Possible to fix blotch without re-doing entire piece?

[noddie1]

Hello everyone,

I'm new to the community, so forgive me if there is already a thread on this topic; I looked and didn't find one, but doesn't mean it isn't there.

About a year ago I started a mission bed. As I was a student at the time, the most economical wood for me to use was poplar. While it was fairly nice to work with in terms of machining and mortise/tenon joints, I ran into some blotching issues with the finish. I did multiple tests, perhaps dozens, varying different stains (oil/gel/water based) and seal coat combinations (minwax pre-condition, old masters stain control, a premixed shellac). The course of action I decided on was the old masters stain controller followed by three coats of a dark walnut gel stain from old masters. It came out much better than a lot of the test pieces, with a few exceptions.

I should mention that I don't have a shop of my own; I started this bed while I was in grad school living in my parents basement and have since moved a few hours away. The bed took me about a year because I was only able to work on it a weekend every month or two, which was not ideal because it made me impatient in the finishing stage. For example, I saw that the finish was uneven on the top of the foot board. I sanded/scraped it off to bare wood and started again, only to have the uneven finish appear again when I redid it. Given my impatience, I decided that it likely wouldn't get any better and that I would have to live with it. I threw on 4 coats of a wiping poly, assembled the bed and moved it to my apartment.

Now that I have been living with my 'finished' bed for a few weeks, the uneven finish on the top of the foot board is driving me insane - every time I walk into the room, I am reminded of my impatience, which detracts from the pride I should feel towards the largest and most challenging piece I`ve made to date.

A very long story short (sorry about that), the finish has some lighter areas. I would call this blothcy as the stain was not evenly absorbed, but it seems that when people refer to blotch, it typically references darker areas - and this is the opposite. I`ve attached a few photos. Since I'm not trying to lighten darker areas of stain, I didn't feel that the typical responses to blotch really applied here. I'm hoping to get some advice on how to fix these lighter areas.

Any thoughts on how to fix these lighter areas? I was thinking about taking a little steel wool and scuffing the light areas and wiping on a little more stain in hope of evening it out? As the bed is currently set up in our bedroom and I don't really have a shop here, I'm hoping to not have to sand it back to barewood and re-apply the finish for a third time (since it didn't work on the second try).

Would appreciate any advice. Sorry for the length!