Feeling a bit Blue........

Stuart Ablett

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Tokyo Japan
.....I have a vacuum pump, I made a vacuum chamber, and last night, I got the idea in my head, to use it........ :D

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Here are the chunks of wood, Keyaki pen blanks

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I used aluminum foil as a "Boat" for the blanks to float in.

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Here is the boat full of color stain (best I could get)

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I put them in the vacuum chamber for an hour, or so, and this is how they came out, I really have no idea how far the stain went into the wood, but I'll find out soon enough.

Cheers!
 
Stuart, could you not use a rectangular plastic box, for getting the same result ?
Maybe I'm thinking to simple, often you are doing things the hard way, anyway I'm doing that often, and after a while you discover that there are more other ways which are more simple. :huh::dunno:
 
Yep, a plastic box would be great, if I had one that size :D

I only have so much stain, so a box that is too big, would not really do the job, I think the wood has to be completely covered by the stain for the effect to work, I think :huh:

I'll be keeping my eyes out for a box the right size for this stuff for sure.

Cheers!
 
I read this and thought I musta missed the "vacuum chamber" thread. But no, when I [found it via a search] it all sounded familiar.

It's been a while now, but I remember reading somewhere how you can do a similar thing using a MityVac hand pump and a ... Mason jar? [Bit of searching...] Ah - it was on the [Woodworking Friends] message board, in [THIS thread] about stabilizing pen blanks.

I don't remember ever seeing any photos, but I imagine you end up with a setup like this one (click on image) from a project at Stanford (found via a Google Images search):

 
I tried something like what you are doing. I found it best to turn the pen blanks round and just a bit over sized before dyeing them under vacuum.

It "seemed" that the dye didn't get into the corners
 
Well, I'm betting that this wood is WAY too dense for this, the dye only went in a very little bit :doh:

I've put the tubes in and turned them down to just about the right size, maybe one more pass with the skew and I've soaked them again, should work :dunno:

I think with a less dense wood it would work well.

I have some Ginko around, it is not nearly as dense so I'll give that a try.

Pics later :wave:
 
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