I have a quartersawn Sycmore chest that I need to finish. It has incredible figure and I want to have some stain to it. Any experiences with stains that will not mute the figure?
The other is on staining hard maple and soft maple. Ive been told that the hard maple is difficult to stain. Any experiences with Hard maple? And will the soft maple have a vastly different appearence?
Wine is God’s way of capturing the sun.
Edited 10/28/2002 9:14:19 AM ET by ChiefsFan
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Regarding rock maple vs soft - my experiences have been that the hard maple takes stain, but can do so unevenly or sometimes unpredictably between boards. One might take the stain well, another it hardly penetrates. I have better luck with lighter colors. Gels are popular since they sit on the surface rather than penetrate. Conditioners sound popular here but I'm not a big fan. I play around a lot with dyes and if I'm after uniformity I go that route. And will soft look different? Probably. It depends on what species of soft, but some, like silver maple, look different to begin with, and absorb colorants much more readily than the sugar maple. If you're mixing species on the same piece, do so either with the intention that different parts will have difference texture, or plan to spend a lot of time matching. Example of what I'm suggesting is rails & stiles of rock maple, panels of silver, or something to that effect.
I have a quartersawn Sycmore chest that I need to finish. It has incredible figure and I want to have some stain to it. Any experiences with stains that will not mute the figure?
You might try just wetting the surface with mineral spirits first and see what the color is that develops. This will be the color you get with a clear finish and you may not need/want to stain it at all.
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