Bleaching removes color from wood and with certain types of wood produces really interesting results.

Made at TechShop Chandler

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Step 1: Supplies

For the sake of the instructable I got a small piece of Wenge, an exotic hardwood that works really well for wood bleach. You can buy wood bleach from a word working supply store. I bought it from woodcraft for 13 bucks.

Step 2: First Solution

The wood bleach box comes with 2 bottles in it, one labeled A and on B. Pour a little bit of solution A into a cup, the box says to brush it on. I wanted the effect to be really dramatic so I soaked my wood in it. You will soak it in this solution for about 10 minutes and you will color run out of the wood right away

Step 3: Solution B

The next step is to remove your wood from solution A and put it in a bath of solution B. You can also brush solution B on but again I wanted a really dramatic look. I soaked my wood in there for around 10 minutes, then took it out and dried it off. It will lighten more overnight

Step 4: Results

The first 3 big pieces are still wet and still look dark. the 3 smaller pieces have dried overnight. I did one of those pieces twice to bleach it even more and it seemed to turn out the best for what I wanted. The bleach works really well with Wenge because it absorbs out into the soft grain so you get almost black and white striped wood.

The bottom samples are Osage and Purple Heart, I was hoping with their strange color I would get some cool results but not really.

Step 5: Make Something!

I made a pen with my bleached wenge.

Note that this only bleaches the surface of the wood, so only bleach a finished piece. I turned and sanded the pen blanks to the size I wanted then bleached them. After that I finished it with CA glue. If I were to sand it down it would return the dark brown and black color.