DIY Non-Toxic Wood Stains

Are you looking for a DIY wood stain that is natural and non-toxic? I love natural non-toxic alternatives for those nasty shelf bought products that compromise our health and environment. So when my daughter asked me to make her a wooden sign to hang over her bed, I decided to go the natural way and use something homemade and non-toxic to stain the wood.

Although, I have used commercial wood stains for certain things in the past, I really don’t like them. They are smelly, expensive and just plain nasty. I remembered staining wood, along with fabric and other things, with natural household items when I was a kid. So I decided that was what I would do for her sign.

What to use for a natural non-toxic wood stain

Since my daughter wants the wood to be a dark brown, the first thought that came to mind was coffee. Coffee gives a nice aged look to fabric and paper and should also do nicely on wood. A few other thoughts were tea (although I didn’t think that would be dark enough), yellow onion skins (probably too yellow on wood), pecan shells (because I don’t have any black walnut hulls) or acorns (which I also don’t have).  There are many other things that can be used for a variety of colors and I will briefly mention those later, but I since I wanted dark brown, I was still thinking coffee.

Since I couldn’t quite remember how well coffee held up as a wood stain, and there are so many natural, safe things to use for staining wood, I decided to do a little research before I began. Thus, the following list of DIY Natural Non-Toxic Wood Stain ideas.

Different Types of Natural Wood Stain

The first thing I found while searching was vinegar and steel wool. Vinegar and Steel Wool make Iron Acetate. I have a list of reference sites at the end of the article.

• Iron Acetate

How to stain wood with Iron Acetate (Vinegar and Steel Wool)

First, you need to make the iron acetate. Basically, you need a quart jar, a 000 steel wool pad and 2-4 cups of vinegar (either white or apple cider).  

 

 

 

 

 

To make the iron acetate:

1. Pull the steel wool pad into little pieces so it can spread out into the vinegar and place it in the jar. Be careful, you may want to wear gloves and do this outside since the steel wool will kind of shed as you pull it apart and may poke you and make a mess. I didn’t wear gloves and I didn’t get poked, but it will make a mess and nobody wants little steel fragments all over their kitchen counter top.
   
2. Pour about 2-4 cups of vinegar over the steel wool. Loosely cover the jar. DO NOT screw the lid onto the jar since there is a chemical reaction that will cause expansion and the jar will break or explode if there is no place for the resulting gases to go.
3. The longer the vinegar and iron sits, the darker the stain will be. If you have a dark wood such as oak and want a light stain, a few hours may be enough. If you want a really dark stain you may want to wait up to a week. It would be good to have scraps of wood to test it on at different time intervals. Be sure to wait about 10 minutes after applying the iron acetate to let it fully react with the wood. It will look light when you first put in on, but will darken with time.
4. When the iron acetate reaches the color you want, simple strain it through a coffee filter into another jar and it is ready to use. The stain should last several months, just be sure that it is through reacting before screwing the lid on tight. If the iron acetate gets darker than you would like, you can lighten it by adding water or vinegar and diluting it. Just add it a little at a time so you don’t dilute it too much.

What is iron acetate?

Iron acetate is the result of a chemical reaction between the vinegar and the iron in the steel wool. Apple cider vinegar may be a little better because of the added acidity from the apples, but I didn’t do enough research to confirm that. I do know that some vinegar is derived from petroleum products instead of real produce such as corn, rice, apples, barley, etc. So there may be a difference in the way some vinegars react and you may want to do some experimenting with it. I prefer using vinegar that isn’t petroleum based so I always use Apple Cider Vinegar for cooking and I use Heinz White Vinegar for cleaning, since Heinz claims theirs is made from real produce.

How does iron acetate stain wood?

The iron acetate reacts with the tannins in wood causing the wood to absorb the iron and blacken. Not all types of wood have the same amount of tannins. Pine has very little tannins and Oak, Mahogany and Walnut have a lot of tannins. Typically lighter wood has less tannins and darker wood has more tannins. The results you get from staining wood with iron acetate will differ with the type of wood and the strength of the iron acetate. In reality, using iron acetate on wood isn’t really staining the wood at all, but reaction between the tannins in the wood and the iron that makes the wood turn varying degrees of black.

Why Would I Want to Use Iron Acetate to Stain Wood?

Since it is a chemical reaction it may be more durable over time and in outdoor environments. If it were a stain, the stain could wash away or fade over time. In the woodworking circles using iron acetate is called Ebonizing the Wood.

How to apply iron acetate to naturally stain wood

1. (Optional) If you are using a light wood such as pine, you may want to make a concentrate of tea or coffee and apply it to the wood first. This will add tannins to the wood and allow you to achieve a darker color with the iron acetate. Black Tea seems to have more tannins than other teas and also more than coffee. If you are using Oak, Walnut, Mahogany or other darker wood that is higher in tannins you can just apply the iron acetate without the tea or coffee concentrate. However, if you want a really dark ebony color, you may still want to use the tea or coffee concentrate to add more tannins.
2. To make a black tea concentrate: Use about 4 family tea bags to a quart of boiling water. Pour the water over the tea bags and let steep overnight.
3. To make a coffee concentrate: Either brew some very strong coffee or use a high concentration of instant coffee in hot water.
4. Now you are ready to apply the iron acetate. With a brush or old rag apply the iron acetate to the wood. It is a thin liquid and it doesn’t have to soak the wood. The iron acetate probably will not look like it is doing anything immediately. Wait a few minutes and the wood will get darker. It will probably take about 30 minutes to reach its peak of darkness.

My Experience With the Iron Acetate

The iron acetate really worked very well. I didn’t have any 000 Steel Wool on hand which was a bit unusual, but my husband did find some 3 Steel Wool, so I thought I would just use that. Judging from the pictures on other sites, the 3 Steel Wool may actually work better. The iron acetate I made looks a lot clearer than the others I saw. Some of the mixtures on other sites looked muddy or rusty, mine is not.

I pulled the steel wool into pieces that were well spread apart and put them in the jar first so they wouldn’t float to the top. I then poured white vinegar over it and put the lid on. I DID NOT screw the lid on tight. After the mixture sat for only a few minutes you could see the bubbles forming and coming to the top. I did shake the jar a few times the first day thinking it might speed up the process, I don’t know that it did. Before I shook the jar I tapped and wiggled it to release the built up gas. I then screwed the lid on and shook it a little bit and then unscrewed the lid so the gas wouldn’t build up and break the jar.

 

When I first put the ingredients together the jar was full of steel wool, now 3 days later you can see that much of the steel wool is gone and the mixture is a clear grey. There is a little scum on the top, I think this is because I didn’t wash the oil from the steel wool before I used it. The scum was not there yesterday when I used the iron acetate, but it was there this morning when I took the final pictures. In a little while I will take the steel wool out and if there is any scum residue left I will skim it off before I close the jar. I am not going to use the iron acetate right now, but I hope to think of another project to use it on before the month is up.

 

 

 

 

For the test I used pine that I pretreated with tea. I used Cold Brew tea and let it sit over night. I wiped the wood with tea and let it dry about 15 minutes and repeated the process. Then I used a rag to apply the iron acetate. I didn’t use gloves and even though the iron acetate is pretty clear looking it did stain under my fingernails.                                                          

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Just Coffee

How to make stain with just coffee

In one of the YouTube videos I watched (included below in resources), the lady stained a doll house floor with just coffee. This gave me hope that my original coffee idea might work. Hers worked perfectly.

1. Make a highly concentrated coffee solution.
2. Brush the solution onto the wood. There were varying techniques to this.

For the doll house floor she used a light brushing of the liquid and then dried it with a heat gun (you could also use a hair dryer). Then reapplied the stain and dried the floor two more times. This achieved a really pretty brown floor color.

Another site saturated the wood with coffee concentrate and let it sit until the desired color was achieved. This was done by wiping a small section dry at different time intervals to check the color. If the color wasn’t dark enough, then the coffee concentrate was reapplied to that small section. When the desired color was achieved, the entire piece of wood was wiped down to remove the excess coffee concentrate and the wood was allowed to dry.

Coffee is the natural wood stain method that I ended up using. I will discus how it turned out at the end of the post.

 

 

 

 

• Alcohol Ink Wood Stains

How to make alcohol wood stains

Another way to make wood stains is by using alcohol stains. I really couldn’t find anybody else using this method. I know they sale alcohol based wood stains, but I couldn’t find any DIY alcohol based stains, so I decided to make some homemade alcohol ink and try that.

To make the alcohol ink I used about an ounce of 91% alcohol, 2 drops blue coloring, 6 drops red coloring and 20 drops yellow coloring.

The alcohol ink did not work very well for a wood stain. For one thing it dried so quickly that it was hard to get it on the wood fast enough. In fact, I would’nt suggest making alcohol ink out of food coloring because it tended to separate back into the original colors when applying it. I used a paper towel since I was using small craft sticks for the test and the red, yellow and blue started spreading out separately on the paper towel. I mixed the alcohol ink up the night before and it was thoroughly shaken both when I made it and before I used it.

 

Samples of different Natural Wood Stains

The pictures below are a test to see how the different Natural Wood Stains look. Craft sticks are made from Birch, but they stained almost exactly like the pine I later used. I pre-treated all of the wood with tea. I did a test without the tea, but the stains showed very light or not at all. The items I used to produce the Natural Non-Toxic Wood Stains are as follows from upper left to lower right:     Blueberries – Mashed, Blackberries – Mashed, Coffee – as described above, Alcohol Ink – as described above, Water & Food Coloring – as described below, Vinegar & Food Coloring – as described below, Spinach – 2 Large handsfull of fresh spinach in 1 cup of water, boiled down and then blended in a blender, Tea – 1 Cold Brew Tea Bag in a quart of water, left overnight, Coffee & Cocoa – This was a little darker than just the coffee. I used half of the coffee from above and mixed in a Tbls. of Cocoa Powder. The cocoa powder didn’t mix very well and there was a lot left at the bottom of the container., Iron Acetate – as described above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Water or Vinegar Stains

How to make water and vinegar wood stains

Make water or vinegar stain the same way as the alcohol stain only using water or vinegar in place of the alcohol.

 

• Wood Wash

How to make a wood wash

A wood wash isn’t technically a stain, but it looks pretty much the same and lets the wood grain show through. You can make a wood wash of any color by mixing 1 part acrylic paint to at least 2 parts water. If you want a lighter wash just add a little more water. Test on some scrap wood until you get the color you want.

 

• Vegetable Stains

How to make vegetable wood stains

This is probably the most fun way to experiment and make stains. Almost any vegetation will stain. Remember trying to get grass and mud stains out of clothes. Sometimes it is almost impossible. The basic process for making stain from vegetation is to either make a paste from it or boil it until you get rich colored water. This method is also good for naturally dying clothes, fabric or yarn. I may do a post on that later. I have three tubs of raw wool I need to clean and do something with. I can’t make stain from all of these items right now, but if you would like to try some and experiment around here are just a few suggestions:

• Black Walnut Hulls – Black Walnut Hulls will produce a great dark wood stain. Soak them for several days or boil them and then soak them. Unfortunately, I don’t have any right now else I would demonstrate using Black Walnuts. That is probably the color I am going for.
• Blackberries – They will make a bluish red stain. Just mash up some blackberries and smear them over the wood.
• Carrots and yellow onion skins will make yellow to orange stain.
• Oak bark, acorns and dandelion roots will also make brown stains; again I don’t have any of these, so I can’t try them.
• Blueberries, elderberries, red cabbage and purple grapes or grape juice will make a bluish purple stain.
• Pomegranates, beets and red hibiscus will make a reddish brown stain.
• Spinach, peppermint leaves, snapdragons, lilacs, grass, nettles and peach leaves will make different colors of green.
• Bay leaves, marigolds, sunflower petals, St. John’s Wort, Dandelion Flowers, paprika, turmeric, and celery leaves will make different colors of yellow.

My plans are to try the coffee by itself. If that doesn’t work, I will use concentrated tea to further pre-condition the wood by adding extra tannins and then use the iron acetate. However, I intend to use some of the other methods on test pieces of wood just for the fun of it and to see what happens. Of course I will share the results with you.

This is How I Ended Up Staining the Wood

After trying several of the different stain type on craft sticks I decided to go with my original plan of coffee. First I applied tea to the boards, Then using my old Pyrex coffee pot without the percolator insert, I added 2 cups of water and 1 scoop of coffee grounds. That was enough coffee grounds for 1 pot of coffee. I put the lid on the pot and boiled it for about 15 minutes and then let it set for about an hour because I was busy. It had boiled down to about 1 ½ cups. I then strained it and applied it to my 1×4’s. It took 3 coats to get the maximum stain. I actually applied 5 coats, but the wood didn’t get any darker after 3^rd coat.

Since the wood wasn’t dark enough with just the coffee, I used about 1/2 of the original amount of the coffee and mixed it with 1 Tbls. of Cocoa. I applied 1 coat and ran out, so I prepared another batch of coffee and cocoa the same as above except I used the whole 1 1/2 cups of coffee and 2 Tbls. of Cocoa. Most of the cocoa from both batches settled to the bottom. I applied 2 more coats of the the coffee & cocoa mixture. It made it a little darker.

My daughter still didn’t think the wood was dark enough, so I used the back of one of the 1×4’s and did a test area of 3 coats of coffee and then a coat of iron acetate. My iron acetate was 1 ½ days old at that point. After about 5 minutes the iron acetate looked like that might be the answer, but as it sat for another 30 minutes it overtook the brown of the coffee and started looking pretty blackish. It was a nice look that I will probably use for other things, but not my daughters sign project.

To get the wood darker I decided to try a really concentrated coffee. I had some darker roast coffee that I use to deodorize the refrigerator (It smells really yummy, but doesn’t taste very good). I used to heaping scoops of the coffee grounds and 4 cups of water. I boiled that until it was down to 2 cups. I let it cool and strained the grounds out. Then I returned the coffee to the pot and boiled it down to a little less than 1 cup. It was really thick and syrup like. I applied 3 coats of the coffee syrup to the boards and they looked rich and dark like I wanted. I let them sit outside overnight.

 

I checked the boards the next morning to see if they had lightened or darkened. The boards were the same color as the night before but as I looked at them and felt of them I began to think that maybe there was a layer of coffee dried on top. I decided to use some of my morning coffee on a rag to see if there was coffee residue on the boards. Sure enough as I wiped down the boards with the regular coffee, sticky coffee came off of the boards. I wiped them down very well to get the residue off. After wiping the boards they were lighter but still darker than before I used the coffee syrup. They aren’t as dark as I would like them to be, however they are pretty dark.

I am always looking for natural, safe and environmentally friendly ways of doing things. I hate toxic chemicals. They are unhealthy for the environment and for you and me. Things have been done naturally for thousands of years. Unfortunately, doing things naturally is not very profitable for marketing. So we tend to hear more about commercially viable products than the time proven natural products. In my life experiences, natural has almost always outperformed synthetic commercial choices for everything I do. Wood staining is no exception.

 

 

Here are some of the resources I used for the article. If you are interested in finding out more about natural wood stains you might want to check them out.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/papyrus-writing-material

https://www.popularwoodworking.com/techniques/ebonizing_wood/

https://www.woodfinishsupply.com/Tannin.html

https://www.livestrong.com/article/527907-tannin-levels-in-teas/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR1Cro6r47o       Coffee stained doll house floor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhjXC8A-cRs         Various kitchen items used for stain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ0gzht_TXU      Iron oxide without tea or coffee concentrate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eqx9pbUPhY       Iron oxide and tea or coffee concentrate. This video is a little confusing, but you can see the different colors achieved.

http://amatuer-woodworker.com/finishes/stain.html     Describes various types of wood stain

https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/ethnobotany/tannins.shtml      Tannins sources