Black dye for wood?

[Karle Woodward]

Anybody have any experiene with this stuff? I'm looking to build a black desk. It will likely be a mix of wood, but a big part of it will be birch plywood. As you know, birch doesn't always take stain that well/evenly, so I'm curious how it will take dye. Will the whole thing look black? Or will it look motled? Any advice? Thanks.

[Dennis Peacock]

Karle,

Trans-Tint Black dye, alcohol based works very well for dying most any wood black. You can also use permanent India Ink. You can also put in some Black UTC (Univeral Tinting Compound) from a local art supply store to most any finish to make it black. I use dye for woods that are difficult to get an even "stain" color on.

[Mike Henderson]

My experience with trying to tint wood black is very spotty. Some woods will take a dye better than others, but it's very difficult to get wood dyed black evenly. I haven't tried birch plywood, but my guess is that it will not dye evenly. Try Dennis' suggestions and see how they work for you.

Maybe a better approach would be to choose a finish, like lacquer, that you can tint. Test your tinting on scrap with about three coats and see if it's the color you want and how much the grain shows through.

Otherwise, go for opaque black lacquer and just spray it black. Of course, you won't see any grain through that.

Mike

[added note] My experience is in trying to get wood to dye to the color of ebony - really dark black.

[Ford Beardsley]

Karle,

I used some water base Aniline dye from Lee Valley.
I used it on Popular and Birch Plywood. Both took the collor well but there
was some grain raised. I did a light sanding put on another coat light sanding.
Then finished with a coat of finish. They were uniform in color.

Ford

[Hal Flynt]

I have used both the Transtint and India Ink in the past with success, so ditto on that.

I have also used flat black latex paint on different components from MDF to Ply and then covered it with a wipe on poly with nice results. Thinning the latex helps to not obscure the grain pattern but will even out splotches. The poly makes it look like an entirely different finish because of its sheen. (I got the idea when I made some speaker cabinets out of MDF and didn't like the total flat look.)

[Harold Beck]

I made a headboard for my son's room out of red oak and red oak ply. I finisheded it with Non Grain Raising Trans Tint black dye and then wiped on oil based poly. It took several applications to get it colored evenly, but it turned out that you could see all of the grain pattern in the oak, it had a nice even sheen (I used satin poly) and was completely black. I won't liken it to ebony because fo the appearance of the grain texture, but the color was dead black.

The color and finish were my wife and son's desire and I didn't know how it would turn out, but the final result surprised me.

HB

[Justin James]

On birch ply, I'd give it a couple of coats of a quality dye, then follow up with India ink. This worked very well for me on some birch turnings a while back.