tconway

I have had limited experience with NGR stains and all good, mostly on Mahogany. But this is cherry and things did not turn out as expected.

I found the post with the Maple Mantel and had much the same results but with darker stain. I decided to try some of the suggestions. But before going too much further I thought it best to get some suggestions.

Here are the specs.

- Everything was sanded to 220 or 400, including all the molding
- I did use rags to apply the stain (I now know to have been a mistake)
- The stain is Constantine NGR Med Br Mahog and on top of that, Behlen's Van Dyke Brown powder mixed with alcohol to be very very light (almost a light pale gray on raw cherry).

I tried liquid pool bleach (12%) as the powdered Sodium hydroxide does not seem to be available. It does have an effect, but not total after about 2 hours sitting on the wood. The third image shows the bleached plinth, Not yet dry from the bleach, but still somewhat blotchy.

I'm hesitant to make a bad situation worse. Anyone have any suggestions.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Tim Conway

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Rick Mosher

The true secret to applying dye stain to blotch prone woods has 2 parts. #1, you must spray it on and #2 you cannot let it get wet enough to puddle. For architectural elements like yours it is much easier to spray a water based aniline dye as it will wick into the corners and not tend to give that "shadow" in the inside corners. (NGR will work also however) Sometimes when there is a lot of inside corners I will spray and wipe the first coat but MUCH lighter than where I want the final color and then I will build up the color by spraying light even coats until I get the correct color since you can keep adding dye stain unlike an oil stain where you could cause adhesion problems. Now for this project, if you want to go darker with the color you can even everything out with some glazing and shading if it is already too dark or right on then I am afraid it is clorox and sandpaper time... Before staining again make up some mock-up samples with inside corners and do your complete finish on them before starting on the real thing, saves a TON of heartaches...