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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 gonna show you
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how to do later on, is entirely different from what people mean
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when they say, well, I'm gonna stain my deck, or I'm gonna stain the outside of my wooden house
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And that usually does impart color too, but that's kind of another process
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It's not the same as this process. It's a much coarser process. So don't be confused by that
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Now, I am not going to show you how to apply stain in this video
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We're gonna 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 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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Now, 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. But even the color is not representative
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of what you're gonna see once this is under some sort of sealing coat
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So for our purposes here, 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 wanna maybe do some test patches or something somewhere, don't assess the results until you get
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some sort of a sealing coat on it. Now, another thing about this
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and I hope you can see it, staining brings out imperfections in the wood
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imperfections that you can't normally see. And you can see what I'm talking about here
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If you look closely, you'll see that there's kind of some swirl marks
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You see that? It's not too attractive. And the swirl marks wouldn't go away
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after I apply urethane either. This is caused by the use of a random orbit sander
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with a fair amount of hand pressure. This did not look bad before I put the stain on
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But stain brings out imperfections. So that's something you need to keep in mind
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If you're gonna be staining something, the sanding job really needs to be quite well done
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And you need to examine it closely to make sure that you don't have any scratches
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or swirl marks. 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 gonna 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 gonna have a very light area
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You might not even notice it at first, but it's gonna stand right out
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when you start your finishing. In cases like that, you're gonna wanna take the time to sand that spot
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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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So 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. Because, I mean, for instance
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this piece of wood here, urethane finish, no stain. If this was a piece of furniture
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or even a floor or something like that, and we scratched through this
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or we wore through the urethane, it wouldn't be the end of the world because the wood underneath is pretty much the same color
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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
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it's really gonna show up and it's gonna look ratty. You can go over it with more stain again
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to kind of hide that color difference, but you need to be aware of that
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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 wanna choose a dark wood if you want a dark look. That way, when you've sealed it
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with a clear sealer that imparts no color, the dark wood is gonna provide the color for you
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So even if you go through that urethane, no big deal because it's still darker wood underneath
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So 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
