My wife and I just built a Whitewood table & bench and we are going to distress it and stain it. We're wanting it to go pretty dark, but have more of a satin versus glossy finish to it.

In reading through some things, there are about as many opinions out there as there are people.

My questions:

Should we pre-treat the wood prior to staining?
Any preferred brand of stain that works best with Whitewood?
Dry or wet sand between coats?
Best way to seal at the end to protect the table?

Anything else I'm missing, please feel free to add. Thanks!

I assume by whitewood you are saying spruce?

If spruce is like pines (which I suspect it will be) it has a tendency to be splotchy in absorbing stains, a pre-stain would help the stain absorb and show evenly.

Standard stains should work fine. Spruce will behave opposite of standard oak in how it takes stains. Oak tends to absorb stain well in its annual rings, but is denser in its late/summer growth. Spruce seems to have denser annual rings and will absorb stain better in its late growth.

Spruce:


Oak:


If you want a rustic or distressed look, wet sanding would be overkill. I would just hit it with a 320 lightly between coats to knock down any bumps/dust that got in the previous coat.

Sealing end grain on a softer wood could be tricky. You may just need to put more coats of finish on the end, or if you are looking to fill in the pores and smooth it out, just wet sand it a little with some varnish as the lubricant (assuming you are using the varnish as your topcoat also). This will make a slight slurry with sawdust and varnish that will fill in the openness of the pores and help seal the end grain.

If its pine/spruce, you wont have much luck getting even stain penetration.

Wood conditioner can certainly help - but I think id recommend a gel stain more than anything to get a relatively even coat in a dark color.

only problem here is that your pines and spruces are soft woods, and will dent / scratch easily. Gel stains dont really penetrate, so these features tend to show more easily than with traditional stains.

Using a decent flat poly coat on top can help (but not completely avoid) scratches.

Also, i say this as a guy who has worked extensively with cheap wood while learning the hobby...

my least favorite part of wood working is finishing - ESPECIALLY when it comes to cheap wood.

I'll make a piece, and be happy with the construction / how it looks in its raw form, and throw a finish on it and just get depressed...

(the wife tells me its things that only i notice... but i dont buy it.)

Thanks for the info guys!

Baumen, since we're distressing it a little bit, the dents and scratches are a welcome addition to the piece, but you're right, I don't want it to look like crap when I go to finishing it with stain.

What would be the best way to get an even dispersement of the stain even though it's soft?

Just the gel stain? Pre-treat first with mineral spirits?

I'm definitely (and obviously) a rookie when it comes to this, but I've had a lot of fun, so I'd like to just get more familiar with it.

distress first - hit it with a chain, a hammer, bend up some nails and use them to get some more curved features. I used a old bent up reciprocating saw blade (not in the saw) and tapped the surface randomly, and that gave a nice short distressed pattern. One big thing about that sort of distressing is to mix up your distressing tools. It helps to make it look more legitimately distressed - and not like something you did youself...

As for pre-stain, minwax sells one that's pretty straight forward. Cant say i've ever used it with a gel stain - but it certainly wouldnt hurt anything.

I think of gel stains basically as wood tinted paint. You can still see the grain through it, but it doesnt really soak into the wood.

this is a decent summary of gel stains.

One concern with a gel stain and a distressed top may be that you wont be able to remove all of the gel from little grooves / crevices. (which, come to think about it, might give the piece a bit of a faux-petina that could help the distressed style...)

if that happens to you, id let the piece dry for at least 2X the stains recommended cure before applying a topcoat, just to make sure that those saturated points dont smear.

[This message has been edited by baumenhammer (edited 5/30/2013 3:01p).]