General Finish Gel Top coat issue.


Mopardude

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First time using any of General Finish products.  I have a Entertainment center I made out of red oak which I stained with a general finish gel stain on Sunday.  Turned out beautiful!  Today (tuesday) I topcoated with general finish gel top coat.  While i was aplying top coated I noticed the top coat was reactivating the stain and making it lighter.  The person I am building this for I know prefers lighter looks so I was not worried and kept on top coating.  When I was done I stood back and look at it and I realized when it was lightening up the color it did not do it evenly and it cam out very blotchy and uneven.  Not Beautiful anymore.  Doing some google searches the best guess I can come up with is my stain coat was not properly cured.  The can says 24 hr. I waited 48 because we have had some killer humidity here in WI the last few days.  Can anyone confirm my theroy or have suggestions of there own?  If my theroy is correct how long are you guys in humid areas letting this product cure?  From what I gather from what I have read, I should be able to go back over what I have done so far with another stain layer to even it back out?

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Welcome to the forums from a fellow Dodge guy!

 

I haven't messed with GF gel coats much but, I know that GF makes some pretty good stuff, I use their stuff quite a bit.

 

As a rule, when ever I add color, I add blotch control.  Something like Charles Neil's blotch control works really well.  Did you do anything like that?

 

Regardless, it sounds like you have some repair to do.  If you post a pic, the great folks here will lend a hand guiding you in the right direction!

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Welcome to WTO. Your using two water based products. So what's happening is the finish is rejuvenating the stain. You need to lock that stain coat down. I do it with a sanding sealer or shellac ( basically the same products ). If you were spraying your finish coat you wouldn't run into the problem your having. It's the wiping action of the gel top coat that's causing the issues .

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Thanks for the warm welcomes but I have been following Marc since his first vids.  Not sure why I had to recreate my loggin to this site.  I guess its been to long since I last posted anything here.  The GF products I am using are not the water based versions.  Here's some pics.

 

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Ouch! yea you got it a bit worse than I did.  Looks like your shelves have a lot of blotch too.  What is the intended use of that cabt with all the shelves so close together like that?  Display case for matchbox cars?

 

 

I used gel stain and arm-r-seal. The same thing happened to me, but way worse. I called GF and they said 24 hours isn't long enough to let the stain cure. So next time I will let it sit 2-3 days.

 

Thats what I am beginning to think too.  I work in a cabinet shop and most of the stains I deal with on a daily basis are engineered to dry fast.  Occasionally we will get something oil based only because it was the stain needed to match something a customer brought us.  At a minimum if the weather behaves its a 3-4 day dry time for oil based stuff around here.  I read the can and it said 24 hrs and I took it at face value instead of going with what experience should have told me.  I think tomorrow since I have nothing to lose I will attempt to add another stain layer to what is there and see how it looks.  If i don't like I will just resand it.  I am kinda skeptical that will do much other than make it to dark and still have blotches.  LOL

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***Update***  Sanded the outside of the frame and reapplied my gel stain but I didn't apply it as thick this time so it would come out lighter like the parts I didn't resand.   Looks good again.  Its a bit humid tonight but not nearly as bad as it was the first time around.  I also stained all the rest of the pieces for this project tonight as well.  I think I let it sit 3-4 days than top coat the backs of the drawer fronts and see if it reactivates again.  I talked to 2 different guys at my local Woodcraft to pick their brains about this one guy told me he always lets it sit several days and it comes out good for him.  Other guy told me he does what the can says and it works good for him!  LOL  So go figure!

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Glad it was a fairly simple fix. My best friend and I had hotrod boats when we were teenagers. The boats were fiberglass, made in a guys backyard shop. He sent us to a junkyard to get motors. Mine was a 390 Ford Police Interceptor. My friend's (now a Noble Prize winning Astrophysicist) was a 426 Wedge. This was in 1967. I think I paid four hundred bucks for my motor, and he paid 425. Both would fly, and pull skiers well. The lake that I live on now was new when I was 12 years old, and we had the whole 20,000 acres to ourselves through our teen years-different story now completely. Depending on who you ask: Massively Over Powered And Respected, or Money On Parts And Repairs.

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