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Almost black stock

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BillyC

Shooting my .45 better every time
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Has anyone tried staining a maple stock almost black. I’m thinking on my next build I would like a real dark stock, with slightly darker stripes like what a black phase tiger would look like. If so could you post pictures please?
 
When I built my Centermark they supplied a French Stain. Went on like Aqua forte. Applied and dried then heated. It was ebony dark. There was no neutralizing afterwards. It was too dark for my taste
 
I don’t know how well it’d work with Maple but you might try experimenting with artificially ageing the timber using ammonia fumes - I’m thinking it might highlight the stripes better than a stain might........

To be very honest this is just a suggestion, not a known solution for maple..(or at least not to me anyway), though I’ve used this method on other timbers (Ebony, oak, Huon Pine, different breeds of mahogany, beech, blackbean, wenge, ironbark etc) that can appear light when fresh cut or sanded and darken with age and have found that, with a longer “soak” time, some can darken even more than I’d expect with normal ageing.

The idea is to hang the timber in a sealed bag with a bowl of ammonia in the bag so that the fumes “soak” the timber - you don’t actually wet the timber with the ammonia.

24 hours usually does the job but when I’ve forgotten a piece for a week some timbers seem to reach a peak while others seem to keep “ageing” or darkening.
 
Thank so for all the responses. Just kicking the idea around but I’m thinking if it worked out it would be a very cool and somewhat unique rifle, certainly not ordinary,
 
I don’t have many pix of it available but this one I made is pretty dark. How it looks depends on light intensity.
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Here is a rifle that I did for a customer that wanted a darker than normal stock. I believe the maple was red maple but I don't know for sure. I used two coats of aquafortis and blushed with a heat gun.
The finish is Permalyn sealer - the pictures are the best I could get at the time.
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I was actually able to find my notes on ebonizing red maple (in cabinetmaking terms, "paint grade soft maple"). This process gave us a consistent color on a large commercial job, including about 100 linear feet of floor-to-ceiling cabinets, so I'm reasonably comfortable with recommending it. While experimenting, I would suggest reducing the strength of the solutions used, maybe by 50% (double the amount of water used, or halve the amount of tannic acid powder or ferric nitrate powder).

Sand (not scrape) no further than 150. Apply a solution of tannic acid solution (100 grams tannic acid in 500 ml of distilled water). I used a sponge to ensure I got complete coverage.

Let it dry, apply another coat and let it soak in, but before it dries, wipe it down with a towel and apply ferric nitrate solution (400 grams ferric nitrate in 1 liter of distilled water). Again, ensure you get complete coverage of the surfaces.

Blush the wood with a heat gun. This was finished with water-based poly, without neutralizing the surfaces. You could still see the grain of the wood, and in the right light you could see figure in the grain.

I turned a powder horn end plug from soft maple and stained it this way, then burnished it back with scotchbrite so the grain could be seen (it was still dark, but you could see the figure in the wood--about as dark as some of the darker American walnut when oiled). If the process is used on curly sugar maple, you can play with burnishing with scotchbrite almost to the point of having it look like a zebra.
 
Here is a rifle that I did for a customer that wanted a darker than normal stock. I believe the maple was red maple but I don't know for sure. I used two coats of aquafortis and blushed with a heat gun.
The finish is Permalyn sealer - the pictures are the best I could get at the time. View attachment 205817View attachment 205818.
This is what I am looking for, maybe a touch lighter so the stripes show a bit more.
 
Has anyone tried staining a maple stock almost black. I’m thinking on my next build I would like a real dark stock, with slightly darker stripes like what a black phase tiger would look like. If so could you post pictures please?
Working on this currently. Tannic Acid & Aqua fortis. Jim Kibler's U tube videos quite helpful. I didn't want this one any darker but it can be achieved with more applications
 

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Look for something like this, Stain, Ebony Toner, 4 ounce bottle, by Laurel Mountain Forge - Track of the Wolf

Or black leather dye, Tannic acid, soot, copier toner, black iron oxide, Or bone black. I have used them all. They all make black.

My experience with AF stain prepared from Ferric nitrate crystal is that it never gets darker than a rusty orange.

I have a selection of stains and colorant materials. I mix and match to get what I want on that stock. Each piece of wood will stain different. There is no set formula, just cut and try.
 
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