Beam Stain/Wax/Oil Advice

[mips]

Hi, So someone in their wisdom had hidden away the beams in our living room. Plaster boards removed and Thanks for King Strip I have managed to remove all the multiple layers of paint on the old oak beam to get back to the dark finish underneath. We are looking to keep the same colour but needs a refresh since with the stripping its lighter in some areas than others. Any advice on the best treatment?

Apologies, if this has been covered previously, I am a newbie here and quick search, I couldn't find a similar question.

 

[Toby Newell]

Better photos would be great

 

[mips]

Hope these help

 

[Toby Newell]

Thanks. Ok, so you are not going to match that with an off the shelf item. The existing finish is mostly missing. It appears to be pigmented, do you want to cover up the wood again? I can do it, but then I have 35 years of experience.

 

[Toby Newell]

Personally I would scrape and sand the rest off, or you could use Paramose DCM stripper. Seems a shame to cover up the centuries old oak (looks 300 to 500 yrsold to me) Then you can leave bare or coat in shellac and wax.

 

[mips]

We were thinking of matching the other side (hallway). Pics attached. Hadn’t really considered going back to bare.

This is the older part of the house and the surveyor had mentioned a similar age but some of our friends disputed that so nice to hear someone else think the same

 

[Toby Newell]

A lot of the loose stuff will go crispy when you overcoat.

I make up all my own stains and coloured finishes from scratch. I use 1:1:1 shellac, Jenkins LT12 matting agent and meths as an almost 0% sheen base, then add brown and black LF spirit dyes for the translucent part and an amount of dark brown and black pigment to make it semi opaque to match any existing.

I use Mixol universal stainers, so mainly Dunkelbraun ( dark brown) and Black. For traditional pigments use burnt umber and black. (Simplifying here, I have around 25 colours I can mix to adjust but it's basically a muddy dark brown very much burnt umber)

You can make a dark brown spirit stain either by buying a dark oak or Jacobean stain or buying black, red and yellow, or black and orange and mixing them.

You can buy everything from Jenkins. Might be easier to buy 0015 satin outside pale or KH406 matt H.L. polish as it's already mixed. Jenkins are the only ones who do the matting agent. If you want to get everything in one shop ask for:

2.5l 0015 (matt) or KH406 (satin) shellac
2.5l meths for diluting and cleaning
50g or 100g each of lamp or veg black pigment powder and burnt umber powder (or universal stainers if they do them)
250ml each of Light Fast stain CONCENTRATE (this is much stronger) Jacobean or dark oak (whichever is darker) and black
1 no. 12 or no. 14 mixed hair (zorino) polishing mop (brush < you do need this)

You can leave as is if going for extra matt, if you want a satin finish you can buy a 225g tin of W501 Harrells traditional wax polish antique.

Experiment in small batches, yogurt pots are handy, or cut down plastic bottles. Mix in the spirit (LF) stains first, mainly the dark brown then slowly add black you don't need much add a small dribble at a time. This will be translucent, to increase the opacity then add the brown and black pigments a little at a time.

Once you have a good match in a small pot you can make up a big batch. I make up a big batch from the start, but for practice you can start small. If you go too dark you can dilute with meths but this will only go so far.

You only want to apply one or two coats, the advantage of shellac is that it soaks in and has a very thin build and so looks closer to a stain and not thick like paint. It also dries inhalf an hour and is thin enough to get into all the nooks and crannies. I can post photos later of examples I did in extra matt. Personally I would remove all the existing, or at least sand it smooth and go over the whole lot in matt. The matt shellac is quite matt but the matting agent is almost 0% super uber matt, which I prefer.

 

[Toby Newell]

We were thinking of matching the other side (hallway). Pics attached. Hadn’t really considered going back to bare.

This is the older part of the house and the surveyor had mentioned a similar age but some of our friends disputed that so nice to hear someone else think the same

View attachment 12932

View attachment 12933

Oh god yuk! That's a horrible modern pigmented stain. Ok, so why you would want to match that god knows! But in that case maybe get the matt shellac and some satin, you may need to mix them, it looks like a high matt from here, 10-15% and lol are your freinds local experts then? Its normally quite easy to get anapproximate age, I'm simply looking at a small patch of wood.

 

[Toby Newell]

Tbh you could match that with any dark brown pigmented varnish but I'm not sure you would want to make it all look like a garden shed. But anyway, you have the sophisticated and easy versions. Shed stain or shellac.

 

[Toby Newell]

Looking at the photos you could get away with just burnt umber and black. It's pretty muddy. Maybe I post images of what the wood looks like underneath lol and you can see which you prefer.

 

[Toby Newell]

Sanding is much quicker than chemical stripping and it needs a light sand to clean and get a good key anyway. The downside is you lose some of the pit sawing marks, the plus side is you easily remove the shed stain and reveal about 95% more patina and about 100X more beauty. If you want to be a stickler just use DCM with bronze liming brushes and cabinet scrapers to remove the finish, this takes a lot longer but you should retain most of the pit sawing marks. Don't worry about losing any natural colour at that age oak is dark caramel / strong coffee up to an inch down fading to digestive, sometimes dark all the way through.

 

[mips]

Thanks Toby for the info & definitely food for thought. Must confess this is all new & appreciate the education on modern stain too.

I was thinking would start losing colour so good to know it won’t.

 

[Toby Newell]

tbh if you wanted to match the existing you could experiment with some coloured water based exterior varnishes like Sadolins. You may need to apply two or three coats. It's pretty much the worst 'stain' out there imo, just a thinned out paint.

 

[Toby Newell]

(this thread ideally should be in the general forum btw, unless of course you update us with your progress!)

Test an area, old oak beams normally have a fantastic colour themselves, I mostly use transparent pale shellac and beeswax. Sometimes I add a very slight spirit stain tint, but translucent and very light. You should have areas of light creamy sapwood in places and you don't want to lose the contrast.

Just a couple of days ago a prospective client sent me a screenshot of my website showing me coating a 400 year old bit of French oak with shellac and said they wanted their new, flat sawn bit of featureless engineered oak to look like that. I said, ok, you have good taste, but whatever I do, it's never going to look like that.

Old Father time has already coloured your timber far more beautifully than anything you or I could replicate. Seems a shame to cover it up.

 

[Toby Newell]

1407 - 1550 oak beam.

Transparent pale shellac and beeswax. Has quite a nice patina, no need to stain. You can use a dead flat shellac with LT12 and no wax if you want zero sheen.

 

[Toby Newell]

Same property, upstairs, horrible layers of goopy brown pigment stain. Clear finished. I did colour out some of the lime and white filler that I couldn't hack out, and some in the woodworm holes!

Notice the caramel cream coloured sapwood on the right upright.

 

[Toby Newell]

Think this was 1620, oak.

Gloop...



Gloop gone...



If you prefer you can just leave the wood bare, not so rich and less contrast but equally as pretty, in a different way. There is no requirement to recoat with anything, the 'nourishment' thing is a myth, will be fine for another few hundred years in the buff.

Transparent shellac and waxed...

 

[a twig]

Moved into general discussion as it will likely get more visibility

 

[Toby Newell]

If you want to match the existing you will have to buy a bunch of proprietary exterior pigmented 'wood stains' (technically coloured varnishes) and test them out, it's a cool, muddy, dark brown. You might have to mix two together. For example Sadolin extra durable woodstain, try mixing Jacobean Walnut and Ebony.

To me from the photos the colour screams burnt umber.

I am 100% confident I could get an identical match with a mixture of burnt and raw umber pigment in a satin varnish.