water based color staining

[chris fox]

I am helping my son(well hes helping me) on a school project. I plan to use left over 1/2" baltic birch for creating puzzle pieces and coat these with powder pigmented water based stain.
Should I treat the baltic birch with a sanding sealer first, and knockdown fibers that rise with 220 then apply the stain? I will topcoat with wipe on poly.

thanks
Chris

[Steve Schoene]

Sanding sealer will block much of the dye. It may be used under dye if there is objectionable blotching, though dye will blotch MUCH less than a pigmented stain would do. If used in this way, it should be very thin, and applied somewhat differently than usual. To work best as a blotch corrector it should be flooded on and IMMEDIATELY wiped off. It will have soaked into the porous areas where the dye might concentrate, and be wiped off of the harder areas where you still want dye to penetrate. Personally I wouldn't bother with the sanding sealer.

My sequence would be dye, let dry, apply one coat of the finish material (I'd use shellac since it is so much faster), knock down any raised grain after the first coat has dried, and then finish by adding more coats until I was happy with the finish.