Staining soft maple white

[Bubapug]

Need suggestions how to stain soft maple white, and still have the grain show. Plan on clear coating with lacquer.

Thanks
Mike

[jteneyck]

Need suggestions how to stain soft maple white, and still have the grain show. Plan on clear coating with lacquer.

Thanks
Mike

My friend and fellow member here has been building new kitchen cabinets with QS maple veneered doors and drawer fronts.  He's using MinWax WB white stain to get a white color that still lets the grain show through.  



The process is something like this.  Sand to 220 or 320, raise the grain, sand gently to remove fuss.  Apply a coat of white stain and wipe off. Sand lightly to remove fuss, then apply another coat.  The more coats the whiter it will get, but the less grain that will show.  When satisfied with the color spray with a coat of GF's Enduro Clear Poly, scuff sand to remove the fuss, then spray one or two more coats.  

I used the same process on an ash veneered vanity.






John

[Turner52]

Have not done it in a while,but we used to use a white stain we bought from Sherwin Williams. Did all of the woodwork and doors with this for entire homes. Stop in there or any real paint store and you should be able to get what you want. Big box stores can be real hit and miss depending on what they stock and the knowledge of the employees, Could be the same at a paint store, but I think your chance of an informred clerk would be higher. Do test samples and either wipe off stain sooner or thin down untill you get what you want. A lot of what we were doing then was on oak. Style at the time was to show the open grain effect of the oak when stained white, but the color variation in oak did show up too. I am sure that you will be able to do wht you want with a little experamentation. At that time we were using an oil based stain. I would recommend that. I am not very familiar with any of the water based stain available now. With oil stain you can thin as much as you want in order to get the desired effect. Not sure about latex. If you have any white oil paint handy you could also thin that down to the desired coloring.

[jteneyck]

Oil based has advantages but also a couple of disadvantages, which may or may not be important.  OB won't raise the grain, which is a big plus on open grain woods like oak, but much less on close grained ones on maple.  And OB will give you a longer working time which makes it easier to get an even color when wiping it off compared to WB.  However, you can overcome the shorter working time of WB stains by adding Extender to it, which I forgot to mention in the post above.  My friend had problems getting uniform color until he added about 5 - 6% of Benjamin Moore's Extender; after that, no problem.  


The disadvantage with white or any light colored OB stain is that 1) WB topcoats won't adhere to them as easily, although it can still be done if you wait long enough for the stain to dry, and 2) they will yellow over time.  I see the later one as a real problem.  You put on white and 10 years later it's no longer white, but some yellowed version of what you had.  WB stains don't have that problem; they go on white and stay white.  Plus, if you use a WB topcoat that has a good UV package in it, everything will stay white for a long, long time.  

It all depends upon what you are after and your longer term expectations.    

John