finishing problems.

[bridger]

posted also at homestead:

I'm staining red oak with fuhr105 antique cherry. the client has requested that I make the color as dark as I can, and approved a sample with 2 coats of stain topped with enduro water poly. the color samples were small and looked OK, but now I'm setting up for the full job and did a larger sample.

wiping this stuff on red oak is giving me bad results. it doesn't want to penetrate into the pores, leaving white dots all over the piece, and it's not absorbing evenly- I'm getting lap marks that won't even out, and areas that are significantly darker/lighter than others.

I'm applying with a rag. the stain is modified with the retarder to near the label limit. I'm in arizona and the weather is warm and dry- weather.com says 86 degrees.

some things I'm considering: spraying as a glaze or either wetting the wood or thinning the finish with water to get it to flow/penetrate better. I see from other posts here that thinning with water is likely to cause more problems with penetration than it solves, plus I'm worried about raising the grain.

so- can this stain be mixed with enduro poly products and sprayed, or am I limited to wiping methods?

or am I just overlooking something obvious here?

[Anonymous]

A drop or two of DAWN in a quart of stain should help to reduce the surface tension considerably. As always, try it on a sample first.

[NorthIdahoWWer]

What grit of paper did you sand with? Maybe this is obvious but a higher grit paper, like 220, will close up the pores and prevent stain absorption. I typically use 120, 150 at the finest if I'm staining. I haven't used your particular brand of stain so I can't comment on that. Good luck.

Will

[HMFIC-1369]

Little whit areas that didn't take stain? Oil or Wax! Before & After sanding wipe down with Mineral Spirits then a final wipe down with denatured Alcohol. Either oil or wax from your fingers or tool surfaces got on the wood!

absorption.

[JGS]

[Rumpty]

Use 180 grit max.

[bridger]

it's drying so fast that I can't get it down evenly. it's drying almost instantly. I don't think it's pulling out of the pores- it's not getting there in the first place.

I can get an OK result on a small piece, but many of my panels are large- a few of them are about 2/3 of a sheet of ply and one is a 14 foot long top.

[bridger]

update:

I'm getting decent results at this point. what I'm doing is spraying the heavily retarded stain onto the unsealed wood and wiping that. using the spray gun to do the initial distribution of the stain seems to get it spread around enough that I can beat the lap marks, and flooding the surface and a vigorous wipedown seems to be the ticket to getting it into all of the pores.