Wood-working for Beginners: A Manual for Amateurs

by Charles G. Wheeler

Fig. 683.

The framing-square, "steel-square," or large two-foot carpenter's square, is a very useful and important tool; not merely for framing and large, heavy work but also for small work, and it is of great value in many mechanical operations. Even an iron square is very useful, but a nickel-plated steel-square is the best, as the figures are more distinct and it is less likely to rust. The long arm makes a good straight-edge. See also page 181.

Staining.—When you stain wood, do it for the sake of the colour, preserving the beauty of the grain, and not to try to imitate a more expensive wood. It is better, as a rule, to use good wood of a handsome colour and leave it as it is to mellow with age than to stain or colour it, but there are times when you will wish to stain wood.

The main point to bear in mind for successful staining is to colour the wood itself, not to put on a superficial coat of coloured varnish. For instance, the fumes of ammonia (or the liquid itself) will give oak in a very short time the same dark colour which the ammonia in the air will produce after years of exposure. This is a natural process—merely anticipating the change caused by time.

There are a number of ways of staining dependent upon such chemical processes carried on in the wood itself. These ways are the best, as you can readily see. Having got the right colour, the wood can be oiled, shellacked, varnished, or waxed in the usual way. By this method the natural grain of the wood is not obscured. In fact, the figure of the grain is sometimes made more conspicuous.

Another way is to wash the wood with some thin stain of the desired colour, after which you can finish in the usual way. This is a good method, for the wood itself is coloured to some distance below the surface, and after it is finished it will take considerable bruising to expose its original colour. This method also sometimes enhances the beauty of the grain.

The poorest way to stain, but a very common one with amateurs and in cheap work, is, instead of staining the wood itself, to cover the surface with coloured varnish or shellac. This is often the cheapest and quickest way of getting a desired colour, but it is decidedly the poorest way. Of course, no coating of colour put on outside can be as durable as colour imbedded in the substance of the wood itself, and scarring or injury to the coating exposes the original colour beneath. Besides this, the grain and character of the wood are necessarily obscured by a coloured coating. Wood finished in this way almost always has a cheap, artificial look, and you can usually detect the fraud at a glance. There are many cheap "varnish stains" or coloured varnishes, but you will do well to avoid them, unless for the cheapest and poorest work.

There are two things you will wish to do in staining. One is simply to darken or enrich the natural colour of the wood, so as to give it at once the rich, deep, mellow tone produced by age. This is always the best way to do when it will give the colour you want. But if you want to change the colour entirely—to make pine wood red or green, or cherry black, you must use some chemical process that will develop a new colour in the wood, or must apply a regular stain.

Raw linseed oil alone, well rubbed in and allowed to stand before applying shellac or varnish, will deepen and bring out the natural colouring in time as well as anything else, but it takes a good while. Repeated applications, each thoroughly rubbed in and the excess rubbed off, and after standing some days or weeks, given a light rubbing down with fine sandpaper, then another oiling, and so on, will in time give a surface of beautiful colour, as well as a soft and attractive lustre. But to carry out this process may take months, so that you will not be very likely to practise it; but you see the result sometimes on old wooden tool-handles and plane-stocks which have been so treated. If you do not care about deepening the colour greatly, one or two applications, allowed to stand a week or two before finishing, will often be sufficient and will make a great difference in the looks of your work, and take off that raw, fresh look peculiar to recently cut wood.

If your work is such that you can defer the shell acing for a year or so, as in the case of some pretty piece of furniture to remain in the house, there is no way you can develop the richness of the wood better than to oil it and let it stand to mellow, with occasional applications of oil and rubbing down. Then finally rub down with fine sandpaper and shellac in the usual way.