Do you guys know about to dye with ammonia?
In Germany you can buy 'Räuchereiche', translated word by word it means: smoked oak.
It has nothing to do with real smoke, but is a chemical reaction of ammonia with the tan acids in the wood. The more acid in the wood, the better reaction. I wondered to use it in bowery.
In the last month I did a lot of experiments with different woods. For example fresh osage can be aged over night so that it looks like 10 years old. Every woods behaves a bit different, but I had great results with elm, ash, dogwood (gets a very nice warm grey).
I noticed three important things.
First this dye is not on the wood, it is in the wood at least 3-4 mm.
Second the color is stable, the acid gets the color by a chemical reaction.
Third the structure of he wood changes, it gets a super smooth surface and the elasticity increases. I will do more tests from time to time. Is anybody here with experience in that item?
Let me show you here an example of a 'smoked' ash bow.
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Here you see the difference between normal and smoked. Before the smoking process I taped the limbs diagonally. In the detail pic above the border is a bit fuzzy, I like that how it came out. The ash developed very nice colors, especially at the growth rings. No pigments added.
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It is a HLD with a deep valley, it is 63“ long. All added parts, overlay, wedge inlay, arrow pass is buffalo horn. The tips are mildly flipped. Drawweight is 72#/28
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