I bought a beautiful pine cabinet that came unfinished. I stained it with one coat of Mixwax Wood Finish Penetrating Stain and it looks gorgeous, but it STINKS. It’s been outside to ventilate – I don’t think you can get much ventilation than being outdoors – for three whole weeks now! Whenever I bring it inside, it stinks so much that I can smell it from upstairs. I’ve rubbed it with baking soda and sprayed vinegar on it and the smell hasn’t gone away.
Obviously I don’t want this cabinet to go to waste and I can’t keep it outside. Any help is appreciated!
Replies
Temperature/humidity outside?
Did you follow the can directions or were steps omitted or made up?
Mixed properly and thoroughly?
It's fluctuated but has generally been below freezing and high humidity (currently 75%)
I mixed the can before applying the stain. The directions just say to apply the stain, wipe after 5-15 minutes, and wait four hours before applying another coat. I didn't wipe it because it had already dried. It probably took about 5 minutes to dry after applying stain, if that.
They usually have a temperature range on the can.
Below-freezing is a major issue. The stain isn't going to be cured like that.
Also, at 75% RH, I would think it would be difficult for that cold, wet air to off-gas the VOCs.
As soon as you bring it in the warm, likely drier air (RELATIVE, not absolute), it instantly starts curing and off-gassing.
You have been preserving the finish like you would meat in the freezer.
If you have a shed and a space heater, that will work.
I would try that.
if not, sand it down, buy a 0 VOC stain, and go that route so you can let it cure inside.
You still need to wipe it with some good elbow grease despite it seeming dry. You'll notice that a lot still comes off.
Thanks so much for all the help! I will try it
The oil stain is basically linseed oil and mineral Spirit with pigments, the instructions calls for it to be wiped, as all oil based stains and oil finishes. Since the oil is sicative, leaving it un-wiped it will dry but take longer than the instructions call for, further wiping will not remove excess as it now dried. Only Time will be able to make it dry enough to overcoat, stain is not a finish its an undercoat meant to impart color. The smell is probably from the uncured linseed oil.
I don't think many of the stains have linseed oil these days. Even the artists colors or japan colors often have some kind of hydrocarbon byproduct sludgy stuff instead of linseed to cut costs - even when the ad copy still claims it. it definitely has driers in it, though - the artist pigment, and some of the pigments themselves are driers (manganese, etc).
What the stains do have by SDS is aliphatic solvents, including a heavy (slow) paraffinic solvent that probably really stinks and is slow to dry. Why the mix includes something so slow, who knows, but it may be to keep the surface open for a while to a subsequent coat. I wish minwax and other companies would spend an extra dollar and get the solvents hydrotreated, but maybe they work better with the stinky stuff left in them.
I tried a 'flooding' technique on a piece once with an oil finish. It took a couple of months for the smell to stop. Also do not use oils on interiors of closed areas like drawers or behind doors. Smells can remain and affect the contents for years if not sealed under a top coat. Speaking of which, once the finish finally fully cures you could top coat the piece with some rattle can lacquer.
I did a similar thing myself. Many years ago when I was fairly new to woodworking, I made a set of three tables and I wanted them to be almost black, but I didn't want to paint them. I used the darkest Minwax stain available (Jacobean?) and basically painted a thick coat on, not wiping it off until it was nearly "dry". I think I even put a second coat on it. However, it took a LONG time to really dry. Not long after, I stripped it all off and properly finished it.
IMO, since you still have odors and have applied baking soda and vinegar to the stain finish (I don't know what that might do to the stain finish or any top coat you might apply), I think the safest bet would be to do as I did - strip it off and refinish it. Also, pine can be very blotchy compared to a hardwood, no matter what you do.
The solution to staining pine is buying artist pigments or micronized earth pigments and making a stain out of them. The particles are so small and so dense, that you can wipe them on and wipe them right back off as long as there isn't physical "fuzz" on the surface of the wood.
the effect is more color dense.
I don't have a pine test piece, but curly cherry or really any can be a nightmare with can stain. The piece on the right is can stain, and the other two are micronized pigment stains. I applied the darker of the types on a sanded surface and a hand planed surface elsewhere and couldn't tell by the color in a picture which was which.
I used ronan or ronin japan colors for this, but have done the same since by just buying the micronized pigment and putting it in a sort of slow solvent like odorless mineral spirits.
https://i.imgur.com/Y8gvu5H.jpg
here are the samples - one is sanded 220 and the other is hand planed.
https://i.imgur.com/psUXnUJ.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/319ewry.jpg?1
I couldn't tell you which is which, but can say I have no clue why this isn't more common in stains for woodworkers. The canned store stuff is terrible if you're trying to make something look nice, and some part of the colorant is dyes even in the browns, which may not be lightfast. This stain is "fo eva" as it's all earth pigments.
Very interesting.
Thanks for this.
I never heardr of that and am excited to try. It looks great.
These are paints that you wipe on/off?
So, this one, all i did was add the ronan artist pigment (could be spelled differently), sometimes also called "japan colors" to an already open can of minwax stain. The color is so much more dense that the stain really doesn't matter - this will dominate and whatever color this was, I can't tell and couldn't tell you.
I also tried it in stain base or whatever pre-stain "conditioner" is (just solvent, so a good base if not wanting the other color).
the result is a much more color dense and in my opinion, easier to use result. you just get some on a rag and wipe it on, but since it's got a lot of solids, with some care to not leave a layer on top. If you do, it's not just sitting in the grain of the wood, so it doesn't spoil anything - you just wipe it off to look like this.
The particles are so small that it's hard to get anything inconsistent unless you put it on too thin and don't compare it to something you did already. the artists colors as the colorant are just 1000 times higher quality than the stain and in the end for as far as this goes, the cost isn't much different.
Since a lot of these are earth pigments, though, they can have a lot of manganese in them and within about a year, the stuff I'd mixed solidified in the can. so I guess a good plan of action would be to buy the pre-stain conditioner if you didn't want to just use mineral spirits (that would also be fine) and get a can of artist color just to try. it'll be soluble in mineral spirits whether it's linseed oil or paraffinic/mineral spirit based artist colors, you just need to stir it. A small jar for a trial adding the japan color (it's like the paints you'd see bob ross using) a little at a time to get what you like will leave you with a good idea of what you want without chancing making a quart that will be solid next year.
it's not only far better looking, but it's also far easier to apply evenly because the particles are so small they will not differentiate much from one surface to the next. linear 220 sanding is probably a good idea, but if you wanted to use ROS 320 or 400, it will not prevent this type of colorant from applying evenly.
Traditional oil based stains and finishes give off odors and fumes for quite awhile; longer if, like others have said, they aren't completely cured. We bought an Arts & Crafts table and chair set. After it was delivered, I could detect odors from the stain and finish for several months; decreasing over time. I'm sure that the set was completely at least 1-2 weeks before delivery. I've used the stain that this set was done in recently on a piece to match and found that just the stain odor/fumes was in my shop for weeks and that's a stable temperature/humidity controlled environment.
that's due to the solvents they're using, at least most likely. it's sort of obnoxious that's the case, but it must be enough to save a buck or something on a can of finish to not get hydrotreated solvents that won't stink.
I've made a fair amount of varnish and applied it on all kinds of things. it smells like nothing within a day or two.
Not to say that something like a hydrotreated solvent isn't still gassing off - especially if slow - and doing it slowly, just that it shouldn't smell like much if it is. when you wash linseed oil and strip a lot of the foreign stuff away from it, it also stinks less, and the same can be done with tung oil so that it doesn't have that stinky nutty smell. but I don't know of any way to do it with raw tung oil other than shaking with heated alcohol, which most people won't want to do, and then allow it to separate in a funnel.
There are a lot of strange things written on the internet about raw tung oil, that it won't dry, that it's really soft, that you need to get the polymerized stuff, etc. I have no idea where people the idea that much of what they're saying is true unless they bought a product that has some tung oil in it or none but appears to them to be all tung oil.