ammonia fuming purple heart UPDATE

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I’ve been working on a blanket chest with kind of a greene and greene influence. I’ve made raised box joints for the corners with square purple heart plugs. I happened into some industrial ammonia a while back and was wondering what the cherry would look like fumed, so I put a scrap of it and the purple heart in a tub and closed it up.

I haven’t taken the cherry out yet but I did the purple heart. It turned GREEN!:eek: Here's a picture of the fumed piece and what it looked like when I started for comparison. I put a light coat of oil on to see what it would do. The oil muted the color some. Before the oil it was the color of grass.

I just noticed looking at the picture there is an area at the bottom of the fumed piece that is darker. That's where I had it laying on top of the cherry with the bottom hanging off.


I took the piece of purple heart and put it in the sun for a few hours today. It went from green to almost black. If you move it back and forth in the light it has sort of a really dark purple hue. Odd is all I can say.
 

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Interesting result, I'd like to see if that green color is maintained or mutes to other hues.

If you can control that I can foresee a vast number of possibilities.
I'd urge you to keep on trying with other wood types and keep track of the results.
 
REMEMBER ammonia at the level you are playing with will burn your eyes and respitory tract, you must use proper PPE (full facemask with proper cartridges). house hold ammonia products have a low %.

please be carefull.

p.s. if you have it in gas form you can bend with it.
 
Ammonia can be your friend but it can cause much harm...

Back in the dark ages (60s) we experimented with freezing Anhydrous Ammonia (back in College, one fellow did his Master's research on it) In the liquid form, when wood was placed in it you could form it like rubber and as it dried it would stay in the form stronger than before. Some nasty stuff... Ever see a bow tie made from Veneer? Press a sheet of 1/4" wood into a bowl. Emboss a stamp into the surface, permanently.

I use Ammonia as an agent to extract the color from Walnut Hulls and make a Walnut dye for coloring the sap wood to near match the heartwood. Hull some walnuts save the hulls and allow to darken and dry, soak overnight in a container full of ammonia and then strain the juice into a container, lasts for years and the smell dissipates as it dries.
 
...I use Ammonia as an agent to extract the color from Walnut Hulls and make a Walnut dye for coloring the sap wood to near match the heartwood. Hull some walnuts save the hulls and allow to darken and dry, soak overnight in a container full of ammonia and then strain the juice into a container, lasts for years and the smell dissipates as it dries.

Why not just use the commercially available Van Dyke crystals?
 
Ammonia can be your friend but it can cause much harm...

Back in the dark ages (60s) we experimented with freezing Anhydrous Ammonia (back in College, one fellow did his Master's research on it) In the liquid form, when wood was placed in it you could form it like rubber and as it dried it would stay in the form stronger than before. Some nasty stuff... Ever see a bow tie made from Veneer? Press a sheet of 1/4" wood into a bowl. Emboss a stamp into the surface, permanently.

I use Ammonia as an agent to extract the color from Walnut Hulls and make a Walnut dye for coloring the sap wood to near match the heartwood. Hull some walnuts save the hulls and allow to darken and dry, soak overnight in a container full of ammonia and then strain the juice into a container, lasts for years and the smell dissipates as it dries.

Understanding the precautions that must be taken....that forming business sounds like it has great potential.
Could you expand on the process?
 
I fumed the blanket chest for about 24 hours. I then uncovered it and let it sit for about 2 hours in the sun. Here is a picture of the lid with one coat of seal a cell. I put a scrap of unfinished cherry on top to show the difference. I also placed a quarter on top for scale. In real life the chest is not as brown as the picture, it has more red. I was going to take a couple more pictures but the battery went dead.
 

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Understanding the precautions that must be taken....that forming business sounds like it has great potential.
Could you expand on the process?

Quite simple (in theory) contain and freeze ammonia gas, soak the wood in the liquid ammonia, remove and place in a form or freehand form until the ammonia evaporates.

Simple enough, but the steps in achieving are costly and dangerous (the reason it has not caught on as an industry standard)

Not cost effective. But in special cases....?
 
I fumed the blanket chest for about 24 hours. I then uncovered it and let it sit for about 2 hours in the sun. Here is a picture of the lid with one coat of seal a cell. I put a scrap of unfinished cherry on top to show the difference. I also placed a quarter on top for scale. In real life the chest is not as brown as the picture, it has more red. I was going to take a couple more pictures but the battery went dead.

I never thought of Cherry aging, Thanks for the posting, gives me another method other than staining (staining always seems to be a failure IMHO) The Blotching common to Cherry staining? How well does this prevent that problem? Or does it even exist?

How deep is the color?
 
The ammonia I used was 24%. I didn't measure out how much I used. I took a 9 inch glass pie plate and poured enough to cover the bottom about 1/4 inch deep.

I don't know if regular household ammonia will work. I think it's around 8%, you probably would need to leave it covered a lot longer. I also found out that you need to change the ammonia out after a certain amount of time. I left a sample in for 48 hours and when I checked on it the ammonia smell was gone. I don't know if it off gasses or what.
 
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