navy blue dining room

welcome back to jonny builds where this week i'm gonna show you how to do staied shou sugi ban like i did on my kitchen island build shou sugi ban is a japanese technique of preserving wood by burning it there are several different styles and looks that can be achieved with this method and it's actually easier than you might think so let's go do it and to get started you'll need a propane torch these are the type that are commonly used to burn weeds i'll leave a link down in the description below of a torch similar to the one that i used it's important when selecting your lumber to stay away from boards like this with the long open grain and look for boards like this one to have a tighter grain and where you can see more of the

cross-section of the tree rings first i'm going to show you these two boards with the straighter grain okay, and now we'll hit the two boards with the tighter grain okay as you can see i didn't char it very much but i did it more. just to kind of show off the difference in the grain and this one reacted a little bit differently than the other one did that brings up a really good point. it's important to test out a couple pieces because the first two i did i think they were a little dryer and they charred very quickly as you saw and these took a couple passes so you want to work with some test pieces but already you can see the difference in the grain pattern and how in my opinion this looks

way better than that okay now we're gonna step it up a little bit and do a little bit deeper of a char to see the difference okay and for this last one. i'm going to show you what it looks like to do the full alligator skin now once you're done burning the wood and allowed it a little bit of time to cool off we're gonna come back in with a wire brush this is just the same brush that i would use if i was welding and we're gonna give the surface a light brush you don't want to brush too hard because you don't want to muck up the wood but this is just to kind of break up the loose and ash

that's gonna be on the surface now if we were to do a heavier char like this one we'd brush it a little bit more and you can see how that brings out the wood grain but for the purpose of the stained shou sugi ban you just need a light brush just to break up any bit of loose ash or soot you're just kind of cleaning the surface getting it ready for the stain the next thing. i like to do is come back in with a couple paper towels just give it a good wipe down you can see how much extra soot, that's gonna take off. okay now we're gonna try the three different colored stains that i have the red the green and the turquoise these are all three stains that i got at home depot that they mixed up for me

they're in the store, and then i also have this gray wood finish minwax wood finish i'm gonna give the board one last wipe down now if you're doing a large area like when i was doing the kitchen island i had that whole tabletop to work with it was about 2 foot by 4 foot and i didn't try to tackle too much at once i did it plank by plank because you want to be able to put the stain on and then quickly rub it back. so it doesn't set too heavy and you'll just brush it on get a good even coat penetration down into the wood grain, and then immediately come back with a clean cloth

and rub it off and there you go, it's that simple if you want it darker than that you can leave the stain on there a little bit longer but i like the contrast of getting the color plus the charred wood, and then the natural wood that's left behind. we'll try the red next same thing give it a good brushing make sure it gets all down into the grain it does not have to be perfect once you've got it on there. you can let it set for a second and then you come back okay now we've given all the stains a little bit of time to dry and i'm gonna come back with a

sanding pad and some 220 grit sandpaper you don't want to use too aggressive of a grit because you don't want to take off too much of the stain or too much of the char and basically what i'm going for here is just to bring out some more of that natural wood color where it didn't char i want to bring that back out so i've got basically three levels of color going on here on this one it would be the gray or the silver the charred and then i'm gonna pull out that natural wood grain and you're just gonna hit it just in the spots where you want to pull it back out

with some light sanding it doesn't take much to give it some contrast and pull that color right back out and then we'll come back with a paper towel and wipe off the excess i'm gonna find the spots like this right here where i want to pull out that natural grain and right in here and i'm just gonna focus on those spots and then for the finish we're gonna come back in and hit it with a minwax wipe-on poly now there are other kind of finishes out there but this is the one that i've tested that i think looks the best and it's the easiest

i tried shellac i tried polycrylic i tried danish oil i think the minwax wipe-on poly looks the best personally put a little on a rag. just wipe it on and watch all those different colors and layers of the stained shou sugi ban just come right out of that okay everybody that's it for this one let me know what you think down in the comments below, and if you haven't already go watch the kitchen island video i'll leave a link to it right over there in the corner and down in the description below i really really enjoy using this technique. it's a lot easier than you might think and i love how you can get different looks all the way from the alligator skin to the stained shou sugi ban that we did today

so i can't wait to see what projects you guys come up with make sure if you do a project with shou sugi ban tag me on instagram i want to see them at jonny builds and thanks for checking this one out, and we'll see you back here next time

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