What are some easy and cheap ways to make colored wood stains?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am making an Okapi woodcut puzzle/picture for my daughter. I want to keep the wood grain but have shades like white, grays, tan, brown, black and grass green. I think I can take a clear finish and just tint it with paint but I am not sure if this is true or if it would work well.

Thank you in advance,
Jim

2

I believe you can use coffee to stain things.

3

I should mention that I have about 5 stains in my shop already. Ranging from very light to dark walnut. This includes cherry & ipswitch pine. I have many different colored paints.

Coffee is an option, but I have browns well covered anyway and generally stains work better than coffee.

4

Go ye down to the local hardware. Befriend the person in the paint department. If you’re the gentleman you are on this board they might give you free samples of their UTC’s, universal tinting colours, of which you might need a matchstick size dollop for the project as described. They will work with any formulation of finish, can be blended with themselves. Just start with minute amounts.
Otherwise, you’re buying a tube, each colour. Red, blue and yellow will make any and all colours.
You might try a kid’s waterpaint set and mix with a water based poly, but that’s just a guess.

5

So tinting colors with a very light or near clear stain/finish should give me what I want it sounds like.

Thank you.

6

If using oak, go to the drug store and get some iron supplement pills. Grind a few up and dissolve in water. It creates a beautiful black by reacting with the tannins in the oak.

7

My experiments with making stains was not overly successful. The green came out well and the black was fairly good. The grey and white barely worked at all.

Here is the Okapi Woodcut Puzzle PictureI made for my daughter.

8

Since the OP will probably gather many opinions, let’s move it to IMHO.

samclem Moderator, General Questions

9

I see you already stained the wood but what about really diluting a latex paint and then sealing it with a clear finish? I have done a fake stain like that on some small projects and as long as the mix is watery enough the grain shows through.

10

I’ll try that in the future. This was just one project.