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In this video I want to talk to you about staining. Now that's a process where you
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impart color to the wood, color that wasn't there already, and you can see a
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bunch of stained things. Everything is stained here except this. So nowadays you can get all kinds of different colors as you can see, but the
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staining I'm talking about and the staining that I'm going to show you how to do later on is entirely different from what people mean when they say I'm
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going to stain my deck or I'm going to stain the outside of my wooden house. And
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that usually does impart color too, but that's kind of another process. It's not
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the same as this process. It's a much coarser process, so don't be confused by
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that. Now I am NOT going to show you how to apply stain in this video. We're going
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to do that later, but I just want to show you what you can expect and what it
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looks like and some of the drawbacks to do with stain as well. So here we got a
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bunch of different colors. This is sort of a traditional brown, nice and smooth
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Now the smoothness comes from, in this case, polyurethane sealing, like the
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stuff I've already shown you. Same for this. This is the top half of a
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frame and panel door. I cut this so that I could use it as part of my
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demonstrations for how to do cabinet making and things. Both this stain and
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this stain were oil-based stains that are now under a sealing coat. All of
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these stains are water-based stains, so they're a little nicer to use. They're a
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little safer to use, and you can get, as I said, a wide range of colors as you can
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see here. Now the first thing I want to point out is that staining on its own
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for interior work doesn't really make wood look all that good. I mean, take
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something like this for instance. It's shiny, it's got some depth to it, it's
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attractive, it's nice to run your finger over. Well, this is the same sort of wood
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and it's been stained, but stained only. And well, there's nothing really to write
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home about that, is there? It doesn't feel nice either. It's just got a color to it
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But even the color is not representative of what you're going to
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see once this is under some sort of sealing coat. So for our purposes here
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all stains, all traditional stains, will be applied underneath some kind of
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sealing coat. And that could be urethane, maybe some wipe-on poly, something a
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little easier to apply. Less protection, but easier to apply. And that really
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brings out the color. So one thing to keep in mind is when you're deciding on
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what stain to use and you want to maybe do some some test patches or something
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somewhere, don't assess the results until you get some some sort of a sealing coat
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on it. Now another thing about this, and I hope you can see it, staining brings out
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imperfections in the wood. Imperfections that you can't normally see. And you
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can see what I'm talking about here. If you look closely, you'll see that there's
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kind of some swirl marks. You see that? It's not too attractive. And you know the
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swirl marks wouldn't go away after I apply urethane either. This is caused by
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the use of a random orbit sander with a fair amount of hand pressure. This did
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not look bad before I put the stain on. But stain brings out imperfections. So
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that's something you need to keep in mind. If you're going to be staining
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something, the sanding job really needs to be quite well done. And you need to
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examine it closely to make sure that you don't have any scratches or swirl marks
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There's another another thing you need to watch for, and that's any area where
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the glue has touched the wood. Because even if you wipe the glue off, the
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surface is still sealed. Which means that when you go to put stain on, the stain is
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going to soak in all around that glue patch. But where the glue was, it won't
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soak in. And so you're going to have a very light area. You might not even
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notice it at first, but it's going to stand right out when you start your
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finishing. In cases like that, you're going to want to take the time to sand
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that spot or maybe use a little chisel or a scraper or something like that to
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get the residual glue out. And it's not just glue on the surface either. It's
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glue that affects the first few layers of wood cells. It's basically sealed
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them ahead of time so that the stain can't soak in. So one other thing, when
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you're making a decision about whether to stain wood or not, don't just consider
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the appearance. You also need to consider durability. Because, I mean for
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instance, this piece of wood here, urethane finish, no stain. If this was a
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piece of furniture or even a floor or something like that, and we scratched
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through this or we wore through the urethane, it wouldn't be the end of the
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world. Because the wood underneath is pretty much the same color. It's just a little bit of yellowing that has happened here from the urethane. But if
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you go through a dark stain and there's light wood underneath, it's really going
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to show up and it's going to look ratty. You can go over with more stain again to
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kind of hide that color difference. But you need to be aware of that. And this is
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why sometimes it makes sense to finish as minimally as possible, to just seal
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the wood and not to color it. Or if you're a woodworker, say, and you have
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some control over the kind of wood you're finishing, then you might want to
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choose a dark wood if you want a dark look. That way when you've sealed it with
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a clear sealer that imparts no color, the dark wood is going to provide the
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color for you. So even if you go through that urethane, no big deal because it's
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still darker wood underneath. So that's staining in a nutshell. There's a little
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bit more to talk about than this, but this will get us going
