Experience with water based stains on maple

PeteC

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. 

https://i.imgur.com/w8QFyPc.jpg 

https://i.imgur.com/8lNxlIr.jpg 

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 

Deadman

I don’t have any experience whatsoever of water based stuff but just wanted to say I think it looks great. 

All I would say is I go very gingerly with any wiping of stains or indeed spraying around any masking especially when faux binding. 

Andyjr1515

Good rundown of your method and great result

elstoof

Did you use the big bottles or the concentrated shots? I found the best results with the shots, welting and flatting the wood a few times with just water before applying the stains. A spritz of water on the wood to damp it evenly before staining helped to reduce blotchiness. 

The crimson stains are good, I tried aniline powders but it was a bit of a faff and didn’t produce results as good. I only compared blue of each so maybe other colours work better in aniline. 

Crimson spirit stains produce more vivid colours ime, and different finish options open up to you depending on which solvent you go for. There’s a few videos on YouTube of PRS lads demoing stains which are quite helpful 

PeteC

Thanks fellas.
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! 

PhilKing

It's looking very nice, a subtle bursting that looks good with the carve.  

Fuengi

Interesting reading through this as I'm currently doing a red LPjr with Crimson's stain an oil. 

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. 

PeteC

Would be interested to see that @Fuengi     I think I am going to sand back quite a bit to try get more grain pattern coming through before the finish coats.  It’s a little dark at the moment. 

Fuengi

PeteC said:

Would be interested to see that @Fuengi     I think I am going to sand back quite a bit to try get more grain pattern coming through before the finish coats.  It’s a little dark at the moment. 

It's sitting behind me drying so just took a couple of snaps.... 

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

PeteC

that's looking great @Fuengi - the grain pattern comes out very well indeed on that cap. 

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.