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.
uh oh...what happened?
Dec 13, 2003
3 Replies
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?
Try locking the stain down with a light, quickie spray of shellac. A spray can will work fine.
Barry
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.
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