Hi all,
I know we shouldn't be staining cherry, but SWMBO believes otherwise. I'm building my first set of kitchen cabinets, and I need the cherry to come out with a dark slightly reddish stain, like this:
Of course, my first attempts with various stain colors blotched like crazy. I tried some standard Minwax pre-stain conditioner, and that didn't help much at all.
Then I tried shellac. If I sand the shellac lightly, then I can't get the stain very dark, but the blotching is minimal. If I sand the shellac more heavily, the blotching is a lot worse, but I can get it dark enough with two coats of stain.
The stains I'm using are standard oil-based Minwax "Finish" stains. For some reason, they named their stain as "finish" when the water- based stains became popular. They now call water-based stains "stain," and oil-based stain "finish" O_o
Anyway, does anyone have a simple finishing schedule that will turn out a satin to semi-gloss dark-stained finish on cherry?
Thanks, Mike