Advice, please

[KimApel]

I have an old laminated spruce mast that I wanted to make look nice, so I stripped and sanded it clean, and because there were still some grey stains remaining, I also used one-part wood bleach (the acid kind), which helped. I also used wood bleach because I understood that it would help avoid sharp color contrasts in the way the wood would later respond to stain/varnish. I also understood that using a light-tone wood stain was advisable to return some color to the wood, left overly pale by the bleach, and to assure a more even overall color when varnished. Well; when I put the stain on, come parts of the laminated wood responded perfectly, but others - areas of open grain, I guess - turned VERY, VERY dark. The overall visual effect is light and dark stripes - not pleasing at all. My questions: 1) Where did I go wrong? 2) What can I do to reverse it? I'm betting that the stain is in deep on the dark areas.

[Ian McColgin]

Probably the grain, as you suggest. I generally hate stains for just this reason and find perfectly match color boring.

Anyway, I'd be surprised if you can lighten it up, so perhaps your best shot is to carefully darken the lighter parts.

G'luck

[Redonebyme]

Pre stain conditioner. It's used to even out the absorbtion of stain on soft wood. Hence, what you should have used.
i think you are SOL.

Unless you can structurally afford to remove another 1/16 -1/8"( depth of stain penetration) of wood off ALL surfaces.

You might be able to get away with less. I' try a good sharp cabinet scraper to a test area, what have you got to loose?

[Bruce Hooke]

This is a classic problem with staining some softwoods. The lighter summer wood absorbs much more stain than the hard winter wood, and as a result the ligher summer wood ends up looking darker than the winter wood. Pine is particularly bad on this count. The usual solution on furniture is to first apply a coat of shellac, but I'm not so sure this would be a good idea on a mast.

One way to even things out a bit might be to add a little artists oil paint to the first coat or two of varnish. (The disadvantage of this approach is that if the varnish peels in one area, or if you sand through all the varnish in one area, then when you re-varnish that area will not match the rest of the mast.) Of course, if you do this make sure to test it first before doing the whole mast this way. As you now probably realize this is what you should have done with the stain too -- if you have an offcut of the wood used that is the easiest way to go but otherwise find a hidden area such as right near the step or behind a fitting and test whatever you plan to apply as a stain and finish.

P.S. One possible way to reverse the stain would be to re-bleach the entire mast. Again, test first in a small area...

[ 01-07-2003, 07:58 PM: Message edited by: Bruce Hooke ]