Reply To: Sapwood for external door
Welcome! / Forums / General Woodworking Discussions / Wood and Wood Preparation / Sapwood for external door / Reply To: Sapwood for external door
Larry, why the gel topcoat *and* spar varnish? Were you thinking a colored gel coat and it was for toning/glazing?
Yeah, I was thinking the colored gel stains. I just think you get better color and tone control by separating the steps. I use the dye stain to even out the tonal value between the sapwood and the heartwood. I use the gel stain more for hue.
I was mainly addressing what to do if parts of what you are trying to finish are wildly different. Obviously, if all the wood is one piece or very uniform, everything gets a lot easier. Then just stain with what you like and Carry on.
With both the dye stain and the gel stain you can control the tone and hue on different parts of a piece by changing the strength and number of coats. Water down the dye stain on parts that are already dark and go full strength on the light parts. Then blend them with a slightly damp rag.
Putting a light sealer between the steps evens out the effect of the gel stain without getting the result all muddy.
As to the sanding after the water based dye stain, just dye it again if you break through the dye layer. the fuzz won’t raise much the second time. You can even control the tone by doing it carefully.
On blotchy wood like beech or maple it sometimes helps to put a sanding sealer on first and sand that almost completely off before staining. It fills the areas that normally sponge up stain
It puts you more in control. You aren’t just at the mercy of whatever a single coat of stain wants to do. I’m almost never completely happy with that. I seldom want the whole piece to be the color of the darkest wood. I generally try to just get it so all the parts work together and you still see the grain.
The spar varnish has good U.V. inhibitors in it, which has so far pevented the dye stain from bleaching out over time on projects I have done, which I used to have issues with. I also think newer dye stains are better in that respect. I’d never depend on any clear finish that didn’t protect what you did underneath.
This piece was even in tone 50 years ago, but over time the dye stain bleached. The goal in refinishing was to get the parts to blend without making the piece too dark. Excuse the blurry before photo, but it shows the original color variance the best.