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On Jan 31, 9:22 am, Nobody Special wrote:

I did go get a nice piece of maple burl yesterday and stuck a
sliver into some TransTint (water soluble) dye yesterday for
about 1.5hrs. Pretty much no penetration.

That's why I put in the earlier post to mix with alcohol. It is
miscible with water, and will actually pull the surface moisture out
of the wood to a small extent, penetrating more than water, bringing
the dye along with it.

RUBBISH! If it mixes, it merely dilutes. Water and alcohol molecules both
find their way out to and are carried away in air. The more volatile
alcohol finds its way out at a faster rate than the less-volatile water.

Alcohol mix dyes are used because they don't raise the grain as much as
water mix. The reason the grain raises with water mix is that the water
gets involved in hydrogen-bonding with the sugars, fattening them up. The
wood boys refer to it as "bulking." Alcohols aren't as polar and prone.