Maple Stain Battle

[BrainFrost]

Finishing a cabinet/island project of maple ply and hardwood to match 45 yr interior finish. Using a SW custom mix - lots of pigment. Not a dark color but the maple resisted coloring. Attempting to lift the grain a bit with a quick wipe with a wet cloth to get some bite for the stain. Mostly working but a few areas have resisted completely (hardwood facing/trim) and show the gold coloring rather than the composite brown/gold. Occasional blotches on the plywood too, but I've seen that before with maple.

Any finish pros out there having experience with these issues? My thoughts are to take the hardwood areas down with sandpaper and starting over and not sure what to do with the occasional blotch on the plywood.

Suggestions/related experience will be appreciated, but it's a beautiful day in the Hills today so I'm headed out to the smoker with a couple racks of ribs and a cold beer. No work today - happy Father's Day!

[tjbnwi]

Re: Maple Stain Battle

www.homesteadfinishing.com

Trans tint dye

Use their forum you will get more responses there, I can do it easier than I can explain it.

Tj

[[email protected]]

Re: Maple Stain Battle

Also the professional finishing forum at woodweb.

http://www.woodweb.com/cgi-bin/forums/finishing.pl

[campster]

Re: Maple Stain Battle

I just fought that same battle and I think that the stain won. I used maple ply and tried to use a dark stain. After sanding the the first attempt back to bare wood I used a preconditioner to reduce the blotches. Downside was that the conditioner prevented a dark tint. I happend to be using Minwax and there happened to be a "PolyShades" that was the same color that I was already using. So I thought that I was smarter than the stain and use the PolyShades.

This stuff is created by the devil. I'm sure it works great for small projects but I was doing built-ins for a 10x10 room. I followed the directions which says not to thin. This was like pulling taffy. Streaks everwhere.

Again, I was smarter than the stain so I mixed in a little mineral spirits so that it would spread little easier. This seemed to be the answer until I walked into the room the next day to find runs everywhere.

After a few weekends of sanding and the purchase of a HVLP sprayer I finally got a handle on this demonic stain. Using it undiluted and very thin coats it now looks pretty good. You have to ignore the splatter look on the first coat or two.

So I guess that my point is to use a preconditioner if you're not going to use a dark stain and never use Polyshades unless you spend plenty of time practicing.

[BrainFrost]

Re: Maple Stain Battle

Yup, I hear ya. I think the stain won here too. I've gone ahead and done some sanding and begun the process of recoating so I can sell the job, but the websites offered up today directed me to some pro finishers that were good enough to pass along some advice without slapping me upside the head.

A recommended process, if I can paraphrase it from a rookie prospective, is to wipe first with a 50/50solution of water and denatured alcohol; spray a base coat of stain - followed by a coat of wiping stain. Too late for this job but I'll use it on the next one - now that I have an HVLP sprayer.

Trying Target's Ultima WB lacquer for a first-time waterborne finish effort on this one too. If anyone has any good stories about WB's - I'd like to hear them.

Thanks again.

[tjbnwi]

Re: Maple Stain Battle

Practice, practice, practice my best advice.

Also if you keep at it you will learn to use dyes for tints, toners and colorant.

If you start to use oil stains you will become very familiar with cut shellac and various cut sanding sealers.

Could there be a reason why no one recommended Min Wax?

Also ply's will almost always take stain differently. Avoid cheep ply's I've had some de-laminate.

Tj

[dave_k]

Re: Maple Stain Battle

Trying Target's Ultima WB lacquer for a first-time waterborne finish effort on this one too. If anyone has any good stories about WB's - I'd like to hear them.

Thanks again.

I don't have any good stories, my experience with Target coatings is that they are easy to use, forgiving and very predictable. I use their lacquer, poly, CV and shellac on a regular basis and they have never done me wrong ... yet. Can't say that for any of the other products i have used, with some the problems were minor and just took some getting used to some were major headaches

[Lamar Horton]

Re: Maple Stain Battle

Are you using SW Wood Classics or SW Sherwood. I have found the Sherwood BAC stains to work pretty good with maple. The stain is fairly thick and dries quick so you have to get the excess off pretty quick.

[dave_k]

Re: Maple Stain Battle

Are you using SW Wood Classics or SW Sherwood. I have found the Sherwood BAC stains to work pretty good with maple. The stain is fairly thick and dries quick so you have to get the excess off pretty quick.

I second the SW BAC stains. I've gotten great results on maple ply with solid stock using a dye first to even things out, shellac seal coat then BAC wiping stain. The Wood Classic stains are comparable to Minwax, a slow drying oil stain, I believe the BAC stain is fast drying alkyd and has dye in it as well as pigment. You have to work fast. I spray it with a helper wiping. I have brushed it on on some jobs where I couldn't spray and I did a small area them wiped then did another area. If you are doing a lot of trim you can really work up a sweat but you can topcoat it in an hour as opposed to 8 hours with minwax so with the dye, shellac and topcoat you don't have to stop and wait, you can just keep working on a fair sized job.

[JMS BUILDERS]

Re: Maple Stain Battle

I second the SW BAC stains. I've gotten great results on maple ply with solid stock using a dye first to even things out, shellac seal coat then BAC wiping stain. The Wood Classic stains are comparable to Minwax, a slow drying oil stain, I believe the BAC stain is fast drying alkyd and has dye in it as well as pigment. You have to work fast. I spray it with a helper wiping. I have brushed it on on some jobs where I couldn't spray and I did a small area them wiped then did another area. If you are doing a lot of trim you can really work up a sweat but you can topcoat it in an hour as opposed to 8 hours with minwax so with the dye, shellac and topcoat you don't have to stop and wait, you can just keep working on a fair sized job.

BAM!!!!!!

Lamars and steve are on point!

Also always check maple soft is always best with dark stains

Hard ($$$) you can use a bit differantly