Wood Dye - Aniline Dye 5 Color Kit - Wood Stain Powder

Great product, although make sure to watch youtube vids to get an idea of how the application differs from stain. I prefer the liquid, it is a bit "cleaner?" looking, its hard to describe, but the price difference means ill stick to powder for everything but blue/red, since i make use of them the most, and tend to just add yellow, brown, or black to adjust the hue. Works good on white pine, aspen, hickory, poplar, cedar, hard maple, and mahogany, although ive mainly used it on pine, poplar, and aspen so far with excellent results. Works the best with aspen and hard maple in my opinion. I will be trying red oak at some point soon. Play around with the mix ratio in small batches, you can create some interesting colors that can vary depending on lighting and/or the woods grain. Keep track of the amounts used so you can duplicate colors.I've made a blood red with orange highlights and an almost indigo blue with teal undertones that i am very happy with. Dont use anything higher than about 60% isopropyl alcohol unless you add water or it may not dissolve properly. The shelf life after mixing has been pretty long if kept in sealed container (approx 3mo so far). I DONT RECCOMEND LACQUER THINNER AS A BASE, it seems to allow the dye to permeate lacquer even after it was allowed 24hrs to dry. Isopropyl does not seem to have the same issue. Water only has not given very good results either, it doesn't seem to get into the wood very well at all. Sanding to 400 grit on soft woods seems to work best for me, but with harder ones approx 180 is probably sufficent. The finer you sand, the longer it takes to get in the wood, but too rough and it will go too far, just like oil or water based stain. Youll probably use more than expected, maybe 4 times what you would expect to use on a project than oil staining the same thing? Thats a only guess though, it could be more, but you will never manage to get the same results using a stain, either water or oil based, although i am going to try using Minwax's new 'True Black' oil stain instead of the black powder using mineral spirits maybe as the base and will update if the results are worth mentioning. i havent looked to see if they mention using MS as a base works or not.

This product is great - I'm a novice woodworker and my current project is an aquarium stand I'm cladding in 1/4" stain grade maple plywood. I want to stain it the same color as the deep wine red cherry cabinets I have in my kitchen (you know, that color you see on Queen Anne furniture). I tried several water based and oil based stains on test pieces, but they all had issues - a pain to apply, long wait times to multiple coats, streaks, covered up the wood grain, etc. The closest I got was with a Rustoleum Black Cherry, but it streaked really badly during application. So, I tried these Keda dyes...they worked beautifully - really brought out the wood grain, SO easy to apply, quick dry time to apply several coats, no streaking, etc. My only wish is that they had some sort of a color chart because I had to try several mixes and carefully note the proportions of dye to water before I got what I was looking for (for the record - on my maple plywood, the perfect mix was 1/8 tsp Red dye, 1/8 tsp Black dye, and 1/16 tsp Brown dye in 6oz of water, three coats of 90 seconds letting the dye sit on the wood, then wipe it off and wait 30 minutes to do the next coat).And the cleanup is so easy too - no mess, and just a few seconds of running water and I was able to reuse my foam brush and even my nitrile gloves (unlike that oil based mess).I can't recommend this product enough, and I'm getting another batch (because quite frankly I used up a lot of it trying different mixes - for the record, they're not kidding about "be sparing with the blue dye, it tends to take over").Some advice: on the piece you're going to use this stuff, on, sand it with 80 grit (if it's that rough), then 120 grit, and finally 180 grit, make sure you wipe the surface dry of dust, then flood it with water for 90 seconds and wipe the excess water off and let it sit to raise the grain, sand it at 180 again and wipe the dust off, THEN apply the dye - great results. And make sure you use warm water when mixing the dye up. Tempted to try alcohol instead of water (cut your dry times to a third), but I'm just so happy with what I've got with the water now, I think I'll stick with it. I was going to try the General Finishes premixed dye and/or the TransTint's, but I was worried about how much money I'd have to spend to get the ones I was guessing I'd need to mix to get that dark cherry color - this entire package was <$13.

I had never used a dye on wood before and liked the selection of colors in this pack, the ease of mixing, the ability to mix colors and mixing with water. I’m only offering this review as a caution to those who may be putting their project outside. As stated, I used water to mix the dyes and I used the colors on wood planters and covered all with a UV protective spray sealer. That was about 3 months ago. We have had over 100 temps for many days since and these are sitting in direct sun. The yellow and green colors have faded away, almost 100% fade. I do not attribute this to a product fail, I simply used the product as I did in the past with oil based stain and it did not last in direct sun. I will try again on smaller projects that are in more shaded areas with alcohol base and marine/UV coating. Indoors I have no doubt the colors would stay vibrant. Live and learn, overall I’m happy with the product :-)