Run quickly to the corner DIY store. Look for a pack of steel wool. Let us do nothing but buy it. Take it home, tear off a good 30 cm piece of it. Twist together, put in a clear glass jar. You still need something other, a special secret compound, some white vinegar.. You should dilute it to 5 percent. Pour the jar full with this juice. Close the mason jar, but by no means, I repeat, by no means forget to drill holes in the top. Gases will be released, it will be active, it will pop like soda water. You don’t want it to explode and cover everything with that monster material. The vinegar will dissolve the steel wool, the acid will react with the iron oxide. You will get an interesting stuff in 4-5 days. Filter out the dirt from the top of the juice through a paper filter or a densely woven mesh.
Now.
Lubricate the briar, wait three minutes. All right, two is enough. You will wonder, your pipe’s surface will turn completely black before your eyes as the iron acetate reacts with the tannic acid content of the wood. The change is amazingly spectacular and fast.
The effect is even rougher if the wood is smeared with a dense tea / coffee decoction before the mordant treatment. These fill the fibers with tannic acid. However, briar’s tannic acid is boiled out heavily by briar production guys, there is left some in the pores, for sure… the effect will speak for itself.
It is not a stain. Not a dye. It is mordant, an old solution to turn the wood itself black.
