[Steve Davis]

I already had the DEFT semi gloss lacquer (wood finish). I'd buy several colors of RIT clothing dye. It's aniline dye with salt mixed. I got some coffee filters and some color thinner. This is the slower drying lacquer thinner, used for final color lacquers. I put the RIT into a coffee filter and poured thinner into it. The thinner comes out tinted, but with some salt. One more filter, possibly with 2 filter thicknesses. That should get all of the salt out. I generally kept each color in a separate container. After making black, red, and green, or blue-green, I could mix tinted thinners with some DEFT, and have the toned lacquer I wanted. Just mixing red and a teeny black will give you brown, but too red brown. That's why you ad a bit of green, to give you a green brown, rather than a red brown. You get the feel of it after a while. I did several cabinets using that tinted lacquer, and the came out like new.

I will have to give this a try.

Steve

[Arran]

Oh, I so want to try that out. I still have a stash of rapidly deteriorating artist pigments, must be 50+ years old which I pick out and dilute with linseed oil and paint thinner to fix up flaws and paint in patches with a couple of tiny "spotting" brushes left over from the film era when I still had decent eyesight. Anyway, of the hue, value, and chroma, surprisingly the value is most important (roughly speaking grey scale.)

That might work with alkyd varnish but I wonder if they would mix into laquer or thin with laquer thinner if they are normally diluted with linseed oil or mineral spirits?
Regards
Arran