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Is this stain a good choice?

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Hi,
I'll show you several examples of stain and finish in American black walnut and English walnut. Each was applied to meet specific objectives. The first is a British carbine stocked in black walnut but stained to look as close to the original English walnut as possible. In the first photo I stain the stock with a dilute black aniline dye dissolved in water. This is part of my whiskering and scratch removal process but the black color remains in the open pores after scraping it all off. That black color highlights the grain and give an old mellow look. After scraping off the black, I paint it with pure yellow aniline dye. This kills the cold purplish brown common in black walnut and warms it up to an orange red. I rub off some of the color with a maroon Scotch Bright pad and then stain it with alkanet root infused in mineral spirits to add a deep red. That was a classic stain used by 18th and 19th century British gun makers for walnut. The the gun was finished with Southerland Welles polymerized tung oil.
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....
The next gun is black walnut stained with yellow dye and a dilute coat of LMF walnut stain
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...

Finally, these pistols were stocked in black walnut and stained yellow and then finished.
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Hopefully, this will give you some ideas.

dave


Following up on Dave's suggestions here.. I've been doing some reading about Aniline dyes vs. staining, and in my usual fashion, I may be overthinking things... But I do really like how Dave was able to use layers of dyes (black, yellow), followed by his choice of sealer(s), in a way that brings out the grain in Walnut. I've also learned that dyes penetrate wood deeper than stains, for the most part, and as such can be layered (to accommodate the diff colors) and added to if you're not happy with the color. (My quote here trims down Dave's original post to just a few that I'm seriously considering.)

So.. remembering that my pistol kit from Pendersoli is American Walnut, I wonder if you all could comment on two options that I'm considering. In BOTH cases, I'm going to finish with Birchwood Casey Tru-Oil. The stock has been sanded down to 400 grit sandpaper, which I believe to be ready for dyes. I "raised the grain" once just to see how things were going, but I have sanded it since then so the pours may be partially filled already.

Plan A: Subtle (but easier) lightening of the overall color, with more grain showing (similar to Dave's pistols above, and the 2nd rifle above)
Step 1: Apply Aniline water-based dye in some yellow formulation (diff brands have diff yellows) and allow it to dry completely. Since this is a water-based dye, it should raise the grain a bit.
Step 2: Sand off the fuzzies that the dye lifted. I'm not interested in a "yellow gun" so I think I need to be fairly aggressive with the sanding here in order to produce stripes of yellow associated with the grain. I'm thinking 400 grit sandpaper here.
Step 3: Apply Tru-Oil per instructions.

Plan B: Layering dyes and more grain technique (similar to Dave's first rifle he explained above)
Essentially the same as Plan A, except that I'd start with black aniline dye, then "scrape" it off (see questions), then move to yellow dye, then finish with the Tru-Oil.


So my questions:
(1) As I examine Dave's pics above, that first rifle is just stellar to my eyes. I love the subtle black and yellows that hilight the grains, with the reddish tones of the wood. Nevertheless, seeing the pictures that he shared of the black, then yellow, then finished product... I'm near terrified of applying black dye to my stock for fear that I'll end up with a black gun. Dave or anyone who has done this sort of layered dyes... am I overthinking? Or is it fairly easy to dye the wood, sand it off after drying? From my reading, dyes penetrate the wood really well (advantage of using dyes), so it would seem to me that I would have a difficult time removing that black (or yellow for that matter) dye with just some light sanding. Am I missing something here? Will I be able to remove much of that dye after it dries with just a light sanding? Dave calls it "scraping" so I'm not clear on what that means. Is scraping different than just sanding?

(2) Is American Walnut going to respond differently to the black, yellow, tru-oil treatment than the Black Walnut example from here?
 
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