What is a good stain for mdf to use before photovcarving?

[kristenanne77]

I will attempt a photovcarve this week. MDF is inexpensive and FLAT so I will use that. I believe the procedure is to stain the wood, do the carve, and then seal. (or is it vice versa?).
Anyway, mdf is cheap and i figure it will take a few tries before i get it right.
Any recomendations on a nice stain and sealer for mdf wood that would work well for bringing out the contrast?

Thanks
K

[Leo]

Kristenanna,

I cannot really answer your post about anything to do PhotoVcarve - I have only used it once in 2007.

But - as to the MDF, errr - it's not a great material to be stained. It is a wood product - but - it's not really considered to be wood, per se.

Personally I think is not going to give you good results on a photoVcarve project. I think you are going to want something really dense. Maple might be a good choice as it is really tight grained and dense. Maple does not stain well because it is so dense. BUT - it will accept a dye - like Transtint dye. That stuff is very expensive but it goes a LONG LONG LONG way.

To "seal" MDF or wood - shellac is the best. The zinnser bullseye in the can is what is called a 3 lb cut. That means it is mixed at a ratio of 1 pound of dry shellac to gallon of denatured alcohol. You want a 1 pound cut. Take the canned stuff and mix that at 1 part canned shellac to 2 parts denatured alcohol. The MDF will REALLY soak up the Shellac - give it a few coats. It should dry REALLY fast between coats.

Also - I am not really sure that you need to stain or seal first.

[kristenanne77]

Thanks. I am used to wood but never used this MDF stuff until now, mainly because it is cheap and I need more experience before investing in more expensive woods. Maybe I will just paint it black and carve into that and see what I get!

Thanks
K

[tonydude919]

When doing it on wood, you put a clear finish on first ,then do the carving and afterwards put stain in the lines.

Tony

[martin54]

As Leo has said MDF isn't an ideal material for this & you may struggle to get the results you are looking for not because you are doing anything wrong other than using a substrate that doesn't cut that well. It may be cheap but that's not always the best option when learning. Photo carvings don't go very deep so what you could do is use a more suitable piece of wood, complete the photo carve & then surface it flat again to try the next one, you could do quite a few practice jobs that way all with the same piece of wood which will help with costs.

[kristenanne77]

That is an excellent suggestion.

Thanks
K

[Frank Aarre]

i did a photocarve once that came out half decent on mdf, i painted the mdf white first then routed the photo.looks a little odd because of a machine error so half the picture was routed twice. biggest problem with this picture was that the paint cured too soft, i've been meaning to try this with a paint that cures to a hard surface, but haven't gotten around to it yet.
didn't use sealer on it either.