Here is the secret recipe....Originally Posted by Hardcoretroubadour
The fountain pen ink is a very deep shade of red, similar to fresh blood or a nice drop of red wine with lots of deep burdundy tones. Initial stain coat was 3 parts ink to 1 part colortone cherry which was a very watery diluted batch from about 3 years ago.
2nd coat was full strength fountain pen ink as whilst the timber was a light colour it didn't go as dark as I thought it would. The back is a rather weird stringy grained bit of timber and the water based stain opened it up in a few places from swelling which required natural timber mate filling and light sand back that also stripped a small amount of colour off the back. Thought I had enough full strength ink left but had to add more & more cherry colortone to go the distance and probably the main reason why back is maybe 1 shade more cherry than burgundy.
Some of the grain on front helped to soak up the darker stain and it has come up quite a lush colour which is hard to capture in photos.
Bit of a race on to finish this within next few weeks as my wife reckons it would be a good birthday present for our eldest son who will be back home from where he works in NZ around mid July. 1st build where she has come out into the garage to watch what is happening.
Just ran out of TO tonight and about to order some more. Probably done around a dozen coats with half of them full strength and other half being 50:50 TO:Turps ratio. On this build also did a wipe all over with the diluted solution immediately after wet sanding application and found that helped to keep some of the finish layers intact and also smooth things out. 1st proper wet sand to be done in a few days and then a few more full strength coats before reassessing.
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