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