Did Holland and holland,Rigby and others do this? I am not sure if dye and color are the correct words.

Yes they did and still do, the term is usually called 'stain' but it's essentially a dye. Usually of a red color, frequently derived from natural vegetable sources in the past but also nowadays sometimes created in the lab from chemicals. The stain doesn't lie on the surface to cover the grain, instead it seeps down into the pores and merely modifies the appearance rather than covering it up like paint would.
Regards, Joe

Yes. The traditional dye is dark red in color and is made from the roots of the alkanet plant.

Not much of an esoteric answer.

Yes they did.

The English stock makers of the Golden-age of British gunmaking also used rusted iron to stain the oils used to finish the stocks.
As well as alkanet root.
It seems they started using stains on walnut from France and Spain first. The French walnut tended to be rather brassy in color for the English makers and the Spanish walnut was and is rather gray in color.

If you go way back the flintlock rifles used painted on tiger striping.

Rigby & Co particularly seemed to use it,
or the one's I have seen.

Holland on some of there guns as well.

I wonder how beet juice would work?

quote:

Originally posted by 22WRF:
I wonder how beet juice would work?

Cool, a purple gun

quote:

Originally posted by cmfic1:

quote:

Originally posted by 22WRF:
I wonder how beet juice would work?

Cool, a purple gun

A Purple Purdey !!!!

Very nice !!! LOL

Rusted iron huh? I never knew where the golden color came from. I still like the red better.

How does alkanet look on black walnut?

Although this stock was quite dark, I did have some stain added.

I read, in the Dixie Gunworks catalog, IIRC, that the Old-Timers soaked lengths of rope in ambeer(tobacco spit) and tie them around their in-the-white stocks to produce the tiger stripe efect, then stained over it. Kind of gross, but if it was the actual process, apparently worked damned good.

quote:

Originally posted by 22WRF:
I wonder how beet juice would work?

22WRF,

I suppose a test would make one quit wondering, eh? Let us know. One of the most frustrating stains to remove from clothing is peach. Peach on bland Turkish? or a menu item.

Stephen

I have wondered if coffee would work. If you disolved some in a oil finish or maybe alcohol and applied it to a light stock it might darken it some. I have an uncle that made a stain for a hunting powder horn he was workin on from walnuts themselves. On a light grained stock it seems like it would work???????

we see these guns 70-100 years after they were built and try to duplicate the colors ,,,it is not easy to do i have experimented with oil stains ,,water based stains,, alkinet root which sat for over 3 years before using ,,its incredibly red in the jar and when u wipe it but because it is linseed oil it does not seep in and takes time to take on a reddish tinge,water based stains are deep penetrating first time out,,,, behlens makes a good stain oil or water ....paul

Duane Wiebe sells ground alkanet root from india through his website (customgunandrifle.com), plus he describes how to make a solution with the alkanet root and Daly's ship'n shore to seel the pores of gunstocks. Very interesting read under his "gunsmithing tips" section.

quote:

Duane Wiebe sells ground alkanet root from india through his website (customgunandrifle.com), plus he describes how to make a solution with the alkanet root and Daly's ship'n shore to seel the pores of gunstocks. Very interesting read under his "gunsmithing tips" section.

Website: http://customgunandrifle.com/i...icle&id=15&Itemid=14

This works very well!

If you really have more time than sense:

http://www.woodfinishingenterprises.com/dyes.html

I fall into the "more time than sense" group. I bought my Alkanet root from woodfinishingenterprise and did a Ruger No 1 (factory stock, fair wood) just to do it, and like the way it came out. If I could post pics I would. I mixed BLO, turp and some Japan drier, heated, and set the roots inside. It wasn't powder like Duanes - it's roots. Dirt, stones and all. LOL. I put it on the stock with a brush, all day long. It got plenty red and very dark. That website is interesting.

People tend to use the term Stain and Dye as being the same. I prefer a dye on my stocks because it doesn't leave pigment stuck in the grain of the wood. I prefer to use a dye then use the finish to fill the gain not the pigment. I've also found that dye penetrates furter and I'm less likely to remove the color while sanding between coats of finish.

More than you ever wanted to know about the two:::

STAIN CLASSIFICATIONS

p are three classes of stains - pigment-based, dye based and chemical based. Pigment stains use a fine, inert, colored powder as the colorant. Dye stains are based upon a soluble organic chemical dyestuff. The third class, chemical dyes, are based upon a colored precipitate that is formed within the fibers of the wood by a reaction between an applied chemical and chemicals normally present in the wood. While this type of staining can produce some interesting effects - they're rarely used in industrial and professional finishing. Although industrial finishing technicians use the term "colorant" instead of dye or pigment, it's important for finishers to grasp the basic science involved with the difference between the two.

I. Pigment Stains
Pigment stains are the most common stain used in this country. You find them in every paint and hardware store as well as specialty finishing suppliers. There are three ingredients required to make a pigment stain, pigment, binder and carrier.

PIGMENT - pigment is a finely ground, inert, colored powder. They can be natural or man-made, organic or inorganic. By organic we generally mean containing carbon along with hydrogen and oxygen, as well as nitrogen and sulfur. Pigments are classified industrially according the chemistry of the main colorant. While any pigment can be used to stain wood - the ones that find the most use are: Iron Oxides - iron oxide is the yellowish to reddish-brown inorganic constituent that makes rust brown and clay red. The natural iron oxides are dug up out of the earth, washed and ground into pigment and some of these are called the earth colors -the sienna's, umber's and ochre's. The burnt form (burnt sienna, burnt umber) is the raw pigment that has been calcined - or heated to the point just below melting which confers a redder shade to the pigment. A pigment called Van Dyke brown is also in this group but somewhat incorrectly because it is composed of mostly organic matter with only a small amount of iron. The natural iron oxides are well-suited as wood stains because they contain a high silica content which makes them transparent (what technicians call a low refractive index) and they are muted in color which mimics wood-tones well. Synthetic iron oxides are available in red or yellow shades. They are more opaque (high refractive index) - which makes them ideally suited for use in paints, but they can be used in stains in micronized form (ground very fine), usually in combination with the earth pigments.

Synthetic Blacks and Whites - since there are no naturally occurring pure black pigments -carbon, in the form of charred bones (bone-black or drop black) and lampblack are used. For white pigments zinc white and titanium white are used.

Synthetic Organic Pigments - are made by complex chemical processes and produce the bright reds, blues, yellows, oranges, greens and violets that you see in inks and paints. Organic pigments are chemically similar to many of the dyes discussed below.

BINDER -- pigment will not adhere to a wood surface on it's own. It needs a binder or "glue" to stick it the wood surface. Many of the binders used are the same resins that we use as finishes - oils, alkyds, urethanes, acrylics and lacquers.

CARRIER - a mixture of pigment and binder is too thick to be applied easily with a brush, rag or spray gun, so a liquid carrier is added which is simply a solvent that's compatible with the binder. Organic solvents like mineral spirits are the dominant ones and faster drying solvents can be used such as toluene. Recent environmental legislation has pushed the need for less polluting solvents - so water-compatible binders such as acrylics and urethanes are increasing. The combination of the binder/carrier is called the vehicle or medium and it determines the flammability, dry-time and non-yellowing characteristics (acrylics).

II. DYE STAINS
Dye stains are composed of only two components - a dye and a carrier. While at the surface this may seem to be a simpler arrangement than a pigment stain- dyes are little more complex to understand

DYE - a dye is a complex organic chemical derived from petroleum products like benzene, toluene and naphthalene. Through chemical processes such as nitration and sulfonation, these chemicals are processed into dye intermediates such as aniline which are processed further by special operations like diazotization to give the final product - a dry chemical powder. These powders can be dissolved in various to yield colored solutions which can be applied to wood. The conventional classification used for many years in woodworking has been to classify dye powders as water-soluble, alcohol soluble and oil soluble dyes. While this classification serves as an adequate framework - it has also given rise to erroneous generalizations about dye performance (like alcohol dyes are not lightfast). The classification used by the dye industry provides a more accurate classification. While there are thousands of dyes used in everything from textiles to plastics - there are only several types used in woodworking applications.

Basic dyes - these dyes possess a base-like chemical group. These type of dyes were among the first dyes synthesized in the late 1800's. They can be water or alcohol soluble and although very vivid, they possess overall poor lightfastness.

Acid dyes - these dyes possess an acid-like group which confers water solubility upon the dye but are so named because in textile dyeing they are used with some sulfuric or acetic acid in the water solution. Overall -these dyes possess average to very good lightfastness.


Direct dyes - these dyes are similar to acid dyes but have such an affinity for certain textiles (like cotton) that they need only be applied in aqueous solution.

Solvent dyes - dyes that dissolve in certain organic solvents. They are sub- classified as spirit soluble (alcohol) or oil soluble (soluble in vegetable and mineral oils as well as hydrocarbon based solvents like mineral spirits and toluene)

Metallized dyes - some dye groups like acid and solvent dyes can be improved from a lightfastness standpoint by incorporating a metal ion into the molecule. The metal most used is chromium, although cobalt and copper are also used.

CARRIER - dyes dissolve best in certain solvents but the carrier does not have to contain 100% primary solvent. Alcohol can be added to water-soluble dyes, and oil-soluble dyes can have varying amounts of other solvents like alcohol and ketones. Water-soluble metallized acid dyes can be dissolved in glycol ether type solvents, then let down with methanol. This is the typical formulation of the so-called NGR stains.

The Difference Between Dyes and Pigments
There are three main physical differences between dyes and pigments and these affect the working qualities and performance of the stain. The differences are size, how they attach to the wood and lightfastness.
Size - The difference between pigments and dyes can be best visualized by their size. Pigment particles in most wood stains are about 1-2 microns. (1 micron =1/1000 meter) That means that you can see them under a magnifying glass. When a pigment stain is applied to the surface of a piece of wood and wiped off, the discrete pigment particles get lodged in pores, crevices and scratches, any cavity that's larger than the size of a pigment. On ring porous woods like oak - the stain accentuates the pore structure because more pigment is deposited in the pores than in the flat grain between. On diffuse-porous wood like birch - the pigment stains more evenly. On very dense, close grained woods like hard maple, the pigment stains very light because the surface cannot hold much pigment. Because 1-2 microns is well above the wavelength of visible light ( .4 - .7 microns or 400-700 nanometers), pigments absorb light (to produce color) and block it's transmission by reflecting it. If built up too thickly to achieve dark effects, pigment stains can obliterate wood grain but if used correctly can add contrast and depth.

By comparison, dye molecules are much smaller- it would be like comparing a soccer ball (pigment) to the head of a pin (dye). Dye molecule size results in several other differences. Dye colors evenly - regardless of the density or pore structure of the wood and light is not blocked by the dye molecule, it's absorbed and transmitted. This gives dyes their unique ability to accentuate grain and subtle figure even though the dye color is bold and dark.

quote:

Paul K

-- Thank you.