Q: I am building a bath vanity of quarter sawn oak. I stained it with a General Finishes waterbased stain. I’d like to pop the grain a bit. Normally I’d use BLO, but I don’t think I can, over the waterbased stain.
A: The waterbased stain you reference, and in fact nearly all waterbased stains on the market, are pigmented stains with acrylic binders. In other words, they are thin versions of acrylic paint. Knowing that, it should come as no surprise that your wood is now more or less sealed, so it is too late to pop grain with an impregnating material, like oil. That’s just as well, since that method, which works beautifully on curly woods, like figured maple, does little beyond creating problems on woods with very large pores and straight growth, like oak.
To bring out the grain in oak, you need merely use a pigmented stain, then wipe it all off, leaving extra color in the grain or pores. Assuming you wiped the stain completely while still wet, and assuming you used a contrasting color stain to stand out against the oak color, you’ve already done the right thing. If you did not wipe the stain thoroughly while wet, you might want to scrub off the stain on the surface with a nylon abrasive pad and liberal amounts of lacquer thinner. If you did not use a contrasting color, consider removing all the stain with lacquer thinner and a stiff bristle brush, then starting over.
Pigmented stain works perfectly with quarter sawn wood as well, since the ray cells that form the stripes resist absorbing stain, so they, too, will stand out more after staining with a contrasting color, again assuming all the stain is wiped off the surface.
Michael Dresdner
straight talk about wood finishing
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