marc: the wood whisperer is sponsored by powermatic and clear vue cyclones. did you know you could use baking soda to change the color of wood? well, you can.
oak wood flooring stain colors, (scrubbing sound) (blowing sound) pretty. (jazzy music)
in woodworking, we usestain to enhance the natural beauty of wood, andsometimes to make wood look like something that it's not. the stuff we typicallyuse are coloring agents that deposit color ontop of the wood fibers, or allow it to absorbinto the wood fibers. there's another class ofstains that you might not be familiar with, andthose are chemical stains, whereby putting thismaterial onto the wood,
you actually get a chemical reaction that creates the color. that's exactly what baking soda does. let me show you how it works,and we'll do some test boards. i've got a cup of warm waterhere, and you could use distilled water if you wantto be really picky about it. i'm going to add some bakingsoda, about a tablespoon. the quantities areprobably highly variable. you can experiment a little bit
and see what works best for you. i've got some maple, somecherry and some mahogany. let's see how it affects the wood. i'm just going to essentiallypaint it onto the surface with a foam brush. after about 10 minutes, you can see, we don't have much colorchange on the maple, decent color change on the cherry, and quite a color change on the mahogany.
let's apply some oil basedfinish, and that will actually give us a betterperspective on where this will go, after finish is applied. of course, i'm applying finishon the area that has not had the baking soda treatment too, just so we can see whatthat would look like. you can see, there's quitea variation in how much color change took place. the maple doesn't have very much at all,
maybe a little darker, but not much to it. the cherry, a mediumamount of change here. we've got a nice aged cherry look, kind of fast forwards whatnature would do on its own. the mahogany definitely got darker, right? a little bit of a deeper red, i even see a little bit of a purplehue in there, which i don't know if that's a good thing,but it is what it is. why are these different?
because the reaction taking place here, is between the baking soda and molecules in the wood known as tannins. some woods have more tannins than others. maple is very light on tannins. cherry is known to have a decentamount and mahogany as well. depending on the wood, you mayget a different color reaction. that leads into the reasonwhy, you might be wondering, why doesn't everybody use this if youget such great color effects from it?
well, you don't have asmuch control over the color. it really depends on yourconcentration of the solution, as well as the tannincontent in the wood itself. here's a good example. bothof these boards are cherry, and they were both hit onthis side with the same concentration of baking soda. look how much darker this one is. that is a reallybeautiful, handsome color. if i were expecting thisresult, all across a project,
that maybe used wood fromboth of these boards, i might be incrediblydisappointed to find out that things don't matchup as well as they should. you can see just with a clear coat, the woods, in their raw state,are actually pretty close. control and consistency is always going to be an issue with chemical stains. if you buy all of yourmaterial at the same time, and from the same lot,you do stack the cards
in your favor, that you shouldhave at least somewhat consistent results from one boardto the next, hopefully. with all that naturalvariability, why would anybody want to use a chemicalstain in the first place? for me, there are two reasonsthat make it worth it. number one, is that the coloris pretty much permanent. a lot of dyes and pigments, over time, will start to fade andthey just won't look good a couple of years from now.
the more light exposure that they get, the more fading you'll start to see. this kind of just looks the same, forever. the other thing, has todo with the natural aging process of certain woods. so like this cherry piecehere, just has a natural finish on it, a little bit of danish oil, but check out how beautiful that color is. i'd have trouble replicatingthat with dyes and stains.
it just looks gorgeous,and all this takes is time. a chemical stain, mosttimes, will be sort of like hitting the fast forward buttonand going right from raw wood. to something that lookssomewhat in the family, using a natural reaction in the wood. just a quick safety note. while baking soda is pretty harmless, if you get into theworld of chemical stains, you'll no doubt here about things like
potassium dichromate,sodium hydroxide, ammonia. these are things that area little more dangerous, and you need to do yourresearch and understand what precautions you need to take to take those chemicals safe to use. as an example, potassiumdichromate happens to be a carcinogen. i've gotenough of those in my life. i think i'd rather use dyebefore i use something like that. educate yourself andmake sure you know how
to use these chemicals safely.
now, if you'll excuse me, i have to go put this baking soda back into the kitchen, where i never took the baking soda from. (whistling music)
