Water vs Oil based stain

[Howard Phillips]

Sorry for all the questions recently, but since I've been laid off I've been in the garage building almost constantly.

I prefer water-based stains. I know there is much debate over whether oil-based are better, but that's not the point here.

When I do use oil bases my workpiece remains relatively smooth. However, as most know, using water tends to raise the grain making the work rough feeling.

I recently finished some pine with a water based stain, and then moved on to poly before really inspecting it. After my first coat of poly I noticed that the grain was particularly rough around the knots in the wood. Now my stain looks uneven/rough in those areas. Two questions:

1) I'm assuming there's nothing that can be done about it know as there's dry poly on it.

2) I use minwax water-based stains, which all say not to sand between coats of finish. How am I to get my wood back to smooth if I can't sand until after my first coat of poly (and that's not really a sanding at all)?

[Jamie Buxton]

How am I to get my wood back to smooth if I can't sand until after my first coat of poly (and that's not really a sanding at all)?

It depends on how rough the roughness is. When I use waterborne finish, I expect it to raise the grain a bit. I sand to 320, and then spray on two coats on. The surface will feel rough. Then I skitter-sand.
By skitter-sanding, I mean a light quick sanding with extremely fine grit -- 600 grit or so. The surface will feel rough before, and will feel fine afterwards. The sandpaper make tweak the sheen in spots, so one more coat finishes the job. In a sense, I've used the first two coats as sealer coats to nail all the wood fibers in place for that skitter-sanding to knock down.

[Jason Roehl]

Before you stain, wet the surface with water, then sand one more time. You'll have much, much less grain-raising when you do use the water-based stain then.

[Scott Holmes]

I use Jamie's method... to a point.

I usually seal the stain with super blond shellac, then apply 2 finish coats. THEN, I lightly sand any roughness away with 320 paper. 600 is too fine especially if you are using poly... which I'm not using; unless it's a floor; I don't sand floors finer than about 180.