Lost Art Press

The Horse Dung (and Urine!) Experiment

Posted on by Lost Art Press
Jonas in June 2011, when I met him at Dictum GmbH.
Jonas in June 2011, when I met him at Dictum GmbH.

In our excerpt of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry,” A.-J. Roubo offers a recipe for staining wood red using a concoction made using horse dung and urine.

Here’s the recipe:

Before finishing the dyeing of wood, I believe I ought to give a least-costly method of dyeing white wood red, which is done in the following manner:

You take some horse dung, which you put in a bucket of which the bottom is pierced with many holes, and you place it above another bucket, into which falls the water from the dung, as it gradually rots. When it does not rot fast enough, you water it from time to time with some horse urine, which helps a lot and at the same time gives a red water, which not only stains the surface of the wood, but penetrates the interior 3 to 4 lines deep. In staining the wood with this dye, one must take care that all the pieces be of the same species, and about equal in density if one wishes that they be of equal color throughout. This observation is general for all water-based stains, which have no palpable thickness nor even appearance [they leave no residue or any evident change in appearance], which requires the cabinetmaker to make a choice of wood of equal color and a density as I mentioned before.

Woodworker Jonas Jensen of Mors, Denmark, is making this stain and documenting the process on his blog, Mulesaw. Follow along – but be warned, if you don’t like pictures of dung you are not going to like the instructions.

And just a reminder, the standard edition of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry” is almost finished at the printer. If you want the book with free domestic shipping, be sure to place your order before Thursday, Oct. 10.

The standard edition is available in the store here. We have some deluxe versions still available, though the supplies are dwindling. Click here for details on the deluxe edition.

— Christopher Schwarz

12 thoughts on “The Horse Dung (and Urine!) Experiment”

  2. The urine collecting part is also what I “fear” the most, but the gilding normally urinate when it comes into its box after having been out riding, so I plan to be ready at that moment. I also plan to wear gloves..
    The biggest difficulty will be taking a photo at the right time as evidence that the experiment is carried out the correct way.
    But I’ll leave it for some days to see if it will start to rot, then perhaps I wont even need the urine.
    Brgds
    Jonas

  3. I wonder if it has to be specifically horse urine. Could, say, goat urine work? (Trying to keep your capricine dreams alive, Christopher.)

    1. No matter what animal, urine is still difficult to collect from the four-legged ones. I wonder if people urine will work? I think I know where I can get some.

  4. I like where this is going. Now I can tell my wife I need tools AND beer for my next project. She should like that. I direct her impending wrath your way.

    Adam

  5. Jonas is removing proud tails with a backsaw blade? I would think the spine and the set would make that messy. A flush cut saw or a paring chisel, not to mention a plane, seem like better options. Planes tend to spelching if you are not very careful in my hands anyway. I like the chisel best. And I’m anxious to see how “red” this stain will be – I assume Roubo means more mahogany red than Salem red?

    1. As far as I remember, it is a flush cutting saw that I am using.
      It is not my own saw, but there were tools galore at the Dictum workshop that you could try. So I remember picking up a flush cut saw with an offset handle. I can’t remember the make of it, but as far as I remember, the “back” was only on one side.
      I can’t find it at Dictum’s homepage, so maybe they discontinued this line of saws?
      Brgds
      Jonas

  6. Use Red Bull instead of horse urine. It contains taurine; that’s bull urine, right?

Comments are closed.