I'm getting ready to refinish a large chunk of the stairs in my house. I stripped the paint off (most of) it, to learn that it was made of some fairly nice non-quartersawn oak, with spindles that could be either oak or chestnut. Part of the repair work involved making spindle "spacers" with Borg-bought oak, which I _think_ is red oak.
I'd like to refinish it, but oak gives me problems. Y'see, I created a stain board with all the Minwax samples I had. And the stains rarely did much to the oak strip: the grain changed, of course, but the color on the lighter areas looked closer to magic-marker spills than anything else. It's as if the raw oak had a built-in finish.
I had great results when I used mahogany on a recent project (at
From what I can tell, the general strategy for finishing oak involves 1) a stain 2) a seal, probably shellac 3) a glaze, mainly another player of stain 4) the final finish.
Thing is, I don't have the means to try a wide range of experimental stain combinations. Can people point me to places where I can see the end results of oak-staining efforts along with a description of the process? Or, make suggestions as to stain combinations?