Transtint on curly maple

[Robert Hartmann]

I'm making a potato/onion/garlic bin that will reside in our kitchen. I wanted a light wood to match the golden oak cabinets. I went to my preferred lumber supplier and saw some maple that I thought would work. Some curly maple found it's way in the stack, so I grabbed some. This is the first time using maple and I'm enjoying it. Since I've never finished it before (and I'm a novice at finishing) I did a little research and settled on an approach used by Marc Spagnuolo on a pencil holder. He put transtint in some 1/2 lb cut shellac and wiped it on. He then sanded it and applied Seal-a-cell over it. That seems simple as a start for me and his end result was really nice. Problem is I'm not sure how much transtin
to use. He put about 7 drops in half a dixie cup .

So, what would be a good amount to use in 8 oz of shellac? Unfortunately I don't have any decent sized cut-offs to test with.

thanks, Rob

[Jim Becker]

Rob, you need to experiment with some scrap of the material you have with different amounts of the dye to find out what looks best to you. Nobody can really provide a ratio that is guaranteed to do what you want. Even if you have just a small amount of scrap, you can do at least a few samples and you can start with some "regular" maple to get close before trying on scrap with the figure.

[Robert Hartmann]

Thanks Jim, and good idea on non-curly scraps. I did pick up another board (non-curly) just in case I was short. I ended up with two cut-offs about 5x7, pretty good use of what I had. I'll experiment and see what I come up with.