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Coloring Finishing And Painting Wood
Dyestuffs taken from the other application classes, while useful and practicable as textile-dyes, are rarely used on wood because of the difficulty in application to such material. In other words, mordant dyes, pigment dyes, developing colors, sulphur colors, and vat dyes are not in common use by wood-finishers, tho they are valuable textile dyes.
119. Dyeing or Coloring Wood.—Dyeing a piece of wood, in the true sense, consists in steeping it in a solution of dye, and giving it treatments similar to those used in dyeing textiles, straw, and the like, in which the color penetrates entirely thru the wood mass and changes the hue of all the fibers. Rather large pieces of wood are sometimes stained or dyed to a uniform color thruout the interior instead of on the surface only. This can be done by removing the air in the cells, by placing the piece in a vacuum chamber, and then immersing it in a dye liquid under pressure of 80 to 120 atmospheres in a large tank. This procedure is useful for some purposes, but is not the most common method of coloring or staining wood.
Staining or coloring wood is usually done by brush (or sometimes sponge) applications, by spraying with an air gun, or by dipping and wiping. This method of staining the surface, or dyeing, as it is sometimes called, changes the color only superficially, because the dye does not penetrate very deeply into the wood mass.
Plaits, strips, chips, small blocks, and sometimes matchsticks, are dyed by the first method of uniform penetration, but furniture and woodwork in general are treated by the superficial methods of brushing, spraying, or dipping.
The dyes used for such staining are acid dyes, basic dyes, or substantive dyes that are quite fast to light and which are soluble in water. Basic dyes are soluble in either water or alcohol. Some dves that are useless for dyeing textiles, because they are insoluble in water, are soluble in alcohol, and can be used as spirit-stains for wood. Spiritsoluble dyes are also used in varnishes. There are also dyes that are insoluble in water but which are oil-soluble, and can be dissolved in benzene or benzol, gasoline, kerosene, or carbon tetrachloride.
For the coloring of raffia, straw, wood chips, splints, and other similar materials frequently used in the manufacture of hats and baskets, basic coal-tar dyes of the most permanent kinds are much desired because of their brightness. There is usually enough tannic acid in most of the above materials, and also in jute and many kinds of wood, so that basic dyes can be used directly; that is, without the application of any other mordant than that already possessed by the fibers themselves.
120. Solubility of Dyestuffs and Wood-Staining Materials.—Coloring-matter intended for use in textile-dyeing and wood-staining is found on the market in one of three forms: (1) as a powder, (2) as a paste, and (3) as an extract.
