staining veneer

[Ian]

Hi

Has anyone tried staining veneers if so what stains were used.
I am trying to get sycamore veneer very white I have tried bleaching but it still has a yellow tone of it so I was wondering if it would be possible to stain the veneer white perhaps with a white wash stain.

cheers Ian

 

[Chris Knight]

Ian,
What bleach did you use?

Two separate (ie repeated) applications of A&B type bleach is enough to bleach mahogany white, I would have thought it would do for sycamore.

 

[Jake]

What make did you use, Chris?

I've been messing around with bleach for a t&g ceiling I'm going to do in our extension, and the Rustins stuff takes 5 or 6 applications to get to white the various woods I've been experimenting (oak, teak, and some reclaimed unknown iroko-like-but-not-quite stuff). It may be that they are just more colour-hardy than mahogany, which I can well imagine might be the case just from their textures.

I've ordered some Fiddes stuff to see if it is stronger - I have a 30m2 t&g ceiling to do and its going to take forever at that rate.

To the OP, as Chris suggests, try another coat or two of the bleach. It does go yellow in the last stages before success. Also 'liming' helps - not with wax which would mess with the finish, but with titanium oxide pigment in a bit of solvent, scrub it on and wipe off the excess. Sycamore is pretty fine pored so this may not help much as with the woods I've been using.

 

[Ian]

Hi Chris

I used tescos own brand as I had read an article that was using sainburys so I thought tescos would work.The article said to leave it for 3 hours but I found that it needed 7 hours anymore and the veneer started to fall apart thats why I was looking at dyeing it white.

What is A&B bleach?

Cheers Ian

 

[Chris Knight]

Jake,
I can't remember, it would probably have been stuff from Mylands or Jenkins that I last used on Mahogany.

Ian, It sounds as if you are suing household bleach. This will not do the job. You can bleach stuff that has discoloured wood sometimes with household bleach but in your case, the yellowing is probably native to the wood in the same way as red colour is to Mahogany (although sycamore can can discolour during kilning unless vacuum kilning is used).

The bleach I am referring to is a two part bleach, one is hydrogen peroxide, the other is caustic soda. They are applied separately to the wood, one after the other (a search here will turn up several threads on the subject).

Repeated applications work better than single applications of more concentrated stuff or extended times.

 

[Jake]

It's a peroxide bleach.

They vary a bit between brands apparently, but the usual is that you apply one solution - sodium hydroxide - and leave it 10 minutes or so to soak into the fibres, then bruch on the second (B) solution which is a peroxide. The two form a chemical reaction which bleaches out the colour.

Ordinary household chlorine bleach doesn't work on timber's natural colour, although it will get rid of some stains (of the deliberate and accidental types).

 

[Ian]

Are these available in kits like rustins wood bleach or would I need to buy the chemicals separately

I read somewhere that the rustins wasn't any good is there any that you can recommend

Ian

 

[Jake]

Are these available in kits like rustins wood bleach or would I need to buy the chemicals separately

I read somewhere that the rustins wasn't any good is there any that you can recommend

Ian

Yes, they are sold together as a two part kit. I think you may have read that about Rustins a couple of posts above this one - but I didn't mean to say that as I haven't compared it to any other brand (yet) - I am just hoping that something will give me the same results but faster (i.e. with less applications) - I have no idea whether that will happen.

I just bought some Fiddes brand stuff from AG Woodcare

 

[Ian]

no I read it in an article but after reading it again I found that he says that household bleach works just as well which I have tried and it does bleach the veneer but it still comes out slightly yellow thats why I posted here.
The article is below. He also says rustins is for solid wood but does not say it is not for veneers maybe its just harder to apply to veneers.

http://www.redbridgemarquetrygroup.org/ ... torial.htm

Ian

 

[Jake]

The only problem he mentions is that veneer doesn't like water and you have rinse off the A&B bleach, which is right. But you can either deal with the water issue by pressing the veneer until it's dry again, or veneer first and bleach it afterwards, using a suitably waterproof glue. Household bleach is totally ineffective in comparison, I've tried it. How he got results good enough to write up like that in that article I don't know.

 

[Ian]

thanks to everyone I think i'll go for the A&B and to think all that wasted bleach it would have done a better job down the loo

Cheers Ian