Quit ironic that this is my first post and its about cherry.
So, as it goes it is also my first endevor to stain. It is a two piece Cherry (not sure what species)fireplace mantel. I am electrician by trade but have no experience with staining so I did some research and decided to go with a Minwax conditioner to prevent blotching. I tried a test without it and was inconsistant, some blothiness and some even which is the reason I decided to use it. My mistake was not testing with the conditioner as I had too much faith in its ability to do as expected. As it turns out I conditioned the two seperate pieces of the mantel at the same time. Followed the instructions to the T and watched the Minwax video a couple times just to make sure. I started to stain the smaller of the two and it immediately started to blotch up but I finished the piece anyway and am completely dissatisfied with its outcome. So now I have a compounded problem. I have one pieced stained but blotchy and one that is conditioned past the alloted time to be stained as I was concerned to make matters worse by continuing. I’ve read some blogs about being able to just sand both scenerios and start from scratch but none of them were specific to Cherry and wanted some additional support and feedback either way. My confidence at the start was good but is now completely shot. Won’t quit day job anytime soon for sure.
Thanx in advance
Replies
First question would be why would you stain cherry. It will age to its own beauty, and you are covering that up. Second, what you may call "blotching" is what many of us might call "figure" and "the beauty of cherry". Just a couple of thoughts.
Pre stain on cherry
I see no reason that you could not resand and start from scratch. I have done that with cherry in the past. As far as preventing blotching on your next go around I was able to get good results using Zinsser's SealCoat Shellac diluted 50% with alcohol as a pre-stain and then staining with a gel stain. I wiped the shellac on with a rag, let it set for 15 minutes, rubbed it down lightly with a fine synthetic abrasive pad and then stained. I used this method on piece of cherry that was especially prone to blotching and achieved a nice even stain finish. No blotching at all. You can get an idea of how much blotching may occur by wetting down the bare cherry with alcohol or mineral spirits. It's true that cherry will darken naturally without being stained but only the heart wood will darken. The sap wood will remain light. Also even if you have all heart wood it may be different shades and you may want to even out the color. Some may prefer to let it darken naturally anyway. It's really a matter of personal taste.
stain on cherry.
As someone who love's cherry and is my primary wood, I feel for you. I won't pile on about staining the cherry. Many people color, but cherry is notorious for blotch. Minwax we all started with that I think and all had our episodes, but that's another topic. I'm posting a link to a vid from Charles Neil. He talks about it and talks his product on blotch control. He's good and knows his stuff. He has a dvd on finishing cherry (and many others) I'd reccomend. He's got a blog. Register and ask him a question, he's great at responding. He'll give you far better advise than I ever could.
http://www.cn-woodworking.com/blotch-control-cn-pre-color-co/
This 6 dvd set is definately worth the money if your like me and love the working with wood but hate the finishing part. He covers coloring from A-Z with all kinds of wood.
https://charlesneilwoodworking.3dcartstores.com/Its-All-About-the-Color_p_46.html
Good luck!
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