Penetrating Stain and wiping stain

[Jack01]

Penetrating Stain and wiping stain
This topic probably discussed before.

Doing some research I understand following

• Penetrating stain will be absorb in wood.It does create blotching effect in the lighter wood such as Maple.
  
• Wiping stain - This stain is only pigments, sits on top of the wood. similar to Gel Stain.
  

I am finishing  hard maple. to get even color I will dye this on water based dye 1st , then plan to use oil based stain to pop up the grains. 
I have not decided how I will do the final finish, probably oil or poly.

Before I apply dye , I will sand the Maple to 400 grit 

Any feedback will be appreciated.

PS:  so far I  found that " Old Masters"  is company make wiping stains.

[jteneyck]

Most stains are wiping stains.  The only one's I can think of that aren't are deck stains and spray/no wipe stains.  Most stains available to consumers have some sort of binder in them, too, sometimes just linseed oil, but it's still a binder.  I've used a product from SW's called BAC Wiping Stain that has almost no binder in it, but that's the only one I can remember.  But I'm sure there are many more; I just haven't used them.  

Most dyes and stains I've used will blotch on blotch prone wood if applied by hand.  Gel stains are less prone to do it but I've still had it happen many times.  The only way I've found to avoid blotching is 1) to spray dye, and no more than the wood can absorb so it can't migrate to the thirsty areas and blotch or 2) to use spray on toners, or 3) to seal the wood and then use gel stain.    

Maple is one of those woods prone to blotching.  I think you should practice your approach on scrap to see if it's going to work.  

John

[Scoony]

Maple can be tricky to stain. Sanding it to 400 grit may make it harder to stain. I would probably stop at 180 or 220. I would make up a few sample boards and try a few stains and even water based dyes. With water based dyes, the surface will look like crap after the dye dries due to the flatness of it, but the first coat of finish will bring back the beauty of the wood. Glen Huey has some good videos on using dyes, but you will have to do some google-foo to find them.

Some professional shops will use a toner in the finish to get the desired color, but that requires some spraying skill. I tried it once on a maple tool chest and got ok results, but not perfect.