Use black magic on old furniture

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 Use black magic on old furniture



Ebonising will cast a spell on pieces that are well past their best..if you can be a really smooth operator.

I’ve been looking at a lot of furniture lately while acting as the man with the van to help a friend move flat.

The choice out there is incredible and, depending on your style of home, there really is something for everyone.

There are the modern shops that specialise in flat-pack furniture, which you have to assemble yourself, but can help kit your home out efficiently and on budget.

There are the solid wood furniture shops with their dove tail joints and solid bases, to drawers that don’t give way no matter how many clothes are rammed into them.

Then there is the antique warehouse with old-style furniture and stuff you remember from your granny’s house.

But you don’t have to spend a fortune for unique pieces. If you learn a few tricks of the trade about wood finishing, you can transform a plain piece of pine furniture.

Ebonising is a finish which came about because ebony is very expensive.

Take a small pine jewellery box, for example. What you need to achieve is a uniform finish with no grain or any imperfections showing – this is very important to try and make the timber look like pure ebony.

As ebony is very dense, everyday pine wood needs to be filled and sanded so it is smooth and flat. This stage is very important and you have to put in the effort or you are wasting your time.

The wood is then stained with nigrosine water stain or a black alcohol stain. This is simply rubbed into the wood until an even look is achieved.

Once the stain dries there is every chance pores still show through, so sand the surface and apply black grain filler to open pores.

This is done by hard rubbing the grain filer across the surface of the wood with a Hessian cloth so the filler is forced deep into the grain pores. Again, you can’t have any pores showing or the game’s up. Allow the grain filler to dry and again lightly sand and clean the surface of the wood.

The next stage is to use a black polish, made from 10-parts black alcohol stain dissolved with one-part white shellac polish. Apply the polish with a polishing pad and allow to dry. Next, use 320 silicon carbide self-lubricating sandpaper and rub the dried polish.

Then use a polishing rubber and white polish and build it up until you have a full gloss finish. I prefer the duller satin finish and this is achieved by rubbing the wood with steel wool and wax polish.

The end results are very impressive. If you take your time you could pass off that plain-looking old jewellery box as a piece of ebony and it would look great sitting on any dressing table.

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