Korosing

[Wayland]

I thought I'd tart up a couple of my trenchers.

I'm not much of a woodworker but a good friend once showed me this great little technique for decorating wood, called kolrosing, that even I can manage.

First of all I'll say I have no idea if it has any provenance for sailors in our period but I know it pre dates it on land and is very traditional in Scandinavia.

Unlike carving, this does not remove any material from the object being decorated. What you do is make a shallow cut in the surface of the wood with the tip of a sharp knife and then rub powdered wood or bark into the cut, much like scrimshaw work.

Traditionally the powered bark was something like the inner bark of birch or alder which was darker than the wood and would show up well. Many people now use coffee powder as a convenient replacement but I prefer to use cinnamon powder which is just powdered bark after all. I decorated the trenchers above in just this way.

I start by marking out my design with a soft pencil which helps to avoid mistakes, then follow the pencil lines with the tip of a sharp knife. Some people use special knives for the purpose but a craft knife works quite well enough. When the cuts have been made, rub the cinnamon or whatever else you are using into the cuts with the tip of your finger.

Now for the clever bit. Rub the surface over with a drop of oil. You could use any wood working oil but because I am often using the items for food preparation or eating with I usually use olive oil. The oil should make the design stand out a little darker but it also sets the powder into the cuts in a very permanent manner, like a wooden tattoo. Short of sanding or carving right down to the bottom of the cut, almost nothing will shift it.

As a useful side effect, the oil will also remove any lingering traces of the pencil lines.

All that remains to be done now is sand the item down a little or rub it with a hard object to remove any raised edges around the cuts, give a final polish with oil and you have finished.

I know it's unlikely that any sailor would inscribe old Roger on his plate but the one with a salt hole is just for my school talks and teachers prefer to have them run on a line closer to the stereotype as in the UK, pirates are only covered in the literacy curriculum.

I think it’s a great technique for decoration but also for simply labelling your equipment in places where it might be mixed up with others. What do you think?

[Quartermaster James]

Nice work!

If I may be so bold, I highly recommend walnut oil. It is what I use for a food-safe wood finish. It has the advantages of low rancidity and that it polymerizes. I also mix it with beeswax to make a food-safe paste wax.

[Coastie04]

Beautiful work! What wood did you use for those plates?

As for oil, I'd second the motion of walnut oil over olive oil for this type of application. Also, probably any oil that's made for wooden cutting boards will work. Personally, I use a combination of mineral oil and bees wax. It's designed for cutting boards and wooden salad bowls, so I'm sure it's food safe. It would give a little bit of a hard surface to seal in the cinnamon that much better. Overall, though, a great design and a great process. Thanks for sharing!

Coastie

[Wayland]

Beautiful work! What wood did you use for those plates? < Snip

They are made of Beech, but I'm afraid I can't take the credit for making them, I got them from Gerry Burrows so I just had to do the decoration.

[Duchess]

I tried this on a partially sealed gunstock. However each time I went to seal over the design all the powder flushed out. I'm not displeased with the result, more of a tone on tone look, though it isn't what I was trying for. Have you tried this with sealant or just with the oil? I might try it again with some True oil first and see if that helps....

[Wayland]

I tried this on a partially sealed gunstock. However each time I went to seal over the design all the powder flushed out. I'm not displeased with the result, more of a tone on tone look, though it isn't what I was trying for. Have you tried this with sealant or just with the oil? I might try it again with some True oil first and see if that helps....

Are you trying to cut a groove or just making a single cut?

The technique works best with a single fine cut, I often use a scalpel blade.

Also the powder needs to be darker than the wood you are working on, it may be that a gunstock is a bit dark and might work better with coffee powder.

[RIPP Tar]

This is awesome, I am very wood working illiterate (ask my dad, I'm sure I've taken a few years off his life trying to teach me his cabinet finishing techniques) I may try this on one of my pistols as well. Thank you.

[Duchess]

I was doing a single cut. The stock is walnut and I was filling with a really light blue sawdust, the sealant is clear.

[Mary Diamond]

Nicely done, Wayland, an interesting technique!

Thank you also to Quartermaster James and Coastie04 for the tip on walnut oil and beeswax ~ as I delve further into woodworking and food-related items, I was wondering what other food-safe finishes are available aside from cutting board oil.

[Silkie McDonough]

ooooh ....Celtic knotwork ....hmmm ...no ...first make the trencher's woman!

[Wayland]

I was doing a single cut. The stock is walnut and I was filling with a really light blue sawdust, the sealant is clear.

Ahh... The oil usually makes the sawdust go darker so that could be why it isn't showing up very well.

I don't know about the sealant but that might well act the same way.

Edited December 16, 2009 by Wayland

[Duchess]

It actually pulls it right out of the cut, I can see it on my rag. I've got some ideas to try later and will let you know how it turns out.

[Wayland]

It actually pulls it right out of the cut, I can see it on my rag. I've got some ideas to try later and will let you know how it turns out.

You've got me stumped.

I've only ever used oil which is the way it's been done for a thousand years or so in Scandinavia.

These new fangled chemical mixtures could be doing all sorts of strange stuff I suppose.

[LadyBarbossa]

Dear God! Someone be named after m' hometown! Frightenin'.

:::shakes head::: anyways.... them be right nice, Wayland. Brilliantly decorated. An' th' image be loverly, too.

~Lady B

[Wayland]

Dear God! Someone be named after m' hometown! Frightenin'.

:::shakes head::: anyways.... them be right nice, Wayland. Brilliantly decorated. An' th' image be loverly, too.

~Lady B

Nah... I be named after the Old Germanic Smith God on account of my surname and a liking for beating metal into submission.

I also do Early Medieval living history too.

[Mary Diamond]

Lovely shot of you ~ with some fascinating items!

[Quartermaster James]

I tried this on a partially sealed gunstock. However each time I went to seal over the design all the powder flushed out. I'm not displeased with the result, more of a tone on tone look, though it isn't what I was trying for. Have you tried this with sealant or just with the oil? I might try it again with some True oil first and see if that helps....

Light on dark is much more difficult. I cannot say I have ever seen it achieved in this manner.

This traditional technique appears to work via two paths:

1) the pigmenting agent (darker bark) staining the exposed pores; and,

2) the agent actually lodging in the cut.

There's just not enough light material to stand out against the dark this way.

To compound your problem, I suspect the sealant has closed the pores.

To get the light blue to stand out, you could increase the size of the cuts, mix the sawdust with adhesive, and apply that as one would fill in gaps around an inlay. Just a thought. You could, of course, get some light blue material and do an inlay, but that's a subject for another thread.

[Quartermaster James]

Nah... I be named after the Old Germanic Smith God on account of my surname and a liking for beating metal into submission.

Not the C&W musician?

[Wayland]

Nah... I be named after the Old Germanic Smith God on account of my surname and a liking for beating metal into submission.

Not the C&W musician?

Nope, never heard of him I'm afraid.

According to the old sources, Wayland the Smith was the son of a giant called Wade and as my surname is Waidson I was given the name many years ago and it sort of stuck. These days I'm better known as Wayland than by my given name, so there you go.

We seem to have a fleet of moderators on this thread. I wonder if some kind soul could correct the spelling mistake I seem to have made in the thread title? It should read "Kolrosing"

[Wayland]

Lovely shot of you ~ with some fascinating items!

That was a few years back, working in a Viking longhouse in Northern Norway. I had been commissioned to hilt and scabbard the scramaseax you can see in the foreground.

[michaelsbagley]

As a former Norse re-enactor, damn that seax and scabbard are AWESOME!!! I love the pattern welding on that blade! And the fitting he handle too! And the tooling on that scabbard is phenomenal! Seeing stuff like that almost makes me miss my Viking days.

Lovely shot of you ~ with some fascinating items!

That was a few years back, working in a Viking longhouse in Northern Norway. I had been commissioned to hilt and scabbard the scramaseax you can see in the foreground.

[Duchess]

Googling a couple of other references discussed the need to do this technique after the wood was already sealed in someway. The cut was supposed to open up only the area you wanted the dye/dust to stick. I actually kind of like how the stock looks as a whole now, so I'm going to leave it with just the incised, sealed pattern. I think I will try to partially seal a chunk of my scrap walnut and then try the true oil idea.

[silas thatcher]

i carved my initials in my pistol and pretty much did the same thing... after cleaning the gun, i looked at my carving, the gun oil and the pile of burnt crap i got out of the barrel and rubbed it all in... helped cover up the crappy carving job, and gave it a better look... i was pleased :)

[Wayland]

I carved my initials in my pistol and pretty much did the same thing... after cleaning the gun, I looked at my carving, the gun oil and the pile of burnt crap I got out of the barrel and rubbed it all in... helped cover up the crappy carving job, and gave it a better look... I was pleased :)

That makes very good sense of where an "honest fisherman" would get the sort of materials needed to do the job.

I'm sure this type of thing would have been done back then to mark personal equipment, I just wish I could find the smoking gun.

[Captain McCool]

Googling a couple of other references discussed the need to do this technique after the wood was already sealed in someway. The cut was supposed to open up only the area you wanted the dye/dust to stick. I actually kind of like how the stock looks as a whole now, so I'm going to leave it with just the incised, sealed pattern. I think I will try to partially seal a chunk of my scrap walnut and then try the true oil idea.

I'd be very interested to see a photograph of the result! I'm definitely going to try this on something of mine. Just haven't decided what yet. Perhaps it's high time to acquire something on which to try it...