Well I’ve got a bit of a mess on my hands. I’m building some maple cabinets for a client and he wanted to match some existing cabinets he has that are a medium dark finish, most likely a tinted lacquer. I really don’t like to stain wood at all but “the customer is always right”.
I haven’t been able to find a sprayable tinted lacquer here in our small town but had the stain and I tried a test piece looked OK. Then I stained the maple plywood end panels which took the stain evenly and looked good but when I stained the face frames it looked awful, blotchy and every imperfection in the sanding and surfacing showed up glaringly! I then decided to try to spray a fog of stained tinted lacquer on the face frame to see if I could make it look better. I mixed the stain into the clear lacquer at about 6 to one which lumped up a little but I strained it out. I then used my little HVLP gravity feed cup gun and fogged on a top coat ever so lightly, going over it several times until I had a nice even tint. It looks OK now and should look better with a couple of clear top coats. It all dried nicely and the adhesion looks good.
Where I got into trouble was with the drawer fronts. I decided to use clear Benite as a stain controller pre conditioner and let it dry over night and stained them the next day and they looked terrible, the same issues as the face frames except made worse where the Benite seemed to block the stain from taking at all in some spots. I then tried my fogging technique with the tinted lacquer but it just beaded up, I guess due to the Benite. I’ve used Benite successfully with other woods such as alder and hemlock and lacquered over it no problem. Maybe it needs more drying time? My spray area is warm and dry.
I wiped all the stain/lacquer off the drawer fronts as best I could and will let them dry for another day and will try to fog them again. I don’t know what else to do. I can always make the drawer fronts over again if I have total failure. I won’t touch the raised panel doors until I’ve got my procedure worked out.
Any suggestions?
Bret
Replies
For medium dark the original may have used a multi-step schedule. Dye (alcohol or NGR) may have been sprayed initially to get into the basic color range. Then tinted lacquer to intensify the color. The tint might have been dye based or pigment based, but to be sure it was designed to be added to lacquer.
Maple is so much denser than alder and hemlock that when you used the Benite "conditioner" it sealed the wood more completely, preventing stain from penetrating and apparently presenting problems with the lacquer application.
There are lots of ways to skin this cat, but I think you need to think in terms of a compatible products designed to be used together. It may require a trip to the larger city or purchasing on line, a bummer, to small towns don't often carry a professional level assortment of products.
Steve,
You are correct on all points of course. Thanks for trying to help.
The stain I'm using is compatable with lacquer once it's dry but evidently doesn't mix with lacquer as a tinted coating.
At this point I've stripped all the drawer fronts with lacquer thinner which I think also pulled some of the Benite out of the grain. I'll try sanding and re-staining these and see how it looks.
The next time a client wants a stained wood I'll politely decline.
Bret
staining maple
I ran into this problem and tried a mix of several products to solve the problem with poor results. I then tried hood finishing's pigmented wiping stain and it works. Colors are even on solid and ply.
Matching colors
This is a little late to mention but it's not wrong to say to customers if they want everything matched perfect they should consider having the existing cabinets done at the same time the new cabinets are being stained-
SA
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