Wood Burning with Ammonium Chloride (A Guide)

Today we’re focussing in on our process by testing out wood burning with ammonium chloride. It’s a great opportunity to take you through the trials and tribulations of a potential project in the making!

Hubs and I do a lot of hands on research before we even ‘start’ a project and wood burning with ammonium chloride is no exception. If you think our instructions have a lot of detail, you should see all the behind the scenes work that goes into perfecting each step! That’s so we can be assured you’ll get the same outcome if you try one of our projects yourself 😉.

Where to Buy Ammonium Chloride for Wood Burning

* [If you’re looking for some of the things we used, we’ve got you covered (disclosure): Clicking on the affiliate links in this post means we may receive a commission. But don’t worry, you don’t pay a cent more and it helps us make more unique crafts to share with you! Thanks for helping to support our blog!]

I started with a piece of shelf liner from the dollar store as my vinyl sticker and cabinet grade plywood.

Cut Stencil

You could use any Cricut vinyl cutting machine to cut your stencil. But I thought cutting by hand into the wood itself would eliminate the possibility of seepage underneath the vinyl. Again, I think a better quality vinyl might be key – and using a Cricut will save time!

Once the design (our logo) was cut we took it outside to spray with a clear sealer.

Seal with Clear Coat

Two light coats of waterbased exterior clear coat was applied. Then we let it dry.

Wood Burning with Ammonium Chloride

Although ammonium chloride is used as a food additive in ‘salty liquorice’, it’s mildly acidic so can cause eye, skin, and respiratory system irritation. We recommend doing this outdoors in a well ventilated area and using gloves, goggles and even a respirator if you are sensitive.

Ammonium chloride wood burning recipe

Online research shows that most people are using a ratio of 1 tablespoon of ammonium chloride to half a cup of water to create the wood burning solution. I used warm water and only half the amounts noted because we were only doing a small test. I find a little goes a long way.

How to Make Wood Burning Paste

Wood Burning with Thick It

Many complained of bleeding with this technique so a wood burning paste with help with that. One blogger added a scoop of Thick It to the mix. I figure that’s about 1/4 teaspoon for the full strength mix (or 1/8 tsp here). You may have to adjust and add more Thick It if necessary as one reader pointed out.

How to mix ammonium chloride for wood burning

How to Thicken Ammonium Chloride

Thick It used to be a great buy in the States at under $10, however is still under $20. But in Canada it’s obviously more expensive due to the exchange rate. You don’t have to splurge money on something you’ll hardly use! So we substitute Xanthan gum which is a thickener we use in our gluten free recipes. However, Xanthan gum does not dissolve well in liquid and it just gets lumpy. I shook it, stirred it and let it sit to absorb. It didn’t get as thick as I would have liked to prevent runs. Try microwaving and stirring well to incorporate it and get it to gel, then let it cool.

Blend Ammonium Mixture

To combat the issue, one reader gave the Xanthan gum/ammonium chloride solution a few pulses with the immersion blender and it thickened right up. We actually keep a separate one just for mixing paint and such so give it a try!

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Peel off the stencil. Once the xanthan gum is well dissolved, grab a detail brush

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… and a heat gun.

ammonium chloride wood burning

Wood Burning with Heat Gun

Brush the wood burning solution onto the parts that are still bare wood and let dry.

Set the temperature. I set the heat gun to the highest setting (4).

chemical wood burning needs a heat gun to activate

Activate chemical wood burning with a heat gun

Keep the gun moving around; don’t keep it in any one spot for too long.

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wood burning with heat gun

I could have stopped with just a light shade. But I continued and got a great dark effect. However, you can also see a fair amount of bleeding along the grain of the wood. If this was a ‘real’ project and not just a test, I’d be disappointed about that.

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Lessons Learned

Here are a few suggestions based on our first time using Ammonium chloride:

  1. Always test a sample of the wood you intend to use.
  2. Use a light touch with the heat gun. Darker shades tend to bleed more. Or at least, it’s more noticeable!
  3. Experiment with different woods to see if one works better than another.

Wood Burning with Ammonium Chloride

Trial and Error

I found that there was more error than success in wood burning with ammonium chloride. As a matter of fact, I would consider the technique a complete fail if we didn’t learn so much along the way! Stick with us and hopefully we’ll improve it to the point that it’s good enough for one of our projects! No guarantees, but we’ll give it the ‘ol college try at some point and see what happens!

Using Ammonium Chloride to Burn Wood

Watch the Video (and subscribe)

Have a look at our quick video to see it all unfold in real time!

Wood Burning Ideas

Blogger Laura Kampf had great success with her logo but she definitely used a better quality vinyl than I tested and also cut hers with a vinyl cutter. Perhaps the type of wood she uses makes a difference too.

Laura’s logo is a negative stencil and has thicker lettering. Those factors probably helped make it more legible after using the ammonium chloride solution.

We’re excited by the possibilities so we’re not going to give up! Below you can see three other samples we did on bare wood, with a coat of clear coat and with some dry brushed white paint plus a clear coat. All these samples used the same dollar store shelf liner and liquid solution mixed for our logo. As you can see, the last one looks pretty good with hardly any bleed at all.

It’s really hard to say definitively why some samples worked but the logo didn’t! More testing will hopefully help resolve some of those lingering questions.

If you don’t want to make your own wood burning solution, you can also try a ready made Scorch Marker.

Lessons Learned Wood Burning with Ammonium Chloride

Hindsight is 20/20, so what would I do differently? Use the best quality vinyl. It may help prevent seepage in subsequent steps, like when we spray a top coat to seal. Also, if you leave the sticker on too long, the adhesive backing might contribute to resisting the ammonium chloride solution. The stickers on the first two were left a few days. The last sample didn’t sit for too long – about a day while the clear coat dried.

I suspect the type and grain of wood factors into the mix! The first board almost looks ‘striped’. My guess it that the liquid didn’t soak into the wood properly because of the uneven grain. On the other hand, the second board appears to have a medium grain and the last board a tighter grain. I believe each sample came from different pallets so you never know what you’re gonna get with salvaged wood!

Lastly, as one of my readers suggests, try short bursts of the heat gun and hold it further away.

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I’m glad we didn’t go straight to a project-in-progress. As this test proves, it pays to take the time to make samples boards first. For our next trial, I’m going to do a better job of thickening the mixture and use a better vinyl.

How to Burn Wood With Ammonium Chloride

Here is a recap of the steps:

  1. Cut stencil by hand or use a Cricut
  2. Apply stencil to wood and seal with several light coats of clear coat. Let dry overnight.
  3. Mix wood burning solution (see printable recipe below).
  4. Peel stencil and brush solution onto the bare wood
  5. Let dry.
  6. Set heat gun to high. Keep the gun moving until desired effect is achieved.

One Small Success with Transferring to Wood

My one success for the week was transferring a (reverse image) paper printout of our logo to wood using a clear coat to adhere it. We spray the front of the paper with the clear coat, then apply it onto the wood. After letting it dry over night, I wet the paper and then rubbed it away.

I’m happy with how well it turned out. Save for the trace bits of paper I didn’t have the patience to rub off before photographing it, and the build up of clear coat around the edges, I’m pretty happy with the outcome!

This image transfer technique is perfectly suitable for images with finer details, like the wording of our logo 🙂

We Love Hearing from You

If you play with this chemical wood burning and/or transfer technique, or have in the past, we’d love to hear about it. Leave us a comment so we can all benefit from the feedback 🙂

Do you have any less than successful projects you’re determined to improve on next year too? Tell us about it in the comments!

Luckily all is not lost because 99.9% of our projects do work out! You can check them out on our Homepage.

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Chemical Wood Burning FAQs

What’s a good wood burning paste recipe?

  • 1 tablespoon of ammonium chloride per half a cup of warm water.
  • Add 1/4 tsp of Thick It, xanthan gum or corn starch to turn it into a wood burning gel. Stir well. See the printable recipe card below.

 

Wood Burn with Ammonium Chloride

Here's a printable recipe for a wood burning gel that will make your next wood burning project fast and easy!

Equipment

  • Heat Gun
  • Brush
  • Vinyl Stencil
  • Wood
  • Mixing cup
  • Immersion blender or Magic Bullet (dedicated to crafting)
  • Clear Coat spray

Materials

  • 1 Tbsp ammonium chloride
  • 1/2 cup warm water
  • 1/4 tsp thickener - Thicken Up or Xanthan Gum

Instructions

  • Cut stencil by hand or use a Cricut. Tip: use a good qualty vinyl
  • Apply stencil to wood and seal with several light coats of clear coat. Let dry overnight.
  • Mix together ammonium chloride, warm water and add 1/4 tsp of thicken up or Xanthan gum.
    Tip: Blend with an immersion blender or in a Magic Bullet - just a few pulses until gel consistency.
  • Peel stencil and brush solution onto the bare wood. Let dry.
  • Set heat gun to high. Tip: Use short bursts and hold the heat gun a good distance away.
    Keep the gun moving until desired effect is achieved.

33 thoughts on “Wood Burning with Ammonium Chloride (A Guide)

  1. So glad you shared this Sara. We’ve been wanting to play around with Ammonium chloride for the longest time. I’m looking forward to see the improvements you make as you experiment. We can’t get Thicken Up here in South Africa. I wonder how pure cornstarch would work? Or maybe even gelatin?

    • I think those are both great ideas! We can get it, but I refuse to pay ridiculous amounts of money just to experiment 🙂 I just did a thicken test yesterday with Xanthan gum again but mixed it with Inulin (which is a dietary fibre). It took care of the clumping problem and I got the same consistency as the Thicken Up but haven’t mixed it into the ammonium yet. I am excited to try it out to see if it will mix well. I’ve got some new samples drying with clear coat now and can’t wait to see if there’s any improvement!

    • Thank you Linda – you and me both! It’s definitely better as a warm weather project to do outside so I’ll have to wait patiently until Spring – lol

  2. Great post Sara. I did i similar project using the scorch pen and my test project got the same results. When I held the heat gun further away and only did short bursts at a time it worked great.

    • I think that scorch pen is basically the same thing; so much cheaper to make it yourself if you plan to do more projects. Thanks for that advice; when we try our next project I’m definitely going to keep that in mind!

    • MDF is made up of wood dust held together by glue so I wouldn’t recommend it.

  3. Is the ammonia chloride method when completed safe on a serving board used for food?

    • While ammonium chloride is used as a food additive in small quantities, it’s not safe to consume in large quantities. I personally would not take a chance and use it as a serving board; I’d only use it for decorative surfaces.

  4. Can you store and reuse the ammonium chloride/water mixture for a future project?

    • No I tried that and it went moldy. Only mix what you can use and mix up fresh every time.

  5. I am in Canada also so I tried your trick with the Xanthan gum – but I had an unexpected stroke of genius and in order to get it to mix, I gave it a couple of whirs with an immersion blender! Got the perfect sticky gel in about 5 seconds!

    • Thats’ awesome; thanks for that tip! I’ll try that next time too!

    • If the wood is stained AND sealed then this would not work because the wood has to be able to absorb the chemical in order to react with the heat. As for stained wood, we haven’t tried that. But if we did, we’d try a light colour stain on a sample first in order to still see the contrast after burning (dark stain likely wouldn’t show enough contrast). I don’t know if the stain would resist the ammonium chloride, maybe it depends on the brand too, but please let us know if you do try it and what results you get!

  6. I tried a similar project but painted the ammonium solution on the wood while the vinyl was on, then peeled the vinyl off when solution dried and then heat gunned. It worked beautifully on my test wood, but when I bought pine, it burned the wood around the words and looked like the solution bled around the words. I used cornstarch as my thickener and that definitely made a great gel but I think I need to maybe try your reverse method of sealing the wood around the vinyl. Still testing.

    • Hi Nancy ; do you know what your first test wood was made of (before the pine)?

  7. When you seal the wood, is it the parts you don’t want burnt? I did my first board the other day, it worked so well. The next three were complete fails. Didn’t do anything different 🙄 I was so disappointed. Any tips would be great.

    • Hi Tena – yes, you’re sealing the parts you don’t want to burn. This really is a hit or miss sometimes. Did you use the same wood?

      I think even differences in graining can make a difference in the result. This is one of those things that you just have to keep experimenting with to see what works for you best.

    • Hi Karen – no, it’s best to mix only what you need.

  8. Hi Sara,

    Just wondering… Can you bake this in an oven for a more even distribution of heat?

    • Hi Rochelle – No, I wouldn’t attempt to do this in an oven. It need direct heat only on the parts with the mixture. And this should be done outside due to the fumes it produces.

  9. Check out the YouTube video from Mr. Crafty Pants on wood burning a Christmas tray. In the comments, several people have tried the cornstarch and give ratios.

      • Hi Sara,

        I use
        2 tablespoons cold water
        1 Teaspoon cornflour (cornstarch)

        mix together.

        Microwave for 20 seconds.

        Stir well.

        If more thickening required use 10 – 20 second bursts until it gels.

        Wait until it cools to warm, Then add 1 teaspoon of Ammonium Chloride.

        I only make a small amount at a time, as a little goes a long way 🙂

  10. Should you use a mask while handling the ammonium chloride?

    • I personally would while working with the powder. Even if you do this outdoors, it’s probably a good idea while the heat gun is on it too in case there are fumes.

  11. I tried this and needed WAY more than 1/4 tsp of thicker to make it even close to a gel like consistency

  12. you can store it i store mine in the fridge it keeps for a few weeks i believe im on day 3 of my 1st mix and its working well

    • Yes totally agree… idk about a few weeks mine don’t end up lasting that long

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