George wrote:

wrote in message
...

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.


I'm going with nailshooter here. Assuming you've got anhydrous alcohol,
the water will want to equilize the concentrations inside the wood with
that (0%) outside. Thus, water should exit the wood. Since nature
abhors a vacuum, alcohol *should* work its way in to replace the water
taking the dye with it.

The grain-raising (or lack thereof) may be the most common reason
alcohol dyes are used, but there can be other useful properties.

--
Nobody Special