Uploaded May 2022 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Ammonia fuming is a traditional way to stain Arts & Crafts furniture made of oak. In a nutshell, you expose the raw wood to highly concentrated ammonia fumes, and the fumes react with the tannins in the oak to darken it. That’s how I stained this Roycroft-style taboret project in the April 2022 issue of Woodworker's Journal Magazine. The effect of this chemical reaction is that it turns the raw wood to this greenish/gray color in about 24 to 48 hours. One potential problem is that White oak sapwood doesn’t contain much tannin. So, the ammonia won’t react with it and color the wood, like it does with the heartwood. In this video, we'll demonstrate a few ways to match the color of the sapwood.
Ammonia fuming is a traditional way to stain Arts & Crafts furniture made of oak. In a nutshell, you expose the raw wood to highly concentrated ammonia fumes, and the fumes react with the tannins in the oak to darken it. That’s how I stained this Roycroft-style taboret project in the April 2022 issue of Woodworker's Journal Magazine. The effect of this chemical reaction is that it turns the raw wood to this greenish/gray color in about 24 to 48 hours. One potential problem is that White oak sapwood doesn’t contain much tannin. So, the ammonia won’t react with it and color the wood, like it does with the heartwood. In this video, we'll demonstrate a few ways to match the color of the sapwood.
