staining

[Scott Bailey]

I have been building a little box for the purpose of just practicing, well a lot of things (mostly to work on joinery).  it's made from poplar which is of course cheap and rather boring wood, but seems to stain rather well (pretty tight pores).  I got a couple different water based stains, tested on a few scrap pieces, and decided to go with the cherry stain just for color preference.

 

I ran into problems when I figured I needed to stain part of it, let it dry, and then stain the rest.  when I got to putting on part 2, no matter how careful I was, I could not avoid overlapping new stain on parts that had already dried, whether from drips or just being too difficult to "miss" the parts already stained.  of course that left these very dark parts overlapping the rest. i did rub some of it off with a little bit of wet sanding (400 grit) and even wiping with a damp towel which does remove a bit of color, but no matter what I did I couldn't avoid that overlap and it looks pretty bad.  stain is finicky stuff!

 

so how do you guys do it?  would you recommend just staining the whole thing at once and letting it dry on painters triangles?  It seems even that would leave marks though they might be easier to sand off (not to mention there being almost no way to hold the piece without leaving marks anyway).  Is this just a "you need more practice" thing? 

 

I have no issue with practice, despite occasional frustration I'm pretty good about slogging through, I just thought I'd see if I'm missing something.  I can't think of any way to get all sides of the box without first doing the bottom, letting it dry, and then staining the rest. 

[wdwerker]

Most stain is meant to be applied, let it soak in then wipe off the excess.

So you can get the whole thing wet, sit it on the pyramids to soak in, then before it starts to dry on the surface wipe off the excess! By handling it with a rag you can wipe the whole thing without leaving any overlaps.

If you allow the stain to dry on the surface it can cause adherence problems for the finish layers . If you want it darker let it dry and apply a second coat of stain, let it sit longer(but not drying) and wipe off the excess.

If you sand to a very fine grit the wood is polished and will absorb less stain. Do test boards sanded to maybe 150 or 120 grit and see if that gives you darker results. Sometimes I sand to 220 grit with my orbital sander and then come back by hand and sand with the direction of the grain 150 grit to open up the surface.

If you are trying to stain light colored woods very dark dyes are a better choice.

[Scott Bailey]

makes sense.  I did apply it, far as I know, pretty much as you say - wiped the stain on with a foam brush, let it sit for a few minutes, then wiped off the excess with a clean rag.  I just did it in stages and the more I think of it the more it seems like I don't need to do it in stages when applying that way.  I sanded to 180 grit beforehand and it didn't seem to have any problems absorbing to the right tint.