wood stain color for white antlers?
General Topic
I stripped the velvet off last years buck and want to get the antlers lookin new with some wood stain. Can you guys suggest the color I should buy to get the most natural look? Any tips of applying it? I figured paint brush or rag? Thanks gentlemen.
I've had good luck using potassium permanganate. Its the stuff used in iron filters for home water systems.
As it comes out of the bottle, its purple and you will hesitate!
But it turns brown on the antlers. Experiment with strengths and #'s of coats BEFORE using it on the antlers you wish to concentrate on.
Pete
Mineral Oil...(I think)....and it works well!
Get some Lipton Tea bags, soak them in hot water, rob on antlers and ti will give a noce stain. Works great.
Joe: I used the Van Dykes Antler Stain. Link attached
First picture is right out of velvet.
Finished Euro. Notice the bases are darker. You control how dark you want it by diluting a bit with paint thinner then using less and less thinner on subsequent coats until you get it where you like. Good Luck!
MUD! I personally have "stained" a pile of mule deer antlers and I wouldn't use anything other than mud... Cake it on, let it stand for 20-24 hours, then brush it off until you get the color you want...
Dirt from under some Oak Brush is what I have found to work the best, but any will do.
Oh, and it is cheap... I mean free!
Thank you gentlemen all kinds of variety of things to use. The more options the better. Charlie that moose looks fantastic.
If you mess up using stain, there isn't much turning back...
I agree, Chucks moose looks awesome!
2nd the potassium permanganate..Wear Gloves !
The best,easiest and probably the least toxic thing I've used is artist's acrylic tube paint.The most used color is Raw Umber.The paint is water based and can be thinned to any consistency you need.It gives plenty of working time and you can wipe excess or all of it off if you don't like what you see.After it is cured,it won't be affected by water.The cheapest,and it works well is Basics brand.I do it for a living and have tried a lot of things over the years.For me,nothing gives better result.This is an elk antler repair but hopefully you get the idea.
Sorry,guess I forgot how to add a picture.
Jim, that doesn't look natural at all.
Ok... It is raining here in Idaho, I have nothing planned for afterwork (strange) and I have a great antler from last year that is in dire need of some staining... I will post before and after pictures and of the process...
Best part is that I don't have to order anything, use paint brushes, risk making a mess with the stain or worry about consistency of the chemicals being used.
I had a NJ 8pt rack that I remounted on a smaller buck a few years back. One mistake I made was "bleaching" it. I don't even know why I did that. Well last year I wanted to make it look more natural, and I had some minwax chestnut colored stain lying around... I just gave it one coat with a paper towel and it came out perfect...
Then, make some mud. I just mixed a little dirt with some water.
Cake the antler in the mud, for Elk, I don't do the tips that way I can blend in the color later, but for a deer antler I will do the entire thing.
Once the antler is covered in mud, set it somewhere to dry... I will leave it like this until tomorrow after work.
This entire process took about 10 mins and cost me nothing...
I will post the finished product tomorrow.
For dry or whitened antler use Old English Furniture Polish. Our Taxidermist taught us this a few years ago..... they look 100 natural in minutes.
Hope a squirrel doesn't find your chocolate covered treat Nick!
I think Jims work looks as good as I have seen. I have also used potassium permanganate. Mud,,, hum, sounds good enough to give a try, I am not real certain of that though here in the mountains of NC, whereas our mud is basically red clay, but it sounds like it might work. I look forward to seeing your results.
But, as far as possibly the easiest - at least that I think - is "golden oak" stain. Again depends on what area the buck came from, or rather what color you are attempting to duplicate. But golden oak, gives that goldish, or rather tannish color that I see on lots of deer in our area. Then simply use steel wool to highlight the burr areas as well as the points.
All good suggestions... Charlie the moose looks great!
The potassium works good as well as the oil paints and van dykes stain. the best most natural stain/paint I found that works for me is a product from pinchback reproductions.Good luck!
Nick- Can't wait to see the finished Pic!
I've used many shades of brown wood stain on sheds and they turn out fine for display or use in furniture or lamps.
Because of antlers being harder/less porous at the tips, the stain looks pretty natural as being darker on the beam and lighter at the tips.
Key is to wipe off - the sooner you wipe, the lighter the color. You can tailor the shade based on how long you let it sit.
I too am looking forward to Nick's "after" photo, as I'm entrigued by his method.
Carl
Will post it up this evening as soon as I get home from work and brush it up to my liking.
There are some very good suggestions above. Back probably 20 yrs ago I used Burnt Umber color paint from an arts & craft store. This was following the advise of an article I saw in a magazine on finishing bleached antlers. The paint comes in a tube.
Jim B,
I think those look awesome. I was told to use a burn amber on my moose antlers to give them the reddish color that is natural to a lot of the Newfoundland moose that rub on the tamarack. When I went into the art shop and asked for the burnt amber acrylic. I guess by mistake he gave me a burnt something else that is also acrylic. I did not notice the mistake until I had applied it to my antlers. They turned out much to red. I mean when you put a light on them they glow a brite red. Is there any thing that I can do to tone the red down. Could I use the burn amber over them now or do I need to try and remove the paint first?
You need to remove the paint first.Burnt Umber is what you were looking for.I'm not sure what you got,maybe burnt sienna.
If it is reddish orange, as Jim said, it is burnt sienna most likely. That is what I use on a cat's nose. You could try lacquer thinner or acetone, or even paint thinner, I am not certain of which cuts and removes acrylic. Good luck.
Deacon Dave - Back to Nature makes a line of environmentally friendly strippers that will strip that out without dropping your IQ or altering your genome.
Sorry fellas, something came up at work yesterday and I didn't have time when I got home... I will get a few pictures posted up this weekend. A little longer time with the mud on it will only make it look better.
If anyone else tries this method, just make sure you use the darkest dirt you can find, dirt from under Oak brush has worked the best for me.
Thanks guys for the input. Since posting I found the tube and it was the burnt sienna. The color actually looks pretty sharp but not natural. I will strip and apply the burnt umber.
A taxidermist told me once to use Old English, the light color for light antlers and the dark for dark ones. You may want to try it.
Well I got some tube paint in the walnut color and painted away. As you can see it came out darker. It's the rack on the right I did. Ill use a wire brush to thin the paint and let the sun bleach it out a bit. Good enough for me. Thanks guys and c'mon nick I wana see the mud job lol
Nick, I have been rechecking this for days... I would really like to see your "mud" technique results. I am very tempted to go ahead and do this, but wanted to see what you came up with.
That forky must have lived in a burnt sicamore patch his whole life.
We asked our taxidermist that same question last year. He suggested we use Old English furniture polish - we tried it and it worked GREAT.
I use brown liquid shoe polish.
Must take a while for the mud to set in the antlers
That or it just doesn't work.
Must take a while for the mud to set in the antlers
I'll second what Nick is doing. I use mud all the time to color antlers. Polish up with steel wool. then may use a little old english if I want to go darker. Lemon oil for a lighter look. Will also lightly seal the antler with a clear matte sealer sometimes.
It's Nick so I for one do not doubt that it works. I just want to see the results so that I can try it.
I just tried Nick's mud on a set of elk antlers and skull I found a few years ago. The rodents had ate on it and it had a broken tine. I Apoxied it and fixed the damage, then applied the mud and it matched in great. Thanks Nick!
Burnt umber is what you are looking for like Jim said
I would love to see pics....
Tough crowd here! Lol
Ok, sorry folks I've been busy the past 4-5 days. Anyhow, here are the pics.
I used a lighter colored mud on this antler to ensure the color was similar to other browns I've found nearby. Had I wanted it darker, I'd have found some darker and richer dirt to use.
Again, had I wanted it darker, I'd have used darker dirt. The unit these deer live in has very little shade so the antlers tend to not be nearly as brown as nearby units. I'll post a comparison to a true brown next.
The antler on the left was found last year as well and it was a fresh drop. I think the mud got me dang close and it costed nothing...
For other units, I'll use mud from under Oak brush as my base, that tends to get them nice a brown. I do the same with Elk...
Works beat if you lightly sand the antler, it gives the mud something to bond too.
Sorry this took 6 days instead of 2, but life took over and if I were to try and color all my white antlers, I'd have to quit my day job. Lol
Wow... that looks great! That looks more natural than anything else I have seen. Definitely going to try that.
I retract my previous statement, well done.
Did the contour of the bases adsorb more of the mud or did you physically apply more layers down there?
Nick you don't have a sprinkler setup in ur house?? Lol
Hey Nick, how do you know for sure those sheds are from a unit 45 buck? Never know, he could have come down from 43, 44, or 48... Looks good tho
Hey Juan, they may not even be from Idaho...
Looks like a MT shed to me:)
