how to stop the bleeding?

[nev]

in my attempt at a decorated bowl, i invested in some spirit stain (chestnut sampler) to have a go at adding colour, and had a few disastrous results #-o so gave up on that idea for the comp, but would like to give it another go

what i've discovered so far...
sand item to finish before applying stain.
i can apply stain over cellulose sealer
i can stop the bleed by adding a cut along the edge of the colour.

what i would like to know is how do i stop the colour from bleeding along the grain without putting a groove along the edge of the colour with the skew or similar?

any hints and tips welcome

 

[Bodrighy]

I don't think you can. Think of the grain in wood as being like lots of little wicks that the stain wil seep along. Unless you cut those strands the stain will always seep. Make the cut before staining though. Probably best to make a feature of it rather than just a cut with the point of a skew though.

If anyone knows another way then I am always willing to learn.

pete

 

[tekno.mage]

Stopping spirit stain from bleeding along the grain is tricky and on some woods (like ash!) almost impossible! As you have already found, a v-cut with a skew can help a lot. A deeply pyrographed line will also stop the stain from bleeding beyond the line.

Apart from those methods, things gets harder. The main trouble is that spirit stains dissolve into almost all commonly used solvents - so finding a substance that can be used as a "stop" on the wood is difficult. One of the professional turners that demonstrated to my local turning club suggested using acrylic sanding sealer as a mask on areas where you don't want the stain to bleed (in his case, the reverse & edge of a platter rim - the main part ofthe rim being stained), applying stain very carefully only to the areas you want stained, and finally sanding away the sanding sealer mask from the areas you want left plain. It worked for him on that type of design, but might not for everything. It works because the acrylic sanding sealer fill the open pores in the wood, preventing the stain from bleeding along them - and because the stain does not re-dissolve acrylic sanding sealer as it would normal cellulose sanding sealer. It does stain the top surface of the acrylic sanding sealer, but that gets sanded away so this doesn't matter.

The type of wood used also affects how far the stain will penetrate/bleed. Porous woods with open grain (like ash) are the worst. Stain hardly bleeds at all on close-grained boxwood, but then it hardly penetrates the wood either and the results are somewhat washed-out looking.

 

[gus3049]

Hi Nev,

I too have been playing with the Chestnut stains this month. This is a question I have asked too. The answer I got was to cut deep grooves. As Kym says, sealing does it too. I use acid catalyst lacquer and seal all the areas I don't want coloured. So basically the piece gets finished before colouring.

I make sure the sealer goes well into the groove, it doesn't matter if it edges over the bit you want to colour although I use a very thin brush to try and minimise it.

When applying the stain I am careful to wipe off any bits where I miss! A wet finger id usually sufficient - do it enough and you get multi colour hands though. In spite of the seal, the stain will try hard to work so its best taken off straight away.

The problem is that the surface must be dead flat, any scratches will take the colour and show up as fine lines. This is a technique I am going to look at as I rather liked the effect on one I did!

 

[nev]

cheers guys, i thought it was just me doing or not doing something right/wrong.so more experimenting required.

wonder what colour fingers i'll have this week???

 

[Cimares]

One thing to also consider Nev is how are you applying the stain?

Using a brush invariably means you end up with too much stain on the wood which makes the bleed harder to control, I tend to use a lint free cloth which allows me to control the boundary of the stain better.

You do end up with more colour on your fingers tho!

Paul.

 

[boysie39]

I was at a Demo yesterday and he was using colours that were in Gel form , He reckons that it does not seep into the other . I am not a lover of colouring wood but I like some pieces. I have not tried it myself but after 3 hrs. it still had not "bled" . Boysie

 

[CHJ]

Welcome to the Forum Paul, experienced input always welcome.

I too struggle with getting stains to do my bidding, my artistic abilities on the colours front are virtually none existent much to my Daughters disgust (very arty) and I have been know to be disciplined by my young Grandson when talking about Bleeding Colours.

 

[Cimares]

Thanks for the welcome!

I wouldn't say experienced, but just recently I've had the chance to get advice from Les Thorne and Mark Baker whilst the club was demonstrating at the south east wood working show and the quality of my colouring improved drastically.

One tip Mark gave me was to delineate the coloured area using permanent marker. This works better on pieces where there is perhaps an edge transition, such as a coloured platter rim and the vertical edge. A decent black marker over powers the spirit stain nicely.

The final piece I turned at that show went off as a birthday present today unfortunately, but I'll see if I have another example to hand to post.

Paul.

 

[Cimares]

Luckily I'd entered the birthday piece into our club competition, so it's up on our website gallery.

I won't deep link the photo here to be fair to our webmaster's stats, but if colouring interests you, please take a look. http://www.orchard-woodturners.org.uk/may 2011.html. My coloured piece is about half way down on the right hand side. (My winning piece is at the top too.. )

The coloured piece is an elm bowl, with Purple and Red spirit staining on the rim with Gold guilding cream used for grain filler. Then there was a small V cut that I used to get the Sharpie to run straight when adding the transition between the coloured rim and the bowl. The same pen was used to add a solid black line on the edge of the rim, but that's not visible.

Regards

Paul.

 

[Terry Smart]

Hi all

Been away for a few days and have only just seen this thread. Another way of colouring without bleeding (or at least a very significant reduction) is to use our stains to tint either Cellulose Sanding Sealer or Melamine Lacquer, to create a tinted finish. You can add up to about 10% stain to either, and it will give quite a definite colour.
Not sure if that helps but it's worth playing around with.

Cheers

Terry

 

[Bodrighy]

You can also add colour to liming wax, mix it well in and apply and get some good effects.

Pete