Ebonizing, Fuming And Liming

Beech is traditionally the wood used to imitate ebony, and it must be close- and even-grained. You need to get a very dense, rich black, so use dyes with good penetration; water-soluble anilines sink in more deeply if you add just a touch of ammonia. You must also use black filler - for oil stains, use black-pigmented dental plaster, mixed with some of the stain itself. Rub the filler hard into the grain, wiping it across and along, clear it with linseed oil, seal with transparent shellac if you have used an oil stain, and then french polish, using black polish, or aniline spirit black dissolved in white polish. If it is not black enough, add more spirit aniline dye, already dissolved, and a touch of laundry blue to give the blackness some life. Black cellulose or synthetic lacquers can also be sprayed on, as long as the stains and filler are carefully sealed; always put on a final transparent coat. Dulling an ebonized finish with pumice and a brush must be done very carefully, to get the straight lines parallel without overlapping.Fuming is a remarkably simple method of darkening wood, almost always oak. The technique consists of putting the piece of furniture into a hermetically sealed space and surrounding it with saucers of .880 (point eight-eighty) ammonia. The fumes cause a deep reac¬tion, but fading is quite quick and so the surface must be sealed as soon as you take it out of the ammoniac atmosphere. Small items can be fumed in a sealed cupboard and checked by plugging a peg of the same wood as you are fuming in a hole drilled in the side. If you want to do a large piece, fix up a polythene tent; sealing the seams and edges might be awkward, but checking is easy through the clear plastic. If some parts of the piece are darker than others, seal them with a thin coat of white polish and put it back in the fumes until the colour is even.Liming is also used almost exclusively on oak and gives it a pale whitish-grey cast. Wire brush the grain to open the pores, and mix a creamy paste in the proportion of 1kg (21b) of lump lime to 3.5 litres (6 pints) of water. Brush it in stiffly, forcing it into the pores; wipe the excess off, let it dry, paper it lightly and seal it with transparent polish or clear varnish. A 50/50 thinned white oil-based paint brushed on, worked in and wiped off does the job equally well. Sand and seal it in the same way.