I'm in a situation where I don't really even know enough to know if what I want makes sense or has the kinds of problems that I think it might have, but here's the situation:
I would like to make a wood stain out of black walnut hulls. The extraction process seems to involve soaking or possibly boiling in water. Adding a base helps the pyrogallol in the hulls oxidize to brown, which is what I want. (Edit:) At the moment I am using sodium carbonate (baked baking soda) as my base, since it was easy to make and relatively safe, compared with lye or ammonia.
This will be used in combination with shellac, which must be dissolved in alcohol. I would like to either apply the stain to the wood under the shellac, or have the option of mixing the pigment into the shellac. For this it would be ideal if the pigment were in an alcohol solution to avoid diluting the shellac. Furthermore, I found one sketchy source which implied that mixing baking soda and isopropyl alcohol might release harmful gasses, so if that might be a concern, I want to avoid having any dried alkaline salts on the wood when I add alcohol-based shellac on top.
I would ideally like to do this with commonly available materials, and as benign as possible. I have denatured alcohol and everclear available, and all the normal grocery/hardware store stuff.
The specific questions I most need help with are:
- Will the sodium carbonate (either dry on the wood surface or in water solution) create any harmful side products if mixed with alcohol (at least 90% ethanol in everclear or denatured alcohol)?
- Is there are a way to move the pigment from a water solution to an alcohol solution?
Any advice, help, process, or warnings that I'm going to off myself with fumes would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
