Michael Dresdner

Q: I’m having some problems getting dye to take evenly on soft maple.
A: I’m not surprised. Soft maple is notorious for growing with twisted and wavy fibers. That means when you cut a flat surface, you are actually getting flat grain interspersed with end grain. When you stain, whether with pigments or dyes, the end grain absorbs more stain and comes out darker.
When the pattern of the end grain is regular, we call it curly or quilted maple, both very common in soft maple, and talk about how the stain enhanced the figure. However, when it is random, the enhanced end grain is regarded as unattractive, and we call it blotching.
There are a number of ways to color wood to maximize grain patterns, and ways to minimize them as well. I’ve talked about both over the years on this website, and cover both in the coloring sections of all of my books.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 9:00 am and is filed under Coloring options, dye, pigment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.