Raising The Grain....?

[Gigabyte]

Thanks for reading..... I need to learn a good method for raising the grain. I did some test dying on some scrap flamed maple and the results weren't so good. I'm dying black, sanding back and dying red. In the pic below I sanded the left half down to 320, then wiped it for a bit with a damp rag but I did nothing to the right side (right is as it was when I bought the wood). I stained the piece black and sanded both sides back with 320 grit, then dyed red. As you can see on the unsanded side, the flames popped out great...... but not on the sanded side. What can I do to make the grain really pop out? Any techniques, methods, etc. would be greatly appreciated!!!

Edited October 30, 2004 by Gigabyte

[Dugz Ink]

The killer "tiger stripe" variations are caused by variations in the wood grain and figure... not the roughness of the wood. Certain parts of the higly figured grain absorb more dye than others.

So you apply the black, which will soak deep into some parts of the grain. Then you sand down through the black that is only on the surface. Afterwards, apply the red, without sanding down through it. The black will show through the red, giving the affect that you've seen on other projects.

D~s

[Drak]

Here

[Gigabyte]

Doh! I've already seen that.... I have it saved in my favorites as a matter of fact..... Thanks for posting it though Mr. Drak.

Actually your "how to" a couple of pages back was what I was actually following to test this piece..... The problem is when I started both sides looked relatively the same as far as seeing the flames on the naked wood. Maybe the flames where stronger on top of the wood and then I sanded where it was weaker underneath.... That's the only thing I can think of........ I don't know.....

Would using 320 gr instead of 220 gr for the sand back make a difference?

Edited October 30, 2004 by Gigabyte

[Drak]

'Mister'???

Anyway...

List what you did, step by step, in excruciating detail, leave nothing out.

Like:

1)

2)

3)

[Gigabyte]

This is what I did:

1. Sanded from 100-320 gr on half of the piece following the grain

2. Took a damp cloth and wiped it over

3. Mixed a strong black (water soluble) with a touch of red and also another batch of strong red with a touch of black (also water soluble).

4. Quickly wiped the black dye on the whole piece. Rag was wet but not too wet, ie dripping

5. Waited an hour and sanded back the piece with 320 grit on a sanding block. I noticed half the board showed the flame really well and the other didn't mostly... Sanded a little more on that side with no improvent (went from all black to semi-bare wood with no real flame character thru the sanding process...)

5. Dyed it red just to see if the flames would show any better on that side.... and here we are...........

I can see the flames quite well on that side when moving it in the light , sort of reflective (much better than the camera captered it) but the black definitely didn't soak in the same.

Sorry about the Mr.... I do that a lot..... Old military habit I guess

Edited October 30, 2004 by Gigabyte

[Drak]

1) Take your piece of wood and sand it all flat to 220.

2) Do to the right side what you did to the left side. You only really need to sand to 220. SOMETIMES I sand to 320, but more normally, I stop at 220.

3) Either you're doing something (wrong) I'm not catching, or the figured part of the grain just plain runs out on that side of your wood, and you can't enhance figure that's not there.

PS, try to back the camera up a bit, I'd like to see a more overall shot of the wood next time.

[frank falbo]

It sounds like you're directly asking why there's a difference between the side you sanded back, and the side you didn't. I've tried lots of techniques with water based anilines, and here's some basic info. First, the general "woodworkers" consensus is to sponge the bare wood down to raise the grain, then sand it smooth again. Then repeat that process three or more times, until sponging the wood down has no effect anymore. In other words you've raised the grain all it will raise. Then begin your staining.

I found that with figured woods we luthiers want to bring the figure out as much as we can. So we stain and sand back, either with black, or a darker mix of our final color. Sometimes just the final color itself building up in the figure is enough. But everything you do in preparation for the stain affects how the stain will absorb and where. That's why Drak's telling you not to go to 320 grit. If you sponge and sand back several times, you make the bare wood more uniform and less random. The stain goes on smoother and less blotchy. (good for furniture makers) But for figured woods, and for black base stain, that can be bad. I mean, we don't want it to be uniform and smooth. We want it to be wild and maximize the variances in the wood itself. So usually what I'll do is use a dark version of my stain (or it could be black) as the "wet and sand back" application. Instead of sponging and sanding back, I use actual stain to raise the grains and sand back once or twice. But then, when I do the final color, there's still some grain raising. For me, I want that to happen. I shoot (or wipe, brush, whatever) my washcoat over that, while its still a little rough. So I've sealed that in. Then I'll sand the furriness out of the piece. You're nipping off some high spots but it doesn't matter because the stain goes through. Occasionally if the piece was real furry I'll wipe another coat of the stain over the lacquer, because it will only absorb into the little pinhead areas that were exposed when I sanded back. I get good results that way, and I feel like I'm encouraging the figure to come out (literally) but its just my way.

If you use alcohol based stains there's less (or no) grain raising. I think what happened to you is that when you wet and sanded back, you inhibited the black's ability to soak into the flames. Sometimes I don't sand pre-stain at all. I use a scraper on the maple instead. That way I'm almost drawing the figure up to accept the stain. Sanding too fine can have a "de-figuring" effect to some degree. For your final piece I would use the black as your grain raiser. Also unless you want your red darker than how it came, I wouldn't mix black with it. Once you get the black in the flames you won't need any black in the red to further enhance the flames.

[Gigabyte]

It sounds like you're directly asking why there's a difference between the side you sanded back, and the side you didn't....

That's exactly what mean't to say..... I'm just trying to understand how sanding affects the figuring, absorptoin, etc.. and you hit the nail on the head for me....

I did another test piece that came out much better even though the figurig wasn't as strong on one side compared to the other ( same board the other scrap came from).... I sprayed some duplicolor clear on it (without sand and sealer) just to see how it affected the look of the wood... I post a pic of that later...

Anyway, I'll give the raising the grain with the stain a try on some scrap for experimentation purposes and see how it works for me. Thanks for explaining how to raise the grain the normal way too, I'll try it that way too. Thanks for the the help everyone.....