shinksma
What? I get a title?
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2014
- Messages
- 5,424
My wife and I really enjoyed the "interactive exhibit" at Experience PRS 2018 where we got a chance to stain so maple cut offs. She did a really nice piece of quilt, and I did a couple of flamed pieces. One of mine, and hers, were the cutoffs from the side of a maple top - long/skinny, with one straight edge and one with a nice s-curve. I clear-coated the stained surfaces and then put those two pieces together to create a Dali-esque mini-shelf.
She had stained the edges of her wood, I had done just the top - I wasn't sure what was going to be what while we were playing with the stain, so I guess I just did the part that was "most interesting" to me at the time.
After assembling the "shelf", it was obvious the unstained bit of my piece was sticking out like a sore thumb. her piece was the "shelf", so her edge looked nice and up front, but the top and sides of my piece (the "back/wall") were just mostly naked and slightly marred with spots of stain.
So I looked at my collection of paints (recently obtained from F-I-L who no longer had need for them), and couldn't find anything that I thought would do good as a trim for this shelf-thingy.
Then I remembered some food coloring in the pantry. I thought, well, let's see if they can color up the wood kind-of close to what is already there. When I opened the four-pack up, I saw that the raw food coloring looked a whole lot like the stains we had used at PRS!
After a couple of trial runs (you can always sand stuff down again...), I committed to trying to replicate the green-yellow fade of my piece down the long unstained edge. And it worked! It was remarkably close!
I then stained the other piece left over - the one side was done in a yellow-orange fade "up the chevron" like a guitar would be done, I suppose, so I did the opposite side with a yellow-center to sides fade to red. The red food coloring is not as deep as I expected - it took a couple of "coats" to get it to darken up beyond a deep pink. Maybe PRS uses a darker dye, maybe they use a bit of black (gray) or other color to deepen the red, I dunno. Gives you a new appreciation for the art of staining what looks like an easy color...
So, are the dyes/stains used by PRS very similar in composition to what is sold as food coloring/dye?
I will be interested to see if, over time, the colors hold up the same...
Here are the pieces:
She had stained the edges of her wood, I had done just the top - I wasn't sure what was going to be what while we were playing with the stain, so I guess I just did the part that was "most interesting" to me at the time.
After assembling the "shelf", it was obvious the unstained bit of my piece was sticking out like a sore thumb. her piece was the "shelf", so her edge looked nice and up front, but the top and sides of my piece (the "back/wall") were just mostly naked and slightly marred with spots of stain.
So I looked at my collection of paints (recently obtained from F-I-L who no longer had need for them), and couldn't find anything that I thought would do good as a trim for this shelf-thingy.
Then I remembered some food coloring in the pantry. I thought, well, let's see if they can color up the wood kind-of close to what is already there. When I opened the four-pack up, I saw that the raw food coloring looked a whole lot like the stains we had used at PRS!
After a couple of trial runs (you can always sand stuff down again...), I committed to trying to replicate the green-yellow fade of my piece down the long unstained edge. And it worked! It was remarkably close!
I then stained the other piece left over - the one side was done in a yellow-orange fade "up the chevron" like a guitar would be done, I suppose, so I did the opposite side with a yellow-center to sides fade to red. The red food coloring is not as deep as I expected - it took a couple of "coats" to get it to darken up beyond a deep pink. Maybe PRS uses a darker dye, maybe they use a bit of black (gray) or other color to deepen the red, I dunno. Gives you a new appreciation for the art of staining what looks like an easy color...
So, are the dyes/stains used by PRS very similar in composition to what is sold as food coloring/dye?
I will be interested to see if, over time, the colors hold up the same...
Here are the pieces:
