I use steel wool soaked in vinegar. The steel wool should be washed in alochol to remove the oil, but you can skip it if you are not really anal. I do not measure the ratio, so in this container I used a chunk about twice the size of a pea. I filtered it through a coffe filter before using, test it before using on your fret board. Make sure the board if free of glue, as in sand off any glue.
So here it is ready to go.
Ron.
I started to pain it on and you can see it has begun to darken before I got it all on.
I got one coat on the whole thing and you can see the wood has a line of dark and light, this has never happened to me before, but hey it is all part of the beauty of wood. This must be about 1 min after I got it all painted on.
This next photo about 3 min later.
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Steve Spencer said:
I think a lot of the variation with the rusty-iron-in-acid method is down to the difficulty in knowing exactly how much iron oxide you're putting in. The amount of available iron oxide (and the rate at which it will be dissolved) is going to be dependent on the surface area of the material to hand. For example, I think wire wool works better than nails because a given weight of wire wool will have a much greater surface area than an equal weight of nails. But there's variation between different grades of wire wool - the finer it is, the greater its surface area per unit weight. Then on top of that you have variation in the degree of rusting. In short, there's a sort of unavoidable randomness inherent in the process (even if you're carefully following a "recipe").
If you have your iron in the form of a nicely soluble powdered salt that you can weigh out accurately then you ought to be able to develop much more consistent results.
Steve Spencer said:
It has been consistent for me up until this one, but it is part of the home built one of a kind.
I kinda like the home brew thing, part of making things for fun.
Anyways I am glad the thread has some life and conflict to make it interesting in its self.
Cheers Ron.
C.F.Martin guitar company uses ebony finger boards and sometimes the natural ebony has very wide light colored streaks . So they use a commercial dye to touch up the offending areas. I have used the same dye on all types of wood and it is black as can be, every time. The Harmony guitar company used this dye to make their maple fingerboards and tailpieces look like ebony. I have also used black Ritz dye that worked well.
Cheers
Bob :)
I'm glad to hear it works with the greening effect on pine - that's what I'll be using it for next. I'm making a battery powered amp out of well-worn wood that is now fresh looking where it has been cut. That will either be torched, ebonized, or likely both. A very ghetto and rustic looking burst, if it works correctly. Sumac is generally a junk tree but if you look up pictures of the wood it's very yellow and exotic looking. I saw that some were cut along the sides of the road (as they often are) and snagged them instead of letting them rot down. They're small enough to rip down to lumber on a table saw - I recommend checking it out if you get a chance. While you're at it, save some bark for a free high-tannin tea to increase ebonizing reactions in woods with low content. And the red furry berries make a cool lemonade-tasting tea. That's way too many random sumac facts for one post and I apologize.
The stuff here that interests me is the starkly different effects that seem to occur with different timber - presumably due to significant differences in tannin content between timber species. Steve Spencer's results with birch sound similar to the effect I observed on pine (it went slightly greenish rather than being "ebonised"). I've never encountered Sumac as a timber so I don't know what to think about that one.
I keep the lid on the jar just so the Ph does not change to much.
Cheers Ron.