How to dye maple wood. This produces a noticeably different look than pigments especially on dense tight grained woods such as maple that offer few places for pigment to settle. See how general finishes water based wood stain meets the challenge of uniform and dark color absorption on difficult to stain wood species such as pine cherry birch and maple without the need. See the photo above for examples of coloring curly maple. Seal with shellac before a waterborne finish.
I hope this video helps display how powerful versatile. Before curly maple board sanded to 220 grit just before application of brown dye. Use dye for bold and stunning figure pop. After 3 coats of solar lux maple brown dye each coat sanded off before the next coat 1 coat of tung oil.
Wherever the solvent soaks into the wood fibers it takes the dye with it changing the color of the wood cells themselves. Moser tinting oil based finishes dyeing bare wood will color lift. Dyes on the other hand dissolve completely in their solvents. These dyes give you unlimited possibilities of colors and fade options.
If you are staining maple grain be certain to place a heavy coat of black on first and definitely seal the wood after staining. The difference really stands out when you dye dense wood that doesnt accept stain well or figured wood such as curly maple. Soft maple is also often referred to as tiger maple for the tiger like stripes in the wood or curly maple if the stripes are a bit more of the curly nature. Many non water based clears can really get weird on top of these.
The term soft maple is a bit of a comparative misnomer as soft maple is harder than many other hardwoods such as cherry. Cheapest dye oil based dye powder wd. I mix blue dyes to apply on oak and maple to make a gorgeous blue wood stain. I would also suggest testing and practicing on a piece of scrap wood first.