hey I'm John with biscuit tree Woodworks and today I'm going to show you how to get better results on your next stained project I'm going to show you some products and techniques that you should be using if you want great results as well as a few things that you might want to avoid now if you're completely new to woodworking you may not realize this but wood stain isn't actually necessary at all on your project in fact most of the time I prefer not to use a stain at all and let the natural beauty of the wood speak for itself now you may not have access to the wood that you want to use in your area or it just may not be in the budget for the project that you're building but that's where wood stain can come in sometimes you just want to make a bold statement with color that doesn't occur naturally in the wood but still have the wood grain show through I will also use stain if I need to match an existing piece of furniture or if I have a client that requests a specific color now in most cases you'll be using stain to improve the look of inexpensive and in some opinions dull looking wood such as Pine or that mysterious white wood that you see in the Home Centers now another thing wood stain really isn't a wood finish in the sense that it doesn't offer any real protection to the wood you're still going to have to apply some type of top coat over the wood stain otherwise first time someone sets their cold drink on your table you're going to get a really nasty looking water ring seriously I get nightmares every time I think of that now that we've talked about what stain is and what it isn't how do we get the best results from it well like most things in life the more you prepare up front the better your results are likely going to be and unfortunately I'm referring to that necessary evilin woodworking sanding yes if you want professionall looking results you're going to have to S the project before applying the stain otherwise you're going to get a very rough and inconsistent look to the piece so let me show you I have two pieces here that I cut from the same board that I picked up at my local Home Center one of these I'm going to leave as is the other I'm going to take through my sanding progression I'm going to start with a 100 grit then progress to 220 150 and finally 180 grit between each of the Grits I'm going to use a pencil and draw some light lines across the surface of the board this is a great way to know when you're done with each grit once the pencil marks are gone you're free to move on to the next grit and progression between grits I'll vacuum up the dust and particles that break off from the Sandpaper this helps to prevent any scratches and swirl marks as you progress through the finer grits of paper all right now that we've got the sanding complete let's get some stain put on these boards and compare our results now when it comes to applying the stain you have several different options for what tool you want to use you can use a regular bristle brush a foam brush or my personal choice a cotton rag you can make your own by cutting up an old t-shirt or you can get a bag full of them in the paint aisle at your local Home Center you do want to make sure you're wearing gloves for this after all they don't call it stain for nothing I apply the stain in circular motions making sure to work it from multiple directions to get it down into the grains of the wood after a few minutes you want to come back with a clean Rag and wipe away any excess stain you don't want to leave this sitting on top of the surface if you do it's going to become a wet sticky mess and it's really going to ruin your project all right so now that we've stained our boards and they've had a chance to dry let's compare the results here on your right we have the board that was not sanded and here on the left is the one that we sanded through all the way to 180 now clearly you can see there's quite a difference here the unsanded board has some very dark streaks in it especially around the tighter grain and here there's a very dark streak where there was a very rough patch in the board these rougher patches are going to soak up a lot more stain and create a much darker look you can also see down here at the bottom there were some scratches in this board and those picked up a lot more stain as well and it really highlights these defects in the board that's probably not something that you're going to see in your finished piece one other thing that I can see in the unsanded board I'm not sure how well it picks up on camera but you can actually see a small undulations from the mill marks when this board went through the Sawmill you don't have that on the sanded board the finish on this one is is very smooth and much more even than the unsanded board now even though this one does look much better than doing nothing at all I'm still not happy with the way this one turned out you can see around the knot around the tighter grain pattern and it's especially noticeable here around the cathedral grain where you have very light areas next to very dark areas that soaked up more of the stain now some people may actually like this look in the cathedral grain but this is reminiscent of me growing up in the 1980s and I'm not a fan no not that 80s yes that 8s so the dark areas that we have on our sanded board as well as our unsanded board are called blotching so how do we deal with that we use a product called pre-stained wood conditioner now this product is applied after you've completed the sanding but before you apply the stain to apply the pre-stained conditioner I'm going to use a foam brush and wipe on a generous coat after you've applied it you want to give it a few minutes to dry maybe about 15 minutes once it's no longer wet you can apply your stain don't wait any more than 2 hours to apply the stain for this product to work now that the conditioner's had a few minutes to dry I'll apply the stain using the same method as before now let's compare our results again now the pre-stained conditioner is not perfect it did leave a few areas that are a little bit darker and some of this grain over here and around the knots there are a few dark spots but overall the effect is much more muted than it was without the pre-stained conditioner here we have a drastic difference between the dark and lighter areas and with a pre-stain conditioner it's a much more muted effect and looks much more even and I like this look a lot lot better than without you saw me apply it it's really fast really easy and you don't have to wait very long to apply the stain just 15 20 minutes after you've applied it you can go ahead and start putting your stain on and you get a much better look out of it but wait we aren't finished yet we still haven't applied a top coat to protect the wood and the Finish from damage or water marks but before we do I've got two very important things we need to discuss first you should never throw oily Rags into the trash can or into some dusty corner of your shop as oil stains and finishes dry they produce heat this can build up and cause them to spontaneously ignite and cause a fire in your shop there are thousands of shop fires every year because of improper disposal of oily Rags what I do is I take them and lay them out flat on the floor preferably on the concrete floor away from anything that could possi Catch Fire doing this will allow the heat to disperse so they're not going to catch fire and just let them sit overnight the next day they'll be dry a little bit crusty then they're safe to throw in the trash and the second thing I need you to do is go hit that like button if you're enjoying this video that lets me know that you're enjoying my content also lets YouTube know so that they can show the video to more people all right so let's get on to the Finish as with everything else in finishing there are a lot of different options on what we can use for a top coat but I'm going to show you two of the more common ones that I like to use one is a general finishes armor seal this is a wion oilbased poly the second top coat I'm going to use today is a water-based poly now this is a Minwax product that can also be found next to the stains and the wipe on poly at your home center I have two boards that I've prepared using the techniques we've used so far sanding from 100 all the way up to 180 grit then applying the pre-stained conditioner and finally applying the stain after the stain has had a chance to dry you can apply your top coat I'm going to start with the oilbased wipe on poly we'll apply a thin even coat over the entire board with a foam brush you do have some time to work with this but you'll want to avoid going back over any areas you've already covered this will leave streaks in the Finish after the first coat you have to wait 12 to 24 hours to let it dry before you can give it a light sanding with 320 grit then you can apply your second coat another 12 to 24 hours later give it another light sanding and then a third coat the waterbased POC goes on very similar to The oilbased Wipe on finish you do want to work quickly especially on a large project because this water-based finish does dry pretty quickly itself don't go back over any areas you've already covered or you will leave streaks in your top coat this finish will level itself out so just apply it and move on it does go on kind of Milky to begin with but don't worry it will dry clear you only have to wait about 2 hours and then you can come back with your 320 grit sandpaper to give it a very light sanding and apply a second coat three coat should be plenty for an even coverage and good protection now that the Finish is dried on both of our boards let's take a close look and compare the results all right so on the left we have the oilbased WIP on poly and on the right we have the water-based finish now the waterbased Finish dries much faster than the wipe on poly but it doesn't add a lot of depth or color to the wood now with the oilbased wipe on poly this adds a little bit of an amber color to the wood which gives it a bit of a warmer appearance so in my opinion if you don't want to change the color of the wood at all or if you're in a hurry and need to get the project finished then you would go with the water-based finish on the other hand if you have the time and you like the look then my preference would be the oilbased wipe on poly I just like the way that the color comes out on this and I think it looks much better than just a simple water-based finish so as you can see it's not that difficult to get a high quality finish using stains there's just a few steps that you have to go to to get a really good finish but if you follow the process that I've laid out today there's no reason you can't get great results that you're going to be proud of on your next project if you're interested in any of the products I use today I'm going to have links for those in the description so you can go check those out make sure you subscribe so you know when I release another video and thanks for watching