Fuming bucket with the lid off.
Below are thumbnail pictures (click to get a larger image) of my experiments with fuming wood with ammonia. I read a post on the Usenet group rec.crafts.woodturning about fuming sycamore and decided to give it a try. This is how I did it and the results...
1) I used normal household generic ammonia.
2) I used 1 cup of ammonia in a open-top plastic cup. I did not wipe on any
ammonia.
3) The wood test pieces were put around the inside of a 5 gallon plastic bucket
and sealed tightly.
4) Start time was 12 noon. End time was 12 noon the next day. 24 hours ...
overnight
5) Air temperature during the days were 72 F ... nights were 48 F.
6) Woods used:
A) Dry Red Oak
B) Dry White Oak
C) Dry Plain American Sycamore
D) Dry Spalted American Sycamore
E) Green Cherry
7) I cut each wood plank in half (cross cut) to fume one half and let the other half sit out in the other end of the large shop in order to have a "control" to compare against. All boards are either rough cut or just split with a splitter. No other treatments applied to wood.
8) The camera I used isn't good. The camera operator isn't good. The lighting isn't good. But I hope you get the general idea from the pictures such as they are.
Fumed wood is always on the left side. Non-fumed wood is always on the right side.
- Andrew (3/17/2003)
Fuming bucket with the lid off.
Fumed and non-fumed boards
White Oak. Certainly darkened it.
White Oak again
White
Oak looking down the grain.
Red Oak. Very dark as expected
Red Oak.
Green Cherry. I didn't expect this. VERY dark
Green Cherry.
Green Cherry.
Plain American Sycamore. You can see a little bit of darkening here. It's a
little bit more than what shows here though. Not very much but still....
Plain American Sycamore. I took this "quarter-sawn" view because I
could see a definite (albeit subtle) contrast between the "flakes" in
the grain here.
Spalted American Sycamore. About the same as the Plain above. Maybe a little
more definition and darkening.. Note the "Blue-Stain" color difference
(it went from orange in the piece at the right to a dark red in the left)
Spalted American Sycamore. A closer picture.
Spalted American Sycamore. End-grain shot. You can't really see the
difference here due to lighting (I assume). The fumed wood is on the left and it
was certainly darker than the one on the right. The picture shows just the
opposite.
Results: It looks like the sycamore does, indeed, turn darker but not enough to be excited about. At least not within 24 hours. I've put the pieces back into the bucket and I'm going to leave them there for a few days straight to see if anything changes. What I found interesting is that the "Blue-Stain" color changed quite a bit. That might be useful! I also was surprised with the dramatic (to me at least) change of the cherry. I knew from my little research into fuming wood that the oak would darken and it did. Wow, imagine that. <g>
After I get done fuming and letting everything air out a little, I'm going to start planing down each piece and see just how far the color goes into the wood.
I've started cutting these test pieces down the center to see how deep the coloring went instead of planing them down. This will give a better view of what's going on.
Here are the results of this part of the experiment as I get them in...
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Cherry Crosssection. Arrows show penetration depth. NOTE: I wiped on some Tung Oil to bring out the contrast for the photo. The color wasn't the same inside as it was on the outside (shown above) but it was certainly noticable and even up to the final depth. The deeper penetration on the one side I am attributing to the placement of the wood piece in the fuming chamber. The side closest to the ammonia colored deeper by about an 1/8". I noticed that the penetration was deeper in the endgrain than the sidegrain. |
