Anyone making they're own water stains here?
This (longish) post won't be for everyone but if you have to come up with colour matches using pigmented stains regularly it might be of some use to you.
I've read about operators making their own stains by using off the shelf (or custom mixed) water based paints diluted at least 1/2 & 1/2 with water, bypassing the typical ones (liberon etc) for a fraction of the price and with custom colour control - as i'm led to believe a typical water stain has a similar make up to a water based paint aside from the dilution and possibly some bodying agent. I've been using off the shelf matchpots with mixed success and wonder if anyone else here does? I'm well versed in arriving at typical wood colours by trial using the usual common stains. Lately i've used a smartphone with a colour app on it to create a custom colour water stain, pretty accurately and inexpensively. This is a custom colour thing only though, if you want 5 litres of med oak water stain your better just buying it from morrells/mlyands etc.
Say for example you want to colour match a medium oak colour from typical 1930's furniture that's quite common, sometimes a murky green/yellow/brown colour, usually from UV and the rigours of life, the point being it's not an out of the tin colour in the main. You can take your chances with off the shelf stains, colron, liberon, or whatever else and you may get there in one or two goes - then you could use tints in your finish to get your colour closer etc and that's a typical route - but another techy way if your up for it is to use a paint app on a smartphone (i've got some crown one on my'n). You just basically take a reasonable picture of the substrate, then select an area in the pic, then it coverts into a colour number (and solid colour on the screen). You have the option then of getting it mixed into a small pot (or whatever size) and convert it into a water stain that can help you hit the colour in one go.
Lighting and accuracy of colour are going to be variable so judgement needs to be used and it's obviously not a highly accurate sprectrometer thingy but it's pretty good IMO. The other argument is that pigment stains can sit on the surface and not bring out figure like a dye stain would, but that's easily solved with a tea wash of suitable dye stain to bring out figure prior to the water stain.
Sounds like a lot of fuss? yeah! but not if your having to hit colours quickly for jobs or in commercial situations, great for clients who have existing colours they want to match. Anyone else here used this method or similar?
Sean
This (longish) post won't be for everyone but if you have to come up with colour matches using pigmented stains regularly it might be of some use to you.
I've read about operators making their own stains by using off the shelf (or custom mixed) water based paints diluted at least 1/2 & 1/2 with water, bypassing the typical ones (liberon etc) for a fraction of the price and with custom colour control - as i'm led to believe a typical water stain has a similar make up to a water based paint aside from the dilution and possibly some bodying agent. I've been using off the shelf matchpots with mixed success and wonder if anyone else here does? I'm well versed in arriving at typical wood colours by trial using the usual common stains. Lately i've used a smartphone with a colour app on it to create a custom colour water stain, pretty accurately and inexpensively. This is a custom colour thing only though, if you want 5 litres of med oak water stain your better just buying it from morrells/mlyands etc.
Say for example you want to colour match a medium oak colour from typical 1930's furniture that's quite common, sometimes a murky green/yellow/brown colour, usually from UV and the rigours of life, the point being it's not an out of the tin colour in the main. You can take your chances with off the shelf stains, colron, liberon, or whatever else and you may get there in one or two goes - then you could use tints in your finish to get your colour closer etc and that's a typical route - but another techy way if your up for it is to use a paint app on a smartphone (i've got some crown one on my'n). You just basically take a reasonable picture of the substrate, then select an area in the pic, then it coverts into a colour number (and solid colour on the screen). You have the option then of getting it mixed into a small pot (or whatever size) and convert it into a water stain that can help you hit the colour in one go.
Lighting and accuracy of colour are going to be variable so judgement needs to be used and it's obviously not a highly accurate sprectrometer thingy but it's pretty good IMO. The other argument is that pigment stains can sit on the surface and not bring out figure like a dye stain would, but that's easily solved with a tea wash of suitable dye stain to bring out figure prior to the water stain.
Sounds like a lot of fuss? yeah! but not if your having to hit colours quickly for jobs or in commercial situations, great for clients who have existing colours they want to match. Anyone else here used this method or similar?
Sean
