I pretty much work with clear coating.. Most of my clients prefer it, and if they think they don't I convince them.. But I do have a cherry dining table to do that will need to be stained.. I know cherry is known for blotchiness.. One solution is a pre stain treatment, and the other is gel stain.. I also will be spraying a clear coat of catalyzed varnish, which I prefer not to color... So just checking to see what folks here have done..
Joel
I pre-treated with a wood conditioner and then applied an old- fashioned wipe-on oil stain. Get several small cans of reddish stain from the same manufacturer. Sherwin Williams still sells oil stain. Mix and try on scrap until you get what you are looking for. I had good results.
DonkeyHody "Every man is my superior in that I can learn from him." - Thomas Carlyle
Would it not be cheaper to build it out of maple and then stain it? After staining it would be very hard to tell either apart.
I shudder at the thought of staining cherry, but what must be ...
My technique on any "blotchy" wood is to put down a couple of coats of dewaxed shellac and then mix a dye into the next coat. More "toning" than "staining". Then overcoat with varnish or poly if hard wear (as a table top) is expected.
Cherry darkens rapidly when exposed to sunlight.
Another alternative is to wash it with a sodium hydroxide (caustic soda lye) solution. The darkness of the effect is dependent on the strength of the solution. You can rinse with white vinegar to neutralize the caustic, or just leave it exposed to the air for a few days as residual sodium hydroxide will react with carbon dioxide in the air to form sodium carbonate.
However, Sodium hydroxide is use to make meth- amphetamine so it is now hard to buy. You can order over the internet from people who sell soap making supplies.
I suggest starting with one tablespoon to a pint of water. Mix and store the solution in a PLASTIC jar or bottle, it attacks glass. Mix it with COLD water, it is exothermic and will get hot on its own as it dissolves. Do not allow the solution to come into contact with aluminum, or your. Wear goggles and gloves to use it.
If that first solution does not darken the wood enough, double the strength and try again.
The effect is nearly immediate and produces a color basically identical to that of natural aging.
Isn't Draino mostly sodium hydroxide? Can't remember, and don't have any on hand.
Sapwood stain NGR stain Color stain Seal, glaze topcoat
All but the glaze, sprayed.
For additional pop, antique burnishing and dry brushing.
Lye is sodium hydroxide. Draino probably does contain lye. It can dissolve skin, you never want to get it in your eyes. It would be better to just allow the cherry to age naturally.
My wife keeps it on the spice rack.
You sure she's only 1/2 Italian??????????
So she sez'...
It was sodium hydroxide with aluminum flakes and a blue dye. The reaction with aluminum is very exothermic-it was added to help melt grease. I haven't seen it in stores for a couple of years now.
Red Devil Brand _was_ pure lye.
I wasn't present for the incident below, and only heard about it later frommy gf.
My gf's cousin's ex-gf evidently did the same with her clothes dyes. At dinner one night she served an extremely sour and bitter bread pudding. She said she probably mistook something that she used for dying clothes for sugar. What I found particularly disturbing is that she was unable to identify the chemical. It is not just that she didn't know the name, she (or so she said) find the container or recall what it was supposed to be used for, which makes me wonder if she was any more successful at dying clothes than she was at cooking.
My guess would be that it was oxalic acid as it is used dying fabrics, in dry granular form it looks like sugar, and was once called 'bitter salts of lemon' which would seem to agree with the description of how the pudding tasted.
Fortunately the pudding was so unpalatable that no one ate--much.
"Fred the Red Shirt" wrote
Friend of mine, an excellent Cajun cook (but apparently only when firing on less than two six packs), mistook the cinnamon jar for the red pepper jar and whipped up the first known instance of 'candied' boiled crawfish.
... I haven't been able to smell either with the same gusto since.
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