About that craftsmanship...

Finishing a piece of furniture is an art form.  An art form, of which, I do not have a complete grasp. I stained the ash shaker table with Olympic Pecan stain.  It went on easy with a cheap styrofoam brush.  I used the blue Scott shop towels for wiping off the excess, a tip I learned from a Wood Whisperer interview with Michael Dresdner.  What I didn't expect was it to dry so fast.  Getting the excess stain off took some extra wiping. Overall, I'm happy with the result.  You'll notice I didn't take much care staining the inside.  There's a lot of glue spots & splotches. The legs are great, but...

Here is where my craftsmanship failed.  As you can see there's tool marks from the planer.  Hidden from the eye, that is until stain was applied.  Notice the undulating pattern is somewhat spread out, which is probably why I didn't feel it with my bare hand.  Next time, though, I know to do some extra hand planing before applying my stain.

Testing stain...

Just a quick update.  I hand sanded the shaker table and took a leftover piece of ash and did some test staining.  I drew a line down the middle of the board and shellaced one side.  After the shellac dried I sanded with 400 grit and applied a cherry stain to both sides.  On the back, I applied pecan stain to half, and golden maple to the other half.  I plan on checking it tomorrow to see how it all looks.  One of those stains will go on the table I'm sure.

Next project...

Looks like it's going to be a quilt rack for my sister in law. Right now, I'm going to try and make it out of poplar, and stain it with pecan stain. If the poplar does not work, then I'll switch to maple. I'm using a plan I found on Lowes' website. I've attached a pic of my Sketchup model. I'm going to give wedge tenons a shot.

Weekend doings...

I spent Sunday sanding, quite literally. I started with 80 grit and worked up to 150 on the cabinet. Once I got it smooth enough, I put on a wash coat of Bullseye De-waxed shellac. I made up a 1lb cut using the unique and scientifically reliable method that The Wood Whisperer used in his latest finishing episode. Basically, I eye balled it. A couple of weeks ago, I picked up Bob Flexner's book "Understanding Wood Finishing: How to Select and Apply the Right Finish" and it has been a great resource. After reading most of the book, I realize all of the things I did wrong the first time I stained the cabinet. Wrong is not exactly right. I realize all of the things I did not do well. So, I got the cabinet & legs shellac'd this weekend. I've decided to use dye on the poplar instead of stain. There's 2 reasons for this. First, I want to learn how to use dyes. Second, I have some figured hard maple that I want to make the grain pop. From what I've read in Bob's book and seen on TWW, dye is the best way to do that.

Not much this weekend...

I didn't do too much this past weekend. I played around with the stain some more on the cabinet. Think I'm going to strip it all the way down and start over. The walnut gel stain just didn't work. I picked up a book Saturday on finishing and have already discovered a few mistakes I made.

I also worked in cleaning up the garage some. I can walk through it now without tripping, which is very nice. I'm still not finished cleaning up. I wanted to take before & after pics, but my camera is dead.

Stain part 2...

It was a gorgeous day today. Unfortunately, all I had time to do today was put another coat of stain on the inside pieces. It didn't really darken the piece any. So, I figure one of three things has happened.

1. Between the seal coat and the first coat of gel stain all of the wood pores are filled and there's just no place for the stain to go.

2. I didn't leave the second coat of stain on long enough.

3. Gel stain is a one shot deal.

I'll probably post in some of the wood forums soon and try to figure out why the second coat failed. It's not big deal, though. It didn't hurt the color of the cabinet.

Lesson learned...

The stain job on the back of my cabinet didn't come out quite as well as I had hoped. It seems my sanding job was, well... it sucked. Notice all the scratches down the center line of the board? (The center line runs left to right). Apparently, in my haste I bore down on the ROS and gouged it the wood. So, now I'm making a "distressed" Krenov Cabinet.

Drying.

I made a drying table so the finish could cure. The fist pic is my drying table. In the second picture you can see the contrast between the stained poplar, on the left, and the natural shellac'd, on the right. The last pic is all of the pieces drying.

A lot done.

I hand sanded the last coat of shellac with 220 grit. Then I popped the top on a can of walnut gel stain. The staining process was a little easier than I thought it would be. It took a about 45 minutes to stain all the inside pieces.