1 out of 10...?

[Joe]

I've made the across the grain mistake and the problem is that the marks don't show until the stain and/or polish is on.

I got a very similar set (a P75) on Sunday which will be getting the same treatment in due course.

- Joe

[Retired]

Hi,

I've mentioned this before but it's worth mentioning again; I once made a new cabinet (my first) and veneered it using lovely contrasting veneers and admit I felt rather pleased with it after fighting the veneers which refused to behave due to my inexpeience.

My happiness soon disappeared though when I stained it. I hadn't realized that after staining all the veneers would look exactly the same colour. I expected the lighter coloured veneers to retain the contrast after staining.

I've since had similar problems with stringing and cross banding where I went to great lengths to mask where the stain was not needed. Stain is very searching and creeps under masking tape. I'm willing to learn so if anyone has an easy solution to this problem I'm all ears.

I believe Steve; if you stain you will lose the contrast of the two light coloured inlay stripes on your cabinet.

Kind regards, Col.

[Michaelr]

I notice that there are 2 bandings ( lighter coloured) in the cabinet. Are these different colured veneers. How do you cope with 2 different colured veneers ?

Mike

[pwdrive]

After surface preperation, apply a light "solvent" based stain (if required) over the whole job then varnish or oil up, avoid water based stain and all in one stain cum varnish if possible. "solvent" based stains give the best results for DIY, you can stain a whole floor with out any "stain / overlap shading" whatsoever with this kind of stain if applied correctly, it dries to a good flat finish.
A good coloured stain to start off with is a "solvent" based "light oak" (Colron) this can be made even lighter by thinning with spirit "Antique Pine" stains tend to turn out darker that you may think, avoid "mahogany" stain if you can. unless you really want that colour as it rarely turns out right especially on pine or spruce venners or timber.
Hope this is of some use.

Lawrence.

[Retired]

Hi,

I've always found it to be a major problem Mike in trying to stain individual veneers once the veneer has been laid as in a cabinet restoration using contrasting veneers.

Whilst veneering my Ekco T311 cabinet I veneered both new side panels before fitting; the inside was veneered with a cheaper veneer and was needed to prevent the panel buckling as it would have done had I only veneered the face side. The face side was veneered with a large inlay panel of Sapele Pommele; cheaper Sapele cross banding and home made stringing (banding).

I expected a lot of trouble whilst staining; hot hide glue was used throughout the main lay-up and this prevented me from staining the cross banding veneer before laying; water stain would possibly contaminate the veneers not needing stain and spirit stain could possibly cause gluing problems so the inner panel and cross banding's were laid as bare veneer.

Once the stringing grooves had been cut these gave a firewall between the contrasting veneers and the inner panels were fully masked taking a great deal of care to get this masking perfect. The cross banding was then stained and once the masking was removed I was pleased with the result.

I then made the banding's and used waterproof quick setting woodworking adhesive to bed the banding.

I thought at this point I had got away with the staining but trouble quickly followed which was totally frustrating. I needed to bring the new banding down flush which I did with a sharp cabinet scraper. Unfortunately the scraper also removed a skin of surrounding veneer; on the inner panel this didn't matter but on the cross banding it removed the stain.

I set up a sample strip of plain veneer and added masking tape leaving bands of bare veneer; I tried both water and spirit based stains on these bands and both crept very badly under the tape in fact the spirit stain started to dissolve the adhesive on the tape. My chum David (Yorkie) has already mentioned that end grain is like a lot of straws just willing to lap up stain or in fact any liquid and this is exactly what was happening because the veneer was bare.

I tried all kinds of methods but in the end resorted to French polishing the entire panels to fully seal the grain; a number of brush coats of shellac were applied and only when I was sure the grain was sealed I very carefully masked both the banding and inner panels. For colouring I added pigment to a small quantity of shellac agitating the shellac until all the pigment was dissolved. After trying the colour on a test sample I used a traditional French polishing rubber to apply the coloured shellac which was a nightmare because it needed to go on evenly; any overlapping would show up badly and as shellac dries rapidly I was in a state of panic. The result was acceptable with only a little shading where the shellac overlapped but I was lucky.

I found it impossible to obtain a very fine cut off line between the veneers by masking and applying stain to the bare veneer and for me the only solution was to seal the veneer first.

I agree with Lawrence regarding avoiding pre-stained finishes like varnish; unless these are applied evenly they tend to look terrible with light and dark patches together with tide marks; I had to resort to using pre-stained shellac on the cross banding but only as a last resort.

As I've gain more experience I now like to use water stain mixing my own and the colour is Vandyke Brown. This stain was the common stain used by the old cabinetmakers. A bucketful of this stain is very cheap compared to the spirit based stains such as Colron and Blackfriars which I have also used over the years. Water based stain dries quickly whereas spirit stain can take days to dry in a cold workshop.

Applying stain for the first time can be alarming; I find it looks much darker when applied but once the finish is added it lightens up a great deal as can be seen in the pictures below.

Again I would agree with Lawrence regarding being careful with stains as they can behave very differently to what is expected. Take for example Mahogany stain; apply this to Mahogany and the result will be very red. apply this stain to something like pine though and it will resemble Mahogany; the base colour of the timber plays an important role when staining. If in doubt always try a test sample first because once stain is applied there is no going back without having to start over.

So Mike; to answer your question; coping with two different coloured veneers is a nightmare because applying a blanket stain will make all the veneers almost the same colour. In future when I veneer and want contrast I'll choose veneer wisely so as to avoid staining.

Thanks Lawrence I'm always happy to see how others tackle various problems.

Kind regards, Col.

           

[Michaelr]

Thank you Col

Mike