Accent strips-staining?

What is the best way to stain a western red cedar strip a darker color.  All my wood is light colored and I wish two or three strips for contrast. 

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RE: Accent strips-staining?

I haven't tried it myself, but was contemplating using stain at various points and spent some time hunting advice here and on guillemot kayaks' kayak builder's board among other places.

Behlen's Solar lux stains were the ones consistently mentioned and were said to have been used to get the deep red color on Nick Schade's Petrel pictured on this site. 

This is all hearsay coming from me, search around yourself, but you will definitely need a water-based stain, and I'd run some tests personally before trying anything that might have a chance of ruining work into which I had put any significant amount of time.

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Ogata (eric) 

RE: Accent strips-staining?

E.g.

  http://www.kayakforum.com/cgi-bin/Building/index.cgi/noframes/read/169212

RE: Accent strips-staining?

Petrel stain: (allegedly)

 http://www.kayakforum.com/cgi-bin/Building/index.cgi/noframes/read/170772

It is not always predictable to me when this site will post links properly, or when you will just get a picture of crabby patties, whatever.... 

RE: Accent strips-staining?

Did your link maybe pick up an extra space in front of it?  Got to try one myself........ although I'd really rather be trying one of those most excellent-looking crabcakes.

http://www.kayakforum.com/cgi-bin/Building/index.cgi/noframes/read/169212

RE: Accent strips-staining?

The best way is sunlight, in my opinion.  Not the fastest choice though.  If you have the time to put it in the sun, you won't have any ill effects when it comes time to epoxy.  If you don't have the time, follow other folks' suggestions.

 

FrankP

RE: Accent strips-staining?

Frank, I would think that sunlight would make the wood get lighter in color though?

And Ken, I agree, those are some tasty looking crabby patties. As primitive and frustrating as the forum software used by this site can be, I must say, they do have one of the better tasting 404 (not found) pages I have run across. It's making me hungry....

I'll refrain from exploring any of the other failure modes for posting links in this post!

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Ogata (eric)

RE: Accent strips-staining?

Ogata,

Many (not all but a whole lot) of woods get darker with light exposure.  Specific examples are Cherry, Paduak, red cedar, purpleheart, bloodwood, and many others.  A few woods get lighter with sun exposure, the most common of which is black walnut.

Like I said, though, it takes some time and to get a significantly darker tint usually takes longer than most builders would want to wait.  Various wood species obviously darken at different rates, as will different trees of the same species, so it's not a perfect science.  You're probably still better off (for evenness of color and time) using a stain of some sort, I just wanted to put the information out there.

FrankP

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