Bad General Finishes Stain?

[Matt Meiser]

I've been using a bunch of General Finishes water based stain (their dye/pigment product, not the dye stain product) to stain cabinetry for our laundry room. I started staining the wainscot components today and opened my last can and discovered it was a grainy mess inside. It reminded me more of soupy brownie mix than thick chocolate milk if that make sense? This is probably the 5th can and I've bought it all within the past couple months. Since I've been buying a little at a time and not really keeping track of what's old and what's newer its possible that this is the oldest can but still the temperature in my shop has been between 72 and maybe 90 that whole time I'm thinking that I got a can that got frozen or maybe got something just plain old. Anyone seen this? I'm guessing my local Woodcraft will take care of me, but its a bit of a pain and I'm wondering about storing any unused part--or if I will just need to throw it away a while after the project is done?

[Rich Engelhardt]

I started staining the wainscot components today and opened my last can and discovered it was a grainy mess inside. It reminded me more of soupy brownie mix than thick chocolate milk if that make sense
Matt,
That's usually what frozen material looks like if/when it's gone beyond it's maximum number of freeze/thaw cycles.
In years gone by, anything "latex" based would get a "spongy" appearance/texture after being frozen.
Most formulations these days can go through 8 to 10 freeze/thaw cycles before they turn.
With the increased number of freeze/that cycles the newer formulations now have, they seldom if ever get to that "spongy" state.
Most just get to the condition you describe - grainy and "stiff", like cake batter that hasn't been beaten enough.

"Old" material, which hasn't gone through freeze/thaw, usually just settles out. There will be a semi clear layer of Karo syrup like liquid on top and the solids will all settle out at the bottom of the can.
"Old" material like that can be used without any loss of quality as long as the material can be mixed back into a smooth consistancy & the age of the material is within reasonable limits. When I sold paint decades ago, some of the less popular stock (ready mix paint in pink) averaged 3 to 5 years old. We also had a stock of other materials that had to have been 10 plus years old that had been written down to no value back in the very back of the warehouse.
One of my "Winter jobs" was to shake a bunch of that junk, mix all the colors together in a 55 gal drum and paint the warehouse walls.
The stuff had settled out to a "chewing gum" like goo on the bottom of the cans & I had to toss a bunch of ball bearings into each can before I shook them to break that goo up.

Also - among the no value material - we had some that had been frozen and had gone "spongy". I tired all kinds of things to get that stuff back to some sort of workable shape and was never able to. A half pint of DNA mixed into it followed by 15 min on a shaker showed some promise, but, if it sat too long it would "sponge" back up on me.
I got the bright idea of mixing it, then running it through an airless....
Bad move.
The stuff all sponged up inside the surge chamber and I had a real mess on my hands....much to the delight of my friend/co-worker/mentor, "Old Floyd".

[Matt Meiser]

When I took it to Woodcraft, one thing we noticed is that the can wasn't the same design as the new cans--the new cans are all metal and this can was plastic. The theory is that it was old stock that somehow made its way to me. But regardless, they took care of it.