Vinegar and Wire Wool Wood Stain

I only came across this recently -  a very simple and cheap way to make your own wood stain. All you do is pop a chunk of fine wire wool into a jar, top it up with the vinegar of your choice, give it a shake then unscrew the lid a little to let the gases escape. After about two days, remove the wire wool, filter your stain through some kitchen paper, and that's your wood stain ready to use.

Now, the colour you get depends to some extent on the type of vinegar you used and on the amount of tannin in the wood you want to stain. In the video of this, I made up small jars of stain using white wine vinegar, cider vinegar, white (distilled) vinegar, red wine, malt and balsamic vinegars. Then I tested them all on oak, softwood, ordinary plywood, MDF, and an unidentified plywood that I made my workbench top out of (the top and bottom skins are kind of reddish).

The results on the oak, which has a lot of tannin, were amazing. They were solid black, blueish-black, and a range of greys. The softwood was horrible. Ordinary ply and MDF gave a range of pale greys, except for the balsamic vinegar which tended to be reddish-brown.

So if you ever want to stain some wood, consider making your own stain - you'll save a lot of money if you do.