How to make the "Rough Cut" of sawmilled lumber STAND OUT

[Eric Fletcher]

Hello all, I'm in the process of Reclaiming some old sawmilled boards that I plan on doing some various projects with.. But i was wandering what to use to make the circular finish "stand out" a little more.. I have seen numerous pictures of the circular marks beeing Alot darker than the actual grain of the wood.. I once read of a mixture of antiquing solution on here, but could not find it when i did a search.. Thanks for any help..

[Richard M. Wolfe]

Sounds like what you want to show is what I fight and fight to keep from showing - "saw tracks", as a friend of mine called them. If you have some scrap to play with I would try using a pigmented stain. Wipe it on, covering everything, and then wipe it off, but do it pretty lightly and wipe across the milling marks. Hopefully that will allow the pigment to stay accumulated in the 'valleys' while the 'ridges' are cleaned, leading to the contrasting effect you want.

[rob durfos]

We do a lot with this type of finish. You might try dark tung oil. Here is the link.
http://www.realmilkpaint.com/dark_oil.html