Need a little helping finishing a bed

[Daniel Hartmann]

Hi, I'm new here and to wood working in general. I built a copy of this bed for my son. I built it using eastern white pine, I need a little help reproducing the finish on the bed in the photo. I do know the bed in the photo is spruce, if that helps. I was thinking some kind of glaze and blond shellac. Please help!

[Troy Turner]

Daniel -

Welcome aboard!

I haven't played with shellac much, but I have played with some pine in my day :) Just make sure you put a seal coat down or "pretreat" as pine has a bad tendency to blotch. Also, have you looked to see what color they call that? You may be able to get something close to it at the store.

Good luck.

[Scott Holmes]

A water soluable dye would be my method of coloring this pine bed. Then seal coat with shellac and then a top coat. The seal coat of shellac will lock the water soluable dye in place.

As for color, every manufacturer has a different naming convention. You can use most "names" across the different manufacturers. The nice thing about dyes; it's easy to mix and match to adjust to the color you need.

[Daniel Hartmann]

Thanks for the replies. Pottery barn calls this finish "Rustic Pine". I'm looking at some gel stains from general finishes, one in particular called "Candle light". Can I just apply this to the pine or should I seal with shellac first or...?

Thanks!

[Troy Turner]

I would certainly experiment and see what works best for the color you want. I've noticed that without sealing first, the darker colors seem to blotch more than the lighter colors.

I've used gels as well as oil-based stains on pine and have good success with both. I really like using the gel stains, but they (lowes) don't have a full range of colors like the regular stain.

I wish I would've known that sealing was a good idea. When I figured it out, I used a can of the pre-treat stuff from minwax. Didn't have any problems with it. A lot of folks will lay down some dewaxed shellac first. I've got a can in the shop, just gotta find time to get out and mess with it :(

[John TenEyck]

GF's Candlelight is pretty dark compared to that photo. You would definitely want to put down a coat of Sealcoat shellac first if you use it to avoid getting it too dark and to help reduce blotching. Personally, I'd either dye it as Scott recommended, or I'd try mixing a toner of amber shellac with sealcoat in whatever proportions give you the right tone, and adjust that with Transtint dyes if needed. Toners are best applied through multiple coats; I usually build up 3 or 4 very thin coats. Spraying works best but I've done it with a brush, too.

John

[Prashun Patel]

I think a dye-based (vs. pigment based) stain followed by a wiping varnish (oil based) will be the easiest way to get you there.

Also, to put a finer point on Troy's response: Shellac itself is a 'pre-sealer'. So, there is no need to pre-seal before shellac; any color in shellac itself will not blotch significantly. A pre-sealer is sometimes only desirable underneath a liquid pigment based stain or a gel-based stain.

[Pat Barry]

I have used a Minwax stain product (likely to draw a chorus of boo's around here). The name of the stain was Fruitwood. It came out with a sweet honey like appearance that I thought looked really nice. Overcoated this with Minwax (horrors) polyurethane. Overall appearance was really nice, uniform, non-blotchy. All I did for prep was random orbit sand to 150 grit then applied the stain. If you like it its a very simple solution.

[Daniel Hartmann]

Thanks for all the great replies!