I made a gift for my mother… and on her request I’m staining the wood. The wood is red oak, and the stain is a dark gel stain. My first test piece looked ok, but I did get a bit of streaking after wiping it off. Any tips?
First time using red oak… and stain for the matter. The stain really brings out the grain? Is there any way to mute that a bit? The contrast is huge.
Buster
Replies
My experience with gel stain is that you should first seal the wood with a wash coat of shellac or lacquer then apply the gel cost. We'll see what other say suggest
Doug
Gel stain does not penetrate wood much but it will lodge itself into the pores of the wood. Since red oak has both large pores and fairly tight grain (earlywood and latewood), you get a high contrast between the two types of grain when using gel stain. Applying a seal coat of shellac before the stain would amplify the contrast as the shellac would seal the latewood but would not fill the pores of the earlywood enough to prevent the stain to lodge itself in them. I have used this technique on white oak for Arts & Crafts pieces I built.
If you want less of a contrast use a "normal" pigment stain. If you want even less of a contrast use a dye.
As for the streaking issue you need to wipe off the excess with a clean cloth in the direction of the grain. You can wet the cloth with a little bit of mineral spirit to prevent removing too much stain.
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