Stain mottled hard maple

[Ole Anderson]

I should have known better, but I figured only soft woods had issues with mottling when stained. I am used to oak where it is not an issue. Anyway I glued up a 20" x 32" (hard maple) top for my grandson's old school desk. His mom wanted a "honey maple" color so I stained it with regular Minwax oil stain. Now I have a mottled mess. Am I going to make it worse if I try to sand it down, or should I just cut my losses and varnish it? I have a limited amount of time to get it done, 3 part time evenings.

[Casey Gooding]

I would go with one of two options. Both require sanding it back down. Then, either use a VERY thin coat of shellac (maybe 1 part shellac to three parts Denatured alcohol) to condition the wood before staining, or try using a gel stain.

[Scott Holmes]

Use wood bleach or regular chohrine bleach to get the color out. I don't think MW Honey Maple has any pigment so you used an oil soluable dye.

Maple does not stain well. The best way to get a consistent color on hard maple is to spray an alcohol based dye like TransTint. Spray carefully and you can get a consistant color.

Another method would be to remove the color, seal it with shellac and add a toner coat in the color of your liking. "Honey Oak" "golden oak" or "honey maple" are just color names picked by the marketing depatment, not real colors.

Toners are just shellac or lacquer based clear coats with a bit of dye added to even out the color... e.g. "tone" it.

Toners are sprayed 99.99% of the time. Only exception I know of is MW Polyshades which is a varnish based toner that is TERRIBLE.... dries way too slow letting colors run and pool etc.



Casey,

I'm guessing you only use premixed shellac since you said 1 part shellac and 2 parts DNA. You will be pleasently surprised how much better the mixed fresh from flakes shellac works. Cheaper too.

Shellac is referenced by its "cut" - how many pounds per gallon. 1# cut, 2 # cut, etc.

A simple way to remember when mixing your own from flakes is 1oz flakes in 1 cup DNA = 1# cut 2oz flakes in a cup = 2# cut.

16 oz in pound and 16 cups in a gallon.

For ref. Zinsser Seal coat is a 2# cut de-waxed of blonde shellac. Amber and clear (aka blonde) are 3# cut shellac that has NOT been de-waxed.

[Jeff Nolan]

you can get good tone in maple by tinting shellac with Transtint honey amber. I just did this on a bunch of interior trim and was super pleased with the result.

[Ole Anderson]

I don't think bleach will work as I used 50% golden oak, which is pigmented, with 50% natural (no pigment). I couldn't find any shellac on the way home tonight so I will try the MW conditioner which I do have. Again I am on a tight schedule to get this delivered this week for my grandson's birthday.

My plan is to sand it down, apply the MW wood conditioner, and then use MW gell stain in Honey Pine which I found on clearance at my local ACO store. But this time I will do a few test scraps before going with the stain.

Thanks for the help and wish me well.

Update:

180 grit on my ROS didn't touch the stain, I would need to remove a bunch of wood, as with a planer (too wide) or a belt sander maybe. But my BS is busted and I am not sure I want to go that aggressive. Tried bleach, no effect at all.

I tried the gel stain on a test piece left over from the glue-up, no mottling at all on bare wood or on conditioned wood. Shouldda used gel, although it didn't give me much more color than the natural stain on bare wood.

Guess I will go with 3 wipe on varnish coats and if they don't like it, it can be painted or I can apply a laminate.

[Scott Holmes]

Chemical stripper will remove the stain.

[Ole Anderson]

Chemical stripper will remove the stain.

Even when it soaks down in the grain?

Well, last night and this AM I put 2 coats of wipe-on poly on the bottom side. Tonight I will try sanding the top, this time working up from 80 grit (on my test piece first) to see if I can remove enough wood to get the stain out. I am running out of time. Had to stop and buy some coarser 6" stickit disks. 80, 120, 180.

I bought a piece of clear hard maple for the project, 7" x 12' planed to 15/16", about $24 at my local mill. So I can do all the testing I need to on the 48" offcut and when I am done, I can just run it through the planer and get a new board out of it.

[Scott Holmes]

Sanding will not get the stain out of the grain... The stain has a varnish binder that partially seals the wood staining while partially sealed will cause problems.

Use a chemical stripper, then the bleach, then lightly sand if needed.

[Ole Anderson]

I was able to sand away 98% of the stain starting at 80 grit on my ROS, working up to 120. I didn't want to polish it like I did before as the honey maple was just not giving me much warmth in the color. Well even with the 120 grit sanding, I still wasn't getting much color with the gel stain. Running out of time I changed directions. I bought a can of orange shellac. Haven't used shellac in 20 years, but it will add color and with the fast drying time, I can go 3 coats, sand and wax in the time it will take one wipe on poly coat to dry. The mini saga continues.

[Scott Holmes]

Your can of orange shellac... by Zinsser, I suspect, contains wax. It is not De-waxed shellac. The poly will not stick properly.

Pick a non poly varnish or leave it as a shellac finish.

[Ole Anderson]

I was going to sand out the shellac and go over it with Johnsons wax, no poly.

Now I remember why I don't use shellac, it dries too fast to brush out an even finish, hard to keep a wet edge on a big piece. I like my wipe on poly, but too late. I am about ready to turn it into firewood.

What is the secret to brushing shellac on a big piece? I thought I would be smart and use a pad to get a quick even finish. Didn't work, so my third coat was with a brush, turned out a little better but now I am dealing with all the crud in the first and second coats. Don't know if I will be able to sand it all out.

[Mark Ottenheimer]

I remember reading some where that you can use Lacquer retarder in Shellac to slow the drying time. Not sure if this is true or not. I do agree that adding the transtint to tint the shellac would give you the color you need and can be darkened with multiple coats.

[Ole Anderson]

Standard Zinzer orange is what, a 3# cut? Should I be thinning that in order to brush it?

from this article:

http://antiquerestorers.com/Articles/jeff/shellac.htm

comes this quote:


I like to use a 1-1/2 lb. cut shellac solution for brushing. Take one part of the concentrated solution prepared above and add 4 equal parts alcohol.

I presume he means ending up with a 1.5# cut. His reference to a "concentrated solution prepared above" is not clear. That being the case, a 3# cut should be diluted 50/50 with alcohol for brushing.

[Scott Holmes]

Spraying is one way to apply shellac evenly, padding is another opton.

[Ole Anderson]

I finally ended up using one of those disposible pads with the shellac diluted to about a 1.5# cut and was able to get a decent final coat on the top flat surface. Done, and she seems happy with it. I am not.

Given more time, I would have ripped the glue joints on the BS and run the whole thing thru the planer, re-glue and re-edge everything and start from scratch with a sprayed dye followed up with wipe on poly.

Not all projects go as planned. End of story.