Pre-Stain Wood Conditioner on Cherry

[Kevin Gagne]

I have a project that is made out of cherry plywood and solid cherry. Should I use a wood conditioner before I apply the stain or is that not necessary because the wood is not porus?

[joe pezza]

Kevin,

Get a good finishing book before you ruin a expensive project. I am not the best finisher, but I am fairly positive you need a wood condiontioner to prevent blotching.

Definately get some expert advise before going ahead.

Joe p

[Chris Tsutsui]

This may get better results if moved by a mod to the "finishing" forums.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Should I use a wood conditioner before I apply the stain or is that not necessary because the wood is not porus?

I'd do a couple of sample boards ( both sides) to see how ot performs.
You never know it might eliminate or reduce blotching or make it more pronounced.
Some folks hate the blotching in cherry others say it's a beautiful part of the wood.

I'd do a few boards with and without it just to see.

[Doug Hepler]

You are correct, cherry does tend to blotch. It also tends to darken with age. Don't overshoot the color you want by staining it too dark.

Bob Flexner, in Understanding Wood Finishing, recommends that you either use gel stain or that you tone cherry. (pp284-285)

By all means, test your complete finishing schedule on a cutoff from your project.

You could washcoat it. Because washcoating reduces the effect of pigment stain, you probably won't darken the wood very much if you washcoat it, but it should reduce blotching. Again, try it on a cutoff.

Products on the market for washcoating, e.g., Minwax Wood Conditioner, are just very dilute linseed oil & varnish. You can make your own.

There are two main approaches to washcoating. One is to partially fill the pores with solvent and apply the stain before the solvent has dried or soaked in completely.

The other is to partially fill the pores with a drying finish like varnish or shellac. Clearly, the first approach works
only as long as the solvent remains in the pores. The second approach works best after the washcoat has dried completely.

Minwax wood conditioner, used according to label instructions, uses the first approach. I don't really know its composition, but it seems to be mainly solvent, with a bit of oil/varnish, perhaps to retard drying. Actually, Bob Flexner recommends letting this product dry overnight,
despite label instructions. So, it must contain enough oil/varnish mixture to seal the pores somewhat.

I prefer the second approach, as it is more controllable and predictable. It does take a bit longer, but not too much. Use a 1 lb cut of dewaxed shellac, such as SealCoat diluted 1:1 with denatured alcohol. Don’t use this under NGR dye.

An alternative is alkyd varnish diluted 1:3 with a mixture of naphtha and mineral spirits (quicker) or just mineral spirits. Flood on, wipe off. It will feel hard dry in 2 hours (usually). Lightly scuff sand. Stain.

Again, always try a test piece first!

[sean m. titmas]

no matter what the finish schedule says or what some expert recommends to do, you should always do a few sample finishes with the actual wood and finish product that you plan to use. that way you can eliminate any chance for error, or at least minimize it as much as possible. keep in mind that wood is a natural product and the finish can vary from piece to piece even from the same tree.

[Russ Boyd]

I'm with Doug on the Shellac washcoat. I've used minwax with little noticeable results while the shellac/denatured alcohol worked very well to reduce blotching on Alder which tends to blotch like cherry and hemlock. The stain was not noticeably lighter when applied. ALWAYS try it on a test board first.

[Peter Quinn]

I use zinsser Seal Coat (roughly a 2# cut shellac, premixed and dewaxed) cut 50% (2 to 1 shellac to alcohol) for conditioning cherry. Just looking at it funny will make some cherry blotch. There is a fine article in FWW on finishing cherry in the past year worth checking out for more info.

I finished a cherry door with somewhat figured cherry this spring, no stain, just thinned Seal coat padded on, sanded back, three coats of Waterlox original. Really pops the cherry, no blotching. Be sure to follow a full sanding schedule up to 180-220g if you suspect you have blotchy cherry, which can be confirmed by wetting the wood with alcohol or thinner and seeing what happens. Blotch prone areas will make themselves apparent that way.

A test piece is a good idea, but it is possible for the test piece to be blotch free and SOME of the wood in the actual project to be blotch prone, so keep that in mind, as not all cherry is equally blotchy.

[Kevin Gagne]

Thanks for all the great info. I did test a sample with Minwax Cherrywood Gel stain on a piece of the plywood without conditioner and then put a few coats of poly over it and it looked great. I was worried about when I try to finish the whole project it would not be uniform though. I will try the washcoating on a sample also and see how that looks.

[Bob Wingard]

Another good option .. and one I am using on a bookcase right now is to mix up some fairly weak lye and water. Wipe it on & let it work till you get the color you want .. then wash it off with warm water. No stain, no pigment, no blotching .. only a dramatic color change. On this particular project, I'll finish it up with a couple of coats of Natural WATCO oil and some thinned WATERLOX on top of that. The WATCO oil pops the grain much like BLO, but it dries faster and actually adds some durability, though not that much, hence the WATERLOX topcoats. If you have some redervations about the lye wash, try mixing it up a little weaker and just keep the surface wet till you get the desired color change. It will only take a minute or so.

As everyone says .. .. TRY IT ON SCRAP FIRST !! But .. prepare the test piece just as if it were the project.

[Prashun Patel]

If you have a subscription to Finewoodworking online, they have a great article on staining cherry.

Their tests revealed the best is dewaxed shellac thinned to 1#.

Beware that washcoating will inhibit the wood from becoming that dark.

Have you considered not coloring that beautiful cherry at all and just letting time do it's thing on it?