Clear coat dissolving stain

I'm in my first foray into staining an not having much luck. A client has requested an American Oak shelf with a mahogany stain to match their kitchen cupboards. I'm using a Cabbots stain and given it two coats with a cotton pad. However, even after allowing it to dry for a week I have the following problems;

When I brush on the Cabothane clear coat, it dissolves the stain where the brush first touches the stain, so I get a bit of a 1cm wide band as wide as the brush each place the brush touches down

The clear coat doesn't apply smoothly and is a bit sticky looking, requiring a deeper brush action or thicker coat, which increases the likelihood it'll dissolve the stain

If I try to remove a brush hair with my hand, I smudge off the stain at that spot

The result is a patchy finish with light patches areas where I've pressed the brush or touched the surface

What's going on and how do I fix this?

thanks

Did you follow the instructions or just lay it on as you thought it should be? Did the stain recommend the finish you are applying?

Instructions are there for a reason and if followed should not give the results you are getting.

I haven't seen the instructions but I'll just about bet it says something like wipe off the excess stain after application, not to do two coats and leave them to dry for a week.

In most cases you need to use a stain that's incompatible with the finish. IE water or alcohol based with a turpentine based polish - water or turpentine based with alcohol based finish, etc. This way the stain or dye won't pull out into the finish.

If it's American oak then it's possibly been coloured with a chemical dye like "potassium bichromate" or commercially sprayed with a coloured lacquer.

Cheers - Neil

Instructions for staining were quite inadequate and didn't answer any of the points you mentioned. I initially did a test with one coat which almost went transparent so I was trying two, to overcome the thinning out. Most of the shelf is smooth and stained, its just the points where the brush touched down or was heavy that the patching occurred.

I need a better source of information than what the company supplied.

<style></style>Hi Russell

In theory the Cabots stain and Carbothane clear should be incompatible as they're both oil based, however Cabots do sell them as being able to be used together.

I have had a similar problem applying Danish Oil over Cabots stain, however I was able to get a reasonable finish by reworking and evening the whole thing out with a rag. I don't think this is the real solution however.

I think this stain needs to be rubbed right off before it dries so that the only product left is in the wood, not on the surface - as Neil said.
You can do multiple coats of stain and even do different colours over each other to get the colour you want but each coat gets rubbed off hard before the next coat. Stain should be "in" the wood - not form a coating "on" the surface.

How finely the timber is sanded can affect how much colour you get. If it's sanded too finely with a power sander resulting in a burnished surface the stain won't get into the wood properly giving a washed out un-natural look. If you're sanding really fine to get rid of sanding marks you might need to go back over the job with 240 grit on a hand held block to give a cut, porous surface that the stain can soak into.

The other tip for getting a deeper more natural colour with cabots pigment stains is to apply the stain with a brush and then rub it in with a rag finishing with rubbing it off with a clean rag. I don't know why this works but it does. Try as I might I just cannot get the same depth and colour with a rag as I can with an initial brush application.

If the client has existing cupboards in stained American Oak from a commercial cabinet manufacturer then probably both the stain and the finish were sprayed on and the stain was probably a dye stain which will look different to the Cabots pigment stain. You might need to do a few test pieces to match the existing work. Remember you don't have to use just one colour.

Good luck - I'm a lousy stainer, finishing is a trade. The real experts here are polishers who do restoration work and the guys who spray work in factories - qualified tradespersons in both cases.

Regards

Gerard

Thanks Gerard - I think you've nailed it (excuse the pun). The American Oak has a tight grain and was not accepting the stain and I guess I tried to compensate by not taking enough of it off. The resanding is a good idea as well. Some experimentation ahead. Difficult to find a good guide to staining with all of these sorts of tips on the web or in the product support material so I was a bit in the dark.