Varnish making... and Lake making

[LCF]

8 hours ago, MikeC said:

Remember the bright red?  Well here's Fustic,  bright red,  and a mixture of the two.   I don't think I like any of these for the violin finish.   Maybe if I had a good ground color they would look better, this is just bare white wood with a little sealer on it.  

 

 

That yellow looks fluorescent. Have you tested these for fading in a uv cab?

 

I'm still inclined to the idea that replacing a few percent of the alum with iron sulphate would tone these down towards the brown/purple axis.

[MikeC]

6 hours ago, CJones said:

Hey Mike c it’s good to see this thread is still alive. Maybe one of my favorites. I jumped on the bandwagon and made some lakes. Ended up with an orange one. Not 100% on exactly how it happened, I’ll try again and let you know. but if you want some pm me your address and I’ll send it to you. 

 

 

 

That looks good.  Hopefully the thread wont die,  there's a lot of good information here.   I'll send you a PM thanks!  

Did you get that orange from just madder?   Hopefully you can reproduce that, a lot of my early experiments some years ago are irreproducible,  I don't take good notes!   

[MikeC]

2 hours ago, LCF said:

That yellow looks fluorescent. Have you tested these for fading in a uv cab?

 

I'm still inclined to the idea that replacing a few percent of the alum with iron sulphate would tone these down towards the brown/purple axis.

yes it is quite a bright yellow.   I applied the fustic dye directly to the wood of my last build after testing it on scraps first,  smeared a bit of it on a white piece of paper and thought that's way to bright yellow, but on wood it looks much more natural, looks quite good in fact.  

I have not tested light fastness but I'm putting this sample in the bright Georgia sun today and will leave it there as long as there is no rain in the forecast.  We'll see if how it holds up under the UV that we get here in the summer.  

I do have some iron sulfate so I'll try that with a madder lake precipitation but I'm not sure how much to use, only a small amount I would guess?  

Here's a picture of what the fustic dye looks like on wood, drying in the sun. 

 

[MikeC]

When I posted that picture, I said I didn't like the colors but the orange is kind of nice, looks a little brown under certain lighting.  Brown is just dark orange after all.   I think with the right kind of ground it would look good on a violin.  

[CJones]

5 hours ago, MikeC said:

Did you get that orange from just madder? 

Yes but It was a second run off unground root pieces boiled in alcohol first run noticed a lot of color in the root still then stewed in vinegar a few days. It gets a little unknown after that. I will try again later. I did it one of two ways. Or three. No notes and I had about 5 things going at once. 

[MikeC]

Here's a few more color samples,  including some wine colored cochineal.  

[Evan Smith]

On 5/14/2025 at 6:13 AM, LCF said:

Were those peroxide based reactions or just oil in water volcanos?

I actually never saw one and I might be almost as old as you, did you know, Moses?

I actually would heat the terpene resin as I bubbled it, and that seemed to eliminate the peroxide that formed the volcano during cooking, I guess I don’t know I don’t care, and I definitely won’t argue about it.

at one point I made about a gallon of linoleum, that was quite interesting. I left the spoon in the pan in the backyard for about five years. It eventually got subjected to rainwater, dirt, leaves, cat urine, and I  still couldn’t pull the spoon out. It felt like rubber, I mean, really strong, I was young rough and and ready, mean, tough, and that damn  spoon would not budge.

Shazam!

[Evan Smith]

On 5/14/2025 at 4:59 AM, fiddlecollector said:

I cleaned it up using sodium hydroxide and discovered it dissolves the resin easily  and turns the dark yellow /orange resin  an extremely deep blood red.

Did you try using it for varnish at that point?

 

 

are you talking about Turpine resin as in bubbling oxygen through gum, turpentine, and then cooking that?

please don’t answer me, I’m never making varnish again, but,,, just in case.