White wood dye

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pramsay13
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White wood dye

Post by pramsay13 »

If I use white dye on unfinished wood it hardly shows up at all.
I'm sure in the past when I used it it became a soft white, but this new tin is causing issues.
Have they changed the recipe?
Is there a trick to getting it to colour the wood white?
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prospero
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Re: White wood dye

Post by prospero »

:roll: Never heard of white wood dye.

The usual way is to apply white paint and wipe it off, which gives a soft, dusty effect. Or just paint it white. :D

If you want the wood bleached then Hydrogen Peroxide might lighten the wood, if not change it to absolute white.
The results of all these processes are dependant on the type of wood.
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Re: White wood dye

Post by vintage frames »

I'm guessing that you might have a tin of Liberon "Palette Wood Dye - White". What may have happened is that the pigment - titanium white - has settled and compacted in the bottom of the tin. Get a thin stick and see if it can be broken up and stirred into the solution.
Otherwise, buy a tube of student grade acrylic white and squirt a bit of that into the can. Or - you could be more adventurous and take Prospero's advice and experiment with some white paint.
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Re: White wood dye

Post by Not your average framer »

It is my own experience that white wood stains, or wood dyes a a bit of a mixed bunch when it comes to reliability of results. Even when you get one that appears to work well, the results can vary a lot on different pieces of wood of the same type, or when using the stain, or dye on different types of wood.

I can't say that there is an ideal variety of white wood stain, or white wood dye, but the main one that I am using right now is the Polyvine white vax finished varnish. This is quick and easy to apply, but usually it needs two coats to produce the best result. I would also add that white spirit based stain has been one of the least successful white stains in my own experience.

Most of my white finishes on wood are using a white chalky emulsion paint, which can be wiped on and wiped of, if required, or applied in two, or more coats and then distressed. We all tend to have our own ways of doing things, according to what works best for the way we like to do things, so I recommend doing a bit of experimenting to find your own favorite way of doing things.

I'm often trying new finishes and new ideas, even after hand finishing for something like about 15 years. There's always new things to learn, so why not!
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Re: White wood dye

Post by Not your average framer »

Would you care to give us a little more explaination of what it is that you are trying to acheive. I do a certain amount of simple white finished frames using either cheap pine mouldings, or cheap obeche mouldings. For me the emphasis is on very quick and easy to do finishes. These tend to be something that I can turn out cheaply and still make a worthwhile profit from.

There are certain mouldings that I like to use for this, that are not only the right price from the supplier, but also cut and join well. In the case of pine mouldings, some mouldings are selected grade wood and don't usually have many knots. This means less wastage and no messing around tidying up corners that did not cut as well as others.

A lot of the time, I can get away with a quick coat of chalky emulsion paint followed by liquid wax on a sponge. The white wax finish varnish saves bothering with the coat of wax. Obeche often needs a second coat to get the best results, but not always.
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pramsay13
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Re: White wood dye

Post by pramsay13 »

Here is the Liberon sample board with the different wood dye colours
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y_jqIk ... sp=sharing

So I'm looking to paint an obeche frame to get it that colour. It used to be fine but I haven't done it for a while and now it doesn't seem to make a difference at all.

Here is a sample I've been painting. The end of my thumb is roughly where the white should begin but it's hard to see any difference. That is with 3 coats.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OCkNGJ ... sp=sharing
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Re: White wood dye

Post by vintage frames »

As I said before, you can solve this by adding a little "Mixing White Galeria Acrylic Paint" -
https://www.jacksonsart.com/w-n-galeria ... xing-white
Just keep adding until you get the effect you're looking for.
If I can get you to think about this for a minute; when you dye wood say a blue colour, the wood absorbs all the colours of the rainbow except blue. It now reflects back the blue light and so the wood looks ...Blue. Same if you dye the wood green. But if you try to dye the wood white, then all the colours of light must be reflected back because white light must contain every colour. So no light is absorbed by the wood, so painting a white dye onto wood will have no effect and so there is NO SUCH THING as white dye!
What Liberon are selling here is a thin white acrylic emulsion which smears a fine layer of white powder (pigment) onto the wood. The powder is mixed in a thin liquid glue and when that dries off, the powder is held onto the surface. The wood is now white because the powder is reflecting back all the white light.
As you're probably comfortable using the Liberon mixture, then adding some paint to it is the best solution.
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