Shou Sugi Ban

[Justintime]

I've been offering this for a while.
If you like playing with fire even better. Look it up. It's a process of burning the surface layer of the wood. In construction it creates a protective layer so that wood cladding is less vulnerable to damp mould etc.
In framing it's the look of charred timber. Lion's and, LJ have ranges that try to be it, but honestly it's such a beautiful and simple process, I don't know why we'd buy a finish that is far superior when it's done by hand.
The process is simple. Make a hardwood frame, slowly burn the frame surface with a hand held gas burner. Let it cool down, burn some more. Seal with two cooats of Polyvine Dead Flat Matt. I wear Kevlar/leather gloves while I'm doing it.
I'll post some progress pics soon

[Justintime]

So I didn't have enough hands to take any in process pics, but here are some finished pics.
Love to hear what you think!

[NTG999]

Looks good!
Is that ash?

[vintage frames]

That looks really good, Justin.

I too was wondering which wood you've used.
Have you tried it on other timbers?

I also noticed that most of the charring is on the outer edge. Can you control the burn like that?

[Justintime]

Thanks, yes Ash. I only gave the inner rebate lip enough to blacken it otherwise it starts to char the inside of the frame. The outer edge is good and pitted because even when you blow any flames out it carries on burning. I did give it a rub round with the glove to stop it eventually. The outside had two coats of poly vine and the bottom and inside had one just to stabilise it and stop getting black everywhere. As I was close framing the work I lined the rebate with the alu/white framing sealing tape.

[vintage frames]

I think you might have got something interesting there.
There's quite a bit of scope for you to create a range of finishes unique to your workshops.

A few pointers -
Have a look at this guy's instagram. There's a lot on there and you have to scroll back to around 2022 and earlier.
https://www.instagram.com/gilder_eu/

He experimented quite a bit with Shou Sugi Ban and there are some interesting results shown around June 2019.

Where I think you could get some mileage is to do your Shougi thing on a flat oak frame first and then insert a flat oak spacer as a small gilded insert.
'Gilding', (I know ..) but bear-with.
If you seal the slip with your polyvine varnish, paint on some gold size, let it dry and then press on some Transfer gold.
Finish by painting some more polyvine.
This will make your Shou Sugi Ban frame sing and would look great as a sample for your customers.

What you've got is a finish with loads of visual complexity, and people like that.
I all looks natural and incidental and a million miles from the manufactured finishes on bought-in mouldings.