I would like to stain an oak railing (balustrade) to match (or at least not clash with) a bloodwood floor. The railing is about 20 years old and just has a varnish (or poly) finish. I've tried several reddish stains, but I can't get anything remotely close to the floor. Any suggestions? At this point I'm tempted to just paint it white.
General Finishes Water-Based stain Rosewood (available at Woodcraft) will probably get you close. You can actually make multiple applications and it will get darker.
See an example here. This is Red Oak w\lacquer.
Even so, the surface tension will leave little white lines where ever you have deep grain lines. On Oak this will be on every inch of the piece. So what I do is a thin coat of shellac (you could do sanding sealer); then I do a grain fill. The easiest way is with a black or dark brown gel stain but you can use typical grain filler if you want to deal with it. The shellac keeps the filler from coloring the face of the wood and just gets in the grain lines.
Wipe it down and you're good to go for a f> I would like to stain an oak railing (balustrade) to match (or at least
If you can get past the fact that Oak does not look Bloodwood when totally disregarding the color and darkness difference, just keep experimenting. That said however because the grain is so different between these two woods you may not ever be happy. Sometimes "getting close" clashes more than using a complementary color. You might want to consider Black or another color to complement the Red.
There may be some wisdom here. I know it'll never look the same (that's why you spend the $$ for the real thing), so what I really need is something that looks good. Hadn't considered black.
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