pipemakersforum.com

Forgive me if this has been posted before but I took special interest in petersons staining process. It's in the earlier part of the video but they are brushing the stain on then holding it over the flame so "the stain bonds into the wood". Any ideas whats happening here?

http://www.peterson.ie/pipes/makingapipe.html

They're just burning off the alcohol and drying the stain instantly instead of waiting 15 minutes for it to happen at room temperature.

TJ

You can do the same thing with a heat gun, and there's no danger of setting the pipe on fire.

Which I've seen happen.

Rad

Bah , I thought it was something different. I usually just hit the alcohol stain with my lighter to dry it! I use some acid for my Gus staining and that I'll hit with a flame to turn it black, Kinda like tannic acid, thought this might be similar.

I'v been experimenting with wood dye contrast staining recently, and giving it a lot of thought. One idea is using heat to make the alcohol thinner and to drive it deeper into the wood. Another is heating the wood before hand to dry it thoroughly, then cooling it to room temperature before applying warmed alcohol dye. The cool dry wood attracts as a condenser of the warm alcohol.
I can't say if any of this is very effective. I prefer not to use heat, just to put a lot of continuous, soaked-in coats, 10 or more, to deepen the color, and it seems to work pretty good.