Shopsmith Forums

Ed:

I've just gone thru "refinishing hell" on our pine dining room table. This was a project that was at the top of the honey do list. Including the original water stained lacquer finish, I sanded this table down to bare wood three times. I was using a dark Cabot oil stain and frankly was very unsatisfied with the blotching. Three times I tried various mixtures of dewaxed shellac and denatured alcohol. It didn't seem to make a whole lot of difference.

In defense of my finishing "expertise", the 35"x72" table top has been glued up by the manufacturer (Ethan Allen) from no less than eleven boards. Some appear to be slab cut, others qtr sawn. There is probably no way that I can get an even finish. At least I've learned something by going thru this curve.

When I get back to my "Workshop in the Woods" in April I think I will make a new table top out of white pine, using no more than three carefully matched slab cut boards. This will also be an opportunity to make removable breadboard extensions that will be an improvement over the original table top.

I'm coming a bit late to this thread, but I do use cherry (there's quite a bit of it here in Western Pennsylvania) and on occasion I've finished it with gel stain.

A lot of cherry being sold today shows some sapwood which isn't considered a defect. So, you can either trim off the sapwood (unless it's appropriate for what you're making) or stain it to match the rest of the piece. If you simply stain or dye the sapwood, the results aren't all that predictable because the heartwood darkens over time. The same can be said for using solid wood and cherry veneer plywood in a project. I find that General brand "candlelite" gel stain is a good match for aged cherry.

If you apply candlelite gel stain directly to bare cherry, the stain pigment lodges in the grain and gives an unnatural appearance. So, I like to give the wood a couple of coats of gel varnish, then apply a light coat or two of candlelite over the sapwood areas to blend it into the heartwood, possibly covering the entire piece with the gel stain, and then a final coat or two of gel varnish. All of the stain coats are light so that the grain still shows through. The gel stain acts more as a toner, simply evening out the overall color of the piece. It takes a light touch, using very small amounts of the stain to accomplish the matching of the heartwood and sapwood.

If there is no sapwood showing and the color of the cherry matches well, I wouldn't use anything but varnish, with perhaps some oil going on first.