Read Time: 7 mins

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 We are in an age when changing or enhancing the color of wood simply means using one of the fine stains or dyes are readily available. It wasn't all that long ago that the to change or enhance the color of wood was something called Fuming. It's the same thing that mother nature uses, oxidization.
Mother nature does it naturally with oxygen, but we don't have decades to wait, so we can speed up the process with ammonia. The benefits of fuming wood is that you always get a consistent color, no need to worry about dye lots or color names on the can, and the coloring can penetrate the wood up to an eighth of an inch deep for a rich permanent coloration (not longer fuming is required for deeper wood penetration). The disadvantage is that different hues and tones are difficult to control because of differing wood types and length of fuming time and even colors withing the same woods, but we can see these with stains and dyes too.

To fume wood you only need four things, ammonia (more on this later), a plastic or glass (NOT metal) container (with a lid) for the ammonia to aerate from, and some sort of a sealed plastic tent or container in which to fume the wood.

Read Time: 3 mins

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I am one of those people who hate to admit that they don't know how to do something as simple as purchase a paintbrush. I can't tell you how many paint brushes I have purchased over the past 30 years. That is because when I buy paintbrushes, I either never seem to get around to cleaning them properly, in which case after about 2 weeks the bristles have about the same hardness as my ballpeen hammer or, they look so terrible when I am finished with them I just throw them out, which us not usually to hard to do as I didn't pay that much for them in the first place. Then I began to realize that the crappy brushes I was buying were not helping me in getting a nice finish on my woodworking projects.

Read Time: 5 mins

Hits: 13097

You have just spent weeks, maybe months creating a beautiful woodworking piece, now its time finish it. If you are anything like me, you HATE finishing, which is not necessarily a problem but if you rush through the finishing you can destroy all the hard work you have already invested into your project. The very first thing you need to decide before you begin any finishing is ...... what do you want the project to look like, and what is the purpose of the project. Is it a dining room table, plant stand, a pen or guitar. Once you know the questions to ask, determining how, and what you use in the finishing process will be much easier. Does it need to be water proof, do you want a glossy, satin or matte finish, what about the color, natural or do you want to color the wood? All good questions.