uh oh...what happened?

Today I tried something I hadn't tried before: thinning oil-based poly with paint thinner to make a wipe-on poly. Somewhere I read that the first application should be a 50/50 mix. I actually tried 60/40 poly/thinner. When I wiped it on, a noticed a significant amount of the stain was coming off as well. Not enough to be real noticeable, but the project has 2 types of wood: cherry-stained pecan, and also some birds-eye maple that I wanted unstained. Luckily, I found the problem before I ran the poly (now cherry-colored poly) over the maple. Is it supposed to remove the stain as well? BTW, it is oil-based stain.

Reply to
Steven Bliss
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Anything that is a good solvent (or vehicle) for oil-based poly will be a good solvent for oil-based stain too. The same thing would have happened, although to a lesser extent, had you not thinned the poly first.

Any time I apply varnish over stain, I always pour off a little varnish into a smaller container and apply it from that container to avoid contaminating the main supply of varnish. This actually isn't a bad practice to adopt even for woods that are not stained -- sometimes the natural colors of the wood will leach out in the solvent too (padauk in lacquer is a good example).

-- Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

How come we choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America?

Reply to
Doug Miller

Try locking the stain down with a light, quickie spray of shellac. A spray can will work fine.

Barry

Reply to
B a r r y B u r k e J r .

Doug hit the nail on the head. Hindsight, being 20/20, I would have used a water based stain if I were planning on wiping on poly. Barry's idea of using shellac is another good solution.

Reply to
Eric Lund

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