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Making white maple to look as mahogany or walnut wood

  • Thread starter Thread starter Y.T.
  • Start date Start date
  • Watchers Watchers 8
Check out my comment on your build log. I had NO idea!o_O Maybe I'll keep my comments to myself until I know what I'm talking about from now on.
You are a master model shipwright. I've never seen anything better, let alone anything I've done!

Pete:rolleyes:
 
Maybe in future when I post comments, I'll wait until I know what I'm t talking about.:rolleyes:
Have you thought about thimbles, fiddle blocks and hearts? Fiddle blocks are hard to make and Zoltan at Dry dock has some nice ones in pear and boxwood. ( he had custom blocks made for a very big early 19th c. Spanish 74 we're restoring at the USNA museum) Actually all the above are challenging to make at any scale, but I have no doubt you are fully capable. Your model is 18th-19th c. admiralty board quality! I'll get the wood off to you soon.

Pete
 
Y.T. said:
Hi danielsje. I am attached to white maple because this is only decent wood type sold in our Home Depot and I purchased some of it. It appears it is good wood to work with by using scalpel, lathe or table saw. It does not ever split as walnut and mahogany does. I love working with maple but do not like its color.
Click to expand...
Got it…I understand completely...and I understand the difficulties getting a tone you want. I hope one of the suggestions for coloring your white maple works for you.
 
Maple is a wonderful wood. Much loved and appreciated by early American New England furniture makers, Especially when highly figured, although the figured boards are much harder to work because the grain goes every which way. Many of these prized antiques have a highly valued and appreciated golden color, due to being finished with thinned amber shellac. Shellac is perhaps the most common finish I encountered original to the period pieces of furniture I worked on for most of forty years, English and American. Even on ship models of that period.
However, Maple will never be Walnut or Mahogany or Cherry. It resists even the most valiant efforts to the contrary. Though I must admit That Y.T. has pretty well nailed it using acrylic paint built up in repeated translucent coatings. He has a picture of a Top he's made for his "Victory' model which makes a liar out of me. His results are amazing! Time, experimentation, and patience ( which he as in waaay greater abundance than me) I expect are his super powers.
 
It just occurred to me (proof that thinking about this stuff keeps me awake at night) that the above mentioned TransTint has a "golden," or "honrey maple"choice among its variety of stains for wood, and that those are a good place to start in transforming the bland white of maple into something mimicking the color more akin to that of the desired wood you are trying to emulate. These alchohol base golden tone stains penetrate deep into the maple giving you a glowing foundation over which you can creep up on the desired wood color with repeated thin washes with that color stain. More colors may be needed to be added to achieve the desired effect.
This was the technique used by the Baroque era painters to give their canvases the foundation of the "Chiaroscro" effect for which (like Rembrandt") they became so famous.
Make lots of test samples and note down the process of each, so that when you achieve a desired effect you can reproduce it.
 
The Transtint dye appeared to be too expensive to get in Canada. I decided to try and ordered some stains from StewMac. They are specializing in luthier supplies. I had some experience with these stains but had no right color. Below is some video how maple can be toned. More coats produce a deeper tone.



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To intensify the honey-amber tone, finish with amber shellac cut 50-50 with denatured alcohol.
You can pad it on with a soft cotton (old T shirt) cloth made (twisted) into a little polishing pad. Very easy to control the application in very thin coats, literally polished on. Mini French polishing if you will.
This alone will give the maple that nice honey amber color. It's how I colored and finished the tiger maple case for the "Young America" in the images of completed models forum. That's how they achieved the classic "honey maple" color common to colonial and early American antique furniture.
 
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