A while back I was gifted some old classroom side tables the owner no longer needed. They came painted; I don’t know what kind of paint it was, but it was entirely resistant to citristrip. After finally working that out I painstakingly sanded the paint out from every nook and crevice with a dremel until I was confident it was clean. I dried it out, sanded it, and prepared to finally finish up.
Today I stained. Coat of wood conditioner, wait around half an hour, coat of stain. Maybe 3 more hours (instructions call for minimum 2) and a second coat. I was dismayed to find that while the top veneer stained beautifully, the legs came out splotchy. It looks like there was an invisible coat of primer on there or something that prevented the stain from taking. I am confident this is not the result of poor stain application; it was apparent that it wasn’t taking while I was brushing it. The band around the top also came out significantly darker than the top.
The band I know I probably can’t do anything about. It’s annoying but I can live with it. The legs are a different story. Is there anything I can do to make them take the stain more evenly?
P.S. I also had an entirely different table made of some kind of hardwood that I did. It took very evenly but didn’t color much even with two coats. I know with hardwoods that’s somewhat inevitable. Any tricks to make it take more, or do I just need to be happy with it?
Could be the wood itself, rather than any issue with prep. Some woods have areas of varying density that absorb stain unevenly. Maple’s the most notorious, but poplar and softwoods can also have issues, and those would have been common choices for use in a paint-grade piece of furniture. The conditioner should have helped, but maybe it just wasn’t sufficient on its own.
Gel stain will supposedly give better results than liquid on blotch-prone woods (I’ve never tried it). I usually get around it by using diluted acrylic paint instead of stain—while not ideal, it’s translucent enough to leave the grain visible and you can build up additional layers on parts of the surface if you need to.