Now this took much longer than expected. A recycled wooden rack for my bromoil brushes. Bottle of Riesling for scale.
Most of these were kindly donated to me a couple of years ago and I noticed they had a similar rack in use. Its an improvement on the tall boxes I was using.
EDIT:
So I thought I’d stain the brush rack, I have no idea why, but I wanted to try a homemade stain. Years ago I had used Potassium Permanganate as a wood ageing stain which works really well. I didn’t have any so I thought I’d try the old tea/vinegar/steel wool stain. Its very straight forward. I also added some rusty nails for some extra kick.
Soak some steel wool in white vinegar for 24-48 hours, strain and stain. This murky solution is basically Ferrous Acetate which reacts with the natural tannins in the wood. This being cheap pine I thought I’d add some tannin content by saturating the wood with tea.Just left over tea bags steeped for a couple of hours, and then just painted on.
When dry you brush on the Ferrous Acetate. I had read it might take a few minutes to darken….. it took seconds.
I tested it first on the underside and it obviously hadn’t had that much tea soaked into it, and was a much lighter stain. Also the straight acetate stain was really nice just on the pine, a silvery aged look. Whereas the tea saturated surfaces went a little further than expected…
I was surprised how dark it actually went. I might have over done it on the tannin. It went almost black, then with a hint of deep blue, then hours later to a dark grey brown.
With a coat of antique beeswax it now looks like a deep dark brown with a raised grain, Not sure if I like it, so might make another and stain without the tea/tannins. I have no idea what sort of wood it now looks like. Plastic wood maybe?
I think I’ll make another without this stain…. what was I thinking.