https://i.imgur.com/2aPfecy.jpg
I have been revisiting a couple of builds which were still “in the raw” by experimenting with waterbased stains and alongside this learning to do some french polishing.
A couple of things i have found when experimenting with Crimsons water based stains which might help someone else doing this for the first time..
to avoid blotchiness on plain maple its definitley worth making up your own sealer coat/wood conditioner to use as a washcoat before staining. This helps reduce, though not fully eliminate, blotching. I used 3 washcoats and sanded back lightly using 320 grit each time when dried. The grain will be raised quite a bit on the first pass, but by the third will be very smooth. For my conditioner i used titebond original mixed with water in a 1:5 ratio and wiped this on with cotton wadding - allowing it to sit for about a minute before wiping off and allowing to dry fully Testing on scrap maple i found a lot of blotchiness without using this conditioner/sanding back step first.
sealing faux binding edges using a thin shellac coat almost fully stops any top stain penetrating the faux binding and masking it off also helps
my “tobacco burst” needed quite a bit of stain - amber across the whole top, cherry blended from half way to all the way out to the edges, and then brown on the outside. Its vital to keep the staining pad moving and to work the transitions quite hard with a dry cloth soon after the wet stain is on.
Once the whole top had a reasonable “ burst” stain i went back and wiped the whole lot with yellow stain. This second staining application takes off quite a bit of the darkness of the original application and starts to look more natural Any over-heavy areas can be knocked back by using a lighter stain to gently wipe them off to a lighter shade.
i also found that using a very fine water spray and gently working to colour transitions i was able to get rid of nearly all the obvious demarcation zones and blend the colours reasonably well. Wel… almost !
Its certainly not as good as a sprayed finish but has worked quite well.
I still have quite a bit of work to do tidying tiny areas up on this one to get it where i want it but its coming together ok
plan is to use Steves canned nitro as a top coat once its all shellac’d and polished and had a spiriting off.
Would value other thoughts and tips on using stains - i also have some spirit based aniline dye powders i would liie to try out soon.
Cheers all
pete
Comments
I used the larger bottles of stain, not the concentrates. One thing I didn't do was sand back the top fully after applying the base stain colour. I've seen builders do this on YouTube plenty of times but as the finish seemed to be developing OK I carried on without a full sanding back. Perhaps this would help bring the grain patterns out more - which aren't as pronounced as I wanted them really.
I have quite a bit of aniline to try - bought mainly to colour my Rustins natural grain filler (mixed with white spirit), so I might do the next top with anilines and see how I get on. I expect a one-colour stain will go well, but doubt my ability to get a decent burst using hand rubbed aniline!
I have also found rubbing back to 600 grit between stain coats really helps and gives you a much better finish ready for the oil coat.
This is three coats of stain, rubbed back between coats. I have then given it four coats of penetrative oil (until it started to sit on the surface) followed by two coats of high build oil to the cap and a single light coat to the back and neck.
Plan is to let it dry for three weeks total, then polish with a compound.
Maple cap
Mahogany back
My cap is fairly plain, but has some nice figuring here and there and some funky mineral streaks which I want to highlight a bit more.