Home made wood dye

What are some of the things you have used to make different colors of wood dye. I was sanding down a guitar of mine down to wood. Fixing a bad pickup route job i did a few months ago. And had the top down to bare wood. and started thinking about staining it. Even though im going to paint it because of the repair to pickup route would stick out like a sore thumb if i dyed it..But I looked around house and boiled some water and mixed in some paprika. And it gave it nice oranges tint..I know you can use tea and coffee to get a dark dye color.. But what other colors have any of you used??

I dont know man, most stains are oil based. Anything homemade would do wierd things once coated over. You want the wood fibers exposed so the coatings that go over it to adhere properly and not bubble up or flake off.

I suggest you google up primative pigments used by the original painters. They used different combinations of organic and inorganic minerals to get different colors including things like iron oxide, Carbon, chalk, plant juices etc mixed with oils or grease, to make up the various colors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigment

Personally I just visit the hardware store of fine woodworking dealer for all that stuff. They have everything for antiques from laquer burn in sticks that are like crayon you heat and melt on, to all kinds of stains and wood bleaches. I really dont have the time reinvent the wheel nor do I care to have to redo hard work when something experimental fails.

I used egg dye recently. It has faded a bit in the few short months since being done. But it has stabilized and seems to be staying the same now. Maybe that's a downside to any water based dye?http://www.woodworking.org/WC/Garchive01/3_27colorants.html

Here's a link that will give you more ideas.

I tried coffee on some test wood. It didn't do much.

I remember reading here on HC a while back that you can take a plug of chewing tobacco and immerse it in a pint of ammonia, put it in an open glass jar and let it set outside for a week--The color from the tobacco leaches into the ammonia and the ammonia smell will dissipate over the course of a week--Strain it through cheesecloth or whatever and you've got a tobacco stain. Haven't tried it myself; all I know is what I read here......

beets, berries, grapes, onion skins etc.

Last wood project I did, I simply used some yellow and red food dyes, and old teabags, in hot water; boiled it for a while, then brushed it on. Worked fine.

What color would you end up with? Would this finish really stink?:poke:

What color would you end up with? Would this finish really stink? :poke:

On eggs you end up with a sulphur yellow color.

You can make a nice deep brown from walnut hulls.

How do you do it. Just boil them in water?

You leave the fallen walnuts on the ground until the husk is all black and shriveled. Then you just cover them with water and boil, boil, boil. Add a handful of rusty old nails to make it darker; the tannins in the walnuts and iron react. Once it's as dark as you need, just strain it though a coffee filter or something equally fine. It makes a great drawing ink.

That's really cool. Thanks.

Now i just need to find a walnut tree.

That's really cool. Thanks. Now i just need to find a walnut tree.

That'll either be very easy or very hard, depending on where you live. If you're an east coast dweller, check the public parks around. Walnut was a popular tree to plant in parks for a long time and the nuts usually go to waste, other than making a few squirrels fat.

Look for an old series of books called Foxfire. There is information in there about using nature and things around the house to use to stain things like instruments and gun stocks. My brother was into this stuff years ago and stained a bass I had with red food coloring.

As previously stated I did see rapid fading with egg dye, which is basically food coloring. I'm just wondering if a poly top coat would have more UV inhibitors than laquer. I did go Duplicolor clear on this project and it did slow down after an initial quick fade. With Duplicolor being acrylic laquer for automotive use my guess is it might have more UV resistance than, say Reranch clear, but I don't know.

The foxfire books are pretty cool. My Dad has them all and I used to look through them when I was a kid.

I've used ink jet color refills to dye wood before. Stayed bright with no clear coat. Haven't tried it on a guitar yet, so I don't know what it does on different woods. The yellow makes a beautiful vintage amber color, though. The red is a bit magenta, but you can mix the colors to get lots of different shades. Black ink simply goes on charcoal gray.

Those ink jet refill kits aren't very expensive are they? Just curious as I'm a cheap b@$t@%d and proud of it.