Van **** crystals and PU/Acrylic lacquer

[chaoticbob]

Bit of a long shot this! I've been experimenting with Van **** crystals and today made up a concoction of 8 parts Fiddes Premier SP lacquer to one part Van **** solution. The lacquer is a clear gloss waterborne (not waterbourne as it says on the label!) polyurethane/acrylic cross linking resin and the Van **** solution is 100g crystals per litre of water. It has the sort of colour I want and seems OK on some test pieces, but I'm wondering if as the resin cures (7 days or more) there might be problems - eg precipitation of the crystals. Could just wait and see on the test pieces, but under pressure to get this done pronto, so would welcome any thoughts / experiences in the perhaps unlikely event that anyone has tried this before.
Rob.

 

[oakmitre]

You have made coloured water based varnish Except with an uncertain formulation.

The crystals shouldn't come out, because they would not be able to grow in the plastic coat. However you may get fish eyes when brushing on, as these tend to form around impurities, and I don't think van **** mix is particularly clean.

I find tinted varnish to be really difficult to work with a brush - I can never get consistent coverage, and the brush strokes and uneven application is very obvious when dry.

The beauty of using a clear coat is that if you go over the same area twice in error it doesn't stand out. Coloured varnish can also give a murky dead look.

If you are determined to use the mixture, how about using a cheap sponge to wipe the mixture onto the wood then clear coat it later with the same varnish.

 

[Matt@]

my experience of vandyke is that is far from light fast so be prepared for alot of fading!

 

[chaoticbob]

Thanks. The project is repairing/restoring floorboards which are perhaps 200 years old. Some were so bad that bits had to be cut out and patched. I found some boards about the right size from a salvage yard (anything from 10 to 14 inches wide, seems they didn't have standards back then, and the trees were bigger!), but needed to colour match. The different woods absorbed stain to different extents, so that wasn't going to work, hence the idea of using a pigmented varnish. Van **** gave me the hue I was looking for, and I haven't had any problem with application of my concoction.
Didn't know about the fading, thanks for that info Matt.
Rob,