Trouble staining cherry

Mike Reed · 2008-11-30T14:05:04+00:00

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 cherryto come out with a dark slightly reddish stain, like this: my work so far is with a test piece, so I haven't damagedanything ;)Of course, my first attempts with various stain colors blotched likecrazy. I tried some standard Minwax pre-stain conditioner, and thatdidn't help much at all.Then I tried shellac. If I sand the shellac lightly, then I can't getthe stain very dark, but the blotching is minimal. If I sand theshellac more heavily, the blotching is a lot worse, but I can get itdark 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_oAnyway, does anyone have a simple finishing schedule that will turnout a satin to semi-gloss dark-stained finish on cherry?Thanks,Mike