At one time, I had a formula for using water from rusted nails and adding potassium permanganate to stain curly maple. Old gunstock makers used it to stain gunstocks. I lost it when I had a computer crash. Do you have any idea of what the formula was?
Michael Dresdner: Nope. I don’t even have any idea what kind of computer you own; much less what formulas you had in it. However, the rusted nails and water sounds like iron buff, a common chemical stain for blackening tannin-based woods. Potassium permanganate is another chemical stain that also works on tannin woods, but creates a different color than iron buff. Why you would mix the two together is beyond me, as the iron buff would mitigate the color of the permanganate, but if it gave you the color you wanted, great. Typically, chemical stains are a trial and error proposition, and formulas are rarely exact or critical, so don’t lose any sleep over it. Give it a shot with some scrap wood and see if it turns out to your liking.
