Check out my Vinegar Painting
Blacksmith
PT-6".
Vinegar painting is an old method for creating faux veneers that look
like expensive burl wood, etc. I haven't tried using it to create wood
until today. It was amazingly easy and fast.
Previously I just used it to paint interesting patterns on boxes and
stuff. Here, I used it to recreate some kind of light wood veneer
that was destroyed.
With practice, one could duplicate any color and pattern of wood.
With practice.
Blacksmith
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Phil Nelson
Interesting. Can you describe the process? From the photo, it appears to
involve a pigment, liquid (presumably vinegar) and a brush, but . . .
Phil
Stewart Schooley
Blacksmith,
What kind of paint did you use for the base coat?
Stewart
Syl's Old Radioz
http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/dc_faux_graining_combing/article/0,1793,HGTV_3400_1372810,00.html
Syl
Blacksmith
Go for it Stewart!
VINEGAR PAINTING
I saw Bill Russel on TV one night showing results of vinegar painting.
I went to a web site and ordered his book "Decorative Furniture
Finishes with Vinegar Paint". That got me started.
http://www.billrussellstudio.com/
Vinegar painting was in use hundreds of years ago in Europe.
Furniture makers were using it to emulate expensive burls and exotic
woods. Here's how to do it:
Vinegar paint is made up of apple vinegar, dry pigment, and a tiny
amount of dish detergent to allow the paint to fully wet the surface.
If you don't use detergent, it will not stick to some areas. The apple
vinegar allows the pigment to bond to the surface.
Mix 1/8 teaspoon dish detergent to 1 pint of vinegar. When you
vigorously stir it, if it gets too bubbly, you have too much detergent
in it. If it beads up on the surface you apply it to, you have too
little detergent.
Add a teaspoon or less of dry pigment purchased from a better art
store or http://www.danielsmith.com/. You'll want several brown
colors such as Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Raw Sienna, Indian Red (Mars
Red), Cadmium Red Light, maybe Black. You could skip the reds and
black to do basic wood.
This will make quite a bit of one color of vinegar paint. Better to
just mix the vinegar and detergent and keep it in a squeeze bottle.
Then add the solution to a 1/2 teaspoon of color/amount of pigment as
you need it. Mix more as you need it. You can of course mix pigments
for color variations.
You can cover an area the size of the one side of a table radio by
using about a 1/2 teaspoon of pigment and enough vinegar solution to
make a very thin mixture. It will not be anywhere as thick as paint.
Too thin and you'll know it when you apply it. Too thick and it will
look like paint.
PROCEDURE:
Paint the surface with a latex or oil primer. Let dry. Sand lightly to
smooth it. Put on a base coat of good latex or better yet, oil paint
matching the base color of the wood you want to emulate. Let dry.
Sand lightly.
With a very soft oval or round brush, vigorously stir your
vinegar/pigment mixture, then daub, splash, roll, it onto the surface
covering it with the paint. You don't "paint" it. Just get it on
quickly. It won't cover everything.
Next, take a fan brush, twisted plastic wrap, round brush, or whatever
you can use to move the paint around with, and poke it, press it,
twist it, stroke it, or whatever to make the vinegar paint on the
surface move into the pattern of grain or fantasy texture you want.
It will dry in a few minutes and you can then spray or brush with
lacquer or varnish over the top to bring out the colors. It will look
and feel too dull without the final finish.
Large oval brushes are VERY expensive. You can substitute the
Japanese Bamboo handle brushes used for calligraphy. They are readily
available at art and craft stores.
Practice on a scrap of cardboard first to get the feel of it and
practice making the pattern you want. I think, to get started
cheaply, you could try lampblack if you can find it in a hardware.
They used to carry it. It might work as a pigment. Try it over any
light colored paint you have lying around.
If you get good at it, and have a variety of colors, you should be
able to emulate any wood grain pattern. This is the first time I've
tried to emulate wood. When I saw that the veneer on the Philco PT-6
was ruined, I thought I was sunk as far as replacing it. It turns out
that the base paint I had purchased for experimenting was the exact
straw color of the base of the veneer. It came out perfect.
Good Luck!
Stewart Schooley
Blacksmith,
I had heard of vinegar painting somewhere in the past, but never paid
any attention to it. Your success will encourage others and yes, I do
want to add some comments. I checked out the site Sylvain posted and
found out that enamel paint is used for the base coat.
First of all this technique can be done in two different ways. One is to
put a darker color over a lighter base coat as you did and the other is
to put a lighter color over a darker base coat. The first way would be
good for burls and fancy woodgrains. The second way would be good for
when you have straighter grainlines. You'd scratch through it to expose
the darker grainlines.
I did some experimenting last night to see if I could get the cost down
even more. Water, vinegar and sugar come pretty cheap, but dry powdered
pigments aren't found in every art supply store. I used water color
paint that comes in tubes. You can easily find them and you can use the
cheaper "student grade" colors that just about every art company makes.
They worked fine and will be cheaper than dry pigments.
Another thing I tried was to address the problem of doing a larger piece
where I didn't want the vinegar paint to dry too quickly. I've read that
glycerin is chemically inert so I added some to the mixture. I had no
problems and had more time to play around trying things. Adding more
glycerin will make the paint slippery, might be useful for certain effects.
Another thing is that you can add another layer, or more, of vinegar
paint over the first to try for even more and interesting effects. Could
be good for some really fancy burls and crotches. However, since you're
working with water based paint over an enamel base coat, brushing
another coat on might disturb the first coat. I 'd seal each coat with a
light spray before adding another coat.
Blacksmith, I like your vinegar paint. A cheap, reasonably simple way to
solve some of the oddball problems that we all run into sooner or later.
Anyone willing to have fun and play around practicing with this will
surprise themselves with what they can do.
Stewart
Blacksmith
wrote:
>Blacksmith,
>
>I had heard of vinegar painting somewhere in the past, but never paid
>any attention to it. Your success will encourage others and yes, I do
>want to add some comments. I checked out the site Sylvain posted and
>found out that enamel paint is used for the base coat.
>
>First of all this technique can be done in two different ways. One is to
>put a darker color over a lighter base coat as you did and the other is
>to put a lighter color over a darker base coat. The first way would be
>good for burls and fancy woodgrains. The second way would be good for
>when you have straighter grainlines. You'd scratch through it to expose
>the darker grainlines.
>
>I did some experimenting last night to see if I could get the cost down
>even more. Water, vinegar and sugar come pretty cheap,
Strange that one recipe calls for sugar and the other doesn't. I have
a feeling that the sugar would be used if you used something other
than pigment. Tempura doesn't act the same as pigment. The sugar
must bind it to the surface better.
but dry powdered
>pigments aren't found in every art supply store. I used water color
>paint that comes in tubes. You can easily find them and you can use the
>cheaper "student grade" colors that just about every art company makes.
>They worked fine and will be cheaper than dry pigments.
I haven't tried watercolor paints. Sounds like it would work, but
they may be kind of translucent compared to pigment. I'd have to try
both and compare. If they do the trick, they sure would be cheaper.
>
>Another thing I tried was to address the problem of doing a larger piece
>where I didn't want the vinegar paint to dry too quickly. I've read that
>glycerin is chemically inert so I added some to the mixture. I had no
>problems and had more time to play around trying things. Adding more
>glycerin will make the paint slippery, might be useful for certain effects.
Will the glycerine allow the paint to dry thoroughly?
>
>Another thing is that you can add another layer, or more, of vinegar
>paint over the first to try for even more and interesting effects. Could
>be good for some really fancy burls and crotches. However, since you're
>working with water based paint over an enamel base coat, brushing
>another coat on might disturb the first coat. I 'd seal each coat with a
>light spray before adding another coat.
>
>Blacksmith, I like your vinegar paint. A cheap, reasonably simple way to
>solve some of the oddball problems that we all run into sooner or later.
>Anyone willing to have fun and play around practicing with this will
>surprise themselves with what they can do.
>
>Stewart
>
>
Blacksmith
Stewart Schooley
through. Here it is again.
...................................................................................................................................................
Blacksmith,
First, I want to make some comments about the materials we are using:
I'm not a chemist and I don't know why vinegar is used. I can see that
sugar would act as a binder because we know that sugar mixed with water
is sticky. I don't see why you couldn't thin down Karo syrup or Aunt
Jemima's pancake syrup to use as a binder for dry pigments.
Artist's water color paints uses gum arabic as a binder and it doesn't
take much. The paint goes into the paper enough that not much binder is
needed. If you used water color paint on a hard, shiny paper it would
need extra binder to keep it from beading up.
Water color paint can be applied thinly enough to be transparent, less
thin to be translucent, and thick enough to be opaque.
Tempera is opaque water color paint. It has inert powders added to it to
insure opaqueness. The powders are probably dyed so they add to the
color.The really cheap stuff is what was called "show card colors".
Artist's quality tempera paint is available, but our goal is to get
result as cheaply as possible. Also, stay away from any paint labeled
acrylic, polymer, or latex unless you use it only as the basecoat.
In my experiments last night I didn't have anything painted with enamel
paint to try it on so I put it on a baked enamel laundry cart. Pretty
close to painting on glass. I got a good opaque coat that when dry I
could easily scratch through and I can still scratch through it today.
Here's my plan. Using what I could find around here, I painted a board
with three kinds of paint. One uses white latex enamel, one has a tan
flat latex interior wall paint, and the other has an almost black
artist's acrylic paint. I will do some experimenting on them and then
see how spray lacquer works on them. I am going to use the tube water
color with and without glycerin. The more I look at this, the more I
think vinegar and sugar aren't necessary.
This will take me a few days, but I will get back to you.
I don't know if you visit the antique radio forum, but there is a thread
there by Jdee titled "Di-Noc". He restores antique car dashes that had
the faux woodgrain. Between his method and what we are doing I have an
idea that might work. It will be later this evening before I put up my
response to Jdee.
Stewart