# I want to dye a handle blue



## beanbag (Nov 16, 2021)

Because I have bad taste, ok?
I have a ho / magnolia wood handle (attached to a knife) that I want to turn into a blue color. I figured I would try something like in this thread:





Handle Dying


I am making a Santuko chef's knife for my daughter for here graduation from culinary school. She wants the handle to be maple burl and blue.:eek: I know you can buy stabilized/dyed handles but I do my own stabilizing and get the burl from my woods so it's free! My question is do I dye the wood...




www.bladeforums.com




Use an alcohol based dye, then seal with Tru oil, then sand / buff it a little so it's not totally slick.
Does anybody have more specific suggestions on how to go about this?
Initially the handle seemed to come covered with some kind of waxy residue, but even a quick wash with soapy water made that go away and now the handle is fuzzy (grain raised). How to make sure the handle is fully cleaned and prepped?
It's also a darker brown / grey shade of wood, and not the usual light tan color. I'm not sure if the blue dye will make a gross combination with that. Can I bleach it first? If there's to be any contrast or texture, I'd rather it be blue-white or blue-black.
I'll practice first on some scrap piece of wood, but not sure if it will have the same properties as ho wood.


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## beanbag (Nov 19, 2021)

I chickened out on the blue color because the handle is a slightly darker shade of brown, and when I went to the store and saw of sample of blue-on-brown, it kind of looked like a$$. Instead I chose a more "normal" reddish brown.
I used Trans Tint and mixed it with ethanol because an alcohol-based dye will soak in without causing any grain-raising drama. It soaks in and dries immediately, but I ended up applying a few layers of tint anyway.
Then when I applied the Tru Oil, I immediately ran into a problem because it would not soak in unlike on my test piece of wood. (The guy at the wood store said that poplar should behave the same as magnolia). Maybe I should have mixed it with mineral spirits or something, but oh well, too late now.
I'm surprised the grain showed up so much - maybe because the dark areas are where the dye soaks in more and the molecules pile up there? Well, whatever, the Tru oil helped a lot in that regard, and it only interacted minimally with the tint. 
I applied 4 medium coats. (Did not know I was supposed to apply thin coats, but whatever) Lightly sanded with steel wool between coats. The last picture is with 4 coats, where only a little bit of the wood texture is left. I was worried that it would feel nasty and plasticky and squeaky and slippery when wet, but it actually feels kind of nice. I may leave it at that, or maybe do what the guitar people do and use 0000 steel wool and wax afterwards.
Overall rather pleased how this turned out.


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## tostadas (Nov 19, 2021)

beanbag said:


> View attachment 152683
> 
> 
> I chickened out on the blue color because the handle is a slightly darker shade of brown, and when I went to the store and saw of sample of blue-on-brown, it kind of looked like a$$. Instead I chose a more "normal" reddish brown.
> ...


If you don't like it so shiny, you can knock it down with a little bit of stone mud (similar to "rottenstone") on a cloth. But I think Birchwood Casey recommends that you wait at least a couple weeks for the coating to cure first before doing that.


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## inferno (Nov 19, 2021)

i have dyed about 150m2 of floor. and many other things.
i used to work as a type of carpenter for a while and we dyed lots of ****.

step 1: sand until clean wood if oiled/whetever
step 2: wet it to raise the fibers/grain.
step 3: sand it smooth. 
step 4: repeat step 2 and 3 until you get no fiber rise when wetting it. maybe 3 times?

now everything is smooth and nice and nothing will rise when applying the actual stain/dye color.

apply the color.

now you have a few choices. seal it in as it is. or sand it after application to be left with only the color in the grain (this is my fav).
if you only want to have the color in the grain then you apply the color. then seal with oil/paint/clearcoat, then simply sand it so only the color in the grain remains. then you reapply the sealer - oil/paint/clearcoat/whatever you have. 

done.


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## beanbag (Nov 23, 2021)

Few days later update to say that the coating seems to have "dried" a little bit more and shrunk down a tiny bit, revealing more of the wood texture. So the handle is glossy but still with a little texture. I kind of like it, and will probably not bother sanding it down.


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## tostadas (Nov 23, 2021)

beanbag said:


> Few days later update to say that the coating seems to have "dried" a little bit more and shrunk down a tiny bit, revealing more of the wood texture. So the handle is glossy but still with a little texture. I kind of like it, and will probably not bother sanding it down.


Any pics?


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## beanbag (Nov 24, 2021)

If u look at the third pic, u can see that the reflection is a little bit splotchy. It has kind of a pitted, orange peel texture. There's just a little more of that now.


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