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PostPosted: Tue Sep 17, 2019 3:32 pm 
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Koa
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Anyone ever use baking soda solution to dye mahogany? Just curious as to what your process was


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PostPosted: Thu Sep 19, 2019 7:08 am 
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Cocobolo
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I have used lye to age cherry a number of times. I think it's the same process. I understand baking soda works too. In that case, I applied it and let it sit 15-20 min. Then wipe on vinegar to neutralize it. Rinse with water.

I don't know how it will effect mahogany.


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PostPosted: Thu Sep 19, 2019 12:50 pm 
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Fair bit on the net about this. I believe it works with mahogany , but can depend on the individual piece,

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PostPosted: Fri Sep 20, 2019 12:44 pm 
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I have used lye to dye cherry, and experimented with it to dye mahogany. Since I had some lye solution mixed up, I thought I'd try a quick comparison with sodium bicarbonate.

The lye solution is 1 tsp of lye crystals in 8 oz of water. I didn't measure the bicarb solution, but it's a big pinch semi-dissolved in a capful of water. On a scrap of Swietenia macrophylla, I dyed oval areas with each solution and let them dry overnight. I drew a pencil line around each area. This morning I swabbed a little shellac on the left side of each oval, and some white vinegar on the right side of each oval. As I expected, the shellac saturated the color a bit, and the vinegar seemed to reverse the reaction and restored most of the wood's original color.

The color you see will depend somewhat on my camera, your monitor, etc., but what I am seeing is that both of the chemicals turned the wood a shade of reddish brown; the sodium bicarbonate treated area has a purplish-gray cast and the sodium hydroxide treated area has a richer, more amber color. The shellac seems to reduce but not eliminate the color differences.

The effects you would get would depend on your wood, solution strength, finish, phase of the moon, and so on and so on. Personally, on the basis of this brief test I prefer the color produced by lye.

A useful article about dying wood and mahogany with either potassium dichromate or sodium hydroxide is here: https://docplayer.net/24528795-Chemical ... dlock.html


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