doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Alkanet staining

I am working on a Turkish walnut stock and am having trouble on this particular piece getting the red as dark as I want. This is the first time I have had this problem. The Alkanet has been soaked in mineral spirits. Has anyone come up with a way to concentrate the stain or use something else to soak the Alkanet in.

Are you using the same alkanet root as before? Different batches will give different results, and what you find isn't always even from the same species of plant. I soak it in one part food-grade flax seed oil and two parts turpentine. Some guys use boiled linseed oil or alcohol. But I'm going to try Behlen Solar-Lux Blood Red Stain for my next refinishing project. It is said to pop the grain better than alkanet stains. Actually, it is an NGR analine dye. It sounds like a better way to go with less screwing around. I've read it is very concentrated and should be thinned considerably with denatured alcohol before being applied to the stock. Some furniture finishers are recommending 10 to 15 parts thinner to 1 part Behlens, and spraying rather than wiping. Of course, I plan to try it on some scrap walnut first.

http://www.hartvilletool.com/product/2286/stains-and-dyes

I would like to point out that the traditional Brit method of using Alkanet is with the oil of the Flax Plant. It was not come upon by accident but by years of trial and error and to put it succinctly they go together like bullets and guns a marriage formed over time. Alkanet steeped Alcohol is something of a more modern method of obtaining the colour, I feel the jury is still out on this.
Because Alkanet has been used here in Brit Land for such a long time there are a few less known methods devised to adjust and change how it reacts and colours wood.
So try this to darken its effect add Antimony Trichloride sometimes known as �Butter of Antimony�. Add small amounts at a time to the Alkanet/Oil mixture and check the colour change but it all takes time to show, and this is not what we want in our modern world we like things to happen instantly.

The Alkanet is from the same lot as before. Do you have any compatability issues with the flax oil and other finishing oils.
Thanks for the input

Flax oil and linseed oil both come from the same plant. Thus, it will be compatible with any finish that is compatible with linseed oil. The only difference is that flax seed oil is cold pressed and linseed oil is processed by pressing, heating, and using petroleum based chemicals to increase the yield. Either raw linseed oil or flax seed oil can retard the drying of a finish applied over them because they do not have chemical dryers added to them as boiled linseed oil does. However, both flax seed oil and linseed oil will polymerize or harden over time. This is why the traditional English Oil Finishing processes can take months to complete if done properly, although some folks will add chemical dryers to speed things up a bit. Flax seed oil is a food grade product, more pure and safe for human consumption. But flax seed oil does not have as good a shelf life and should be kept refrigerated. Thus, anyone who uses flax seed oil as a solvent carrier for alkanet dye would do best to only produce small batches. I didn't know that until after I bought it.

I confess that I've never tried doing a traditional English Oil Finish as damascus has posted here in the Double Gun FAQ forum. You should read his thread because it has a lot of very good information. I'd like to give it a try because I was very surprised when I did a little experiment a few years ago. I applied a couple coats of several different clear wood finishes to the same piece of planed black walnut to see how they either covered or accentuated a glue joint. The degree of difference was amazing.