Originally Posted by
Knight Guitars
I amazes me some of the crap people will put on a poor piece of wood in name of finishing.
Beech is an absolute doddle to stain you just need to know what your doing and do it right. Companys havent spent millions developing decent woodstain for people to still be using rubbish like alknet, it was a fantastic woodstain 100years ago now its a throwback.
You can buy amazing quality woodstain that is lightfast (holds its color over time in sunlight) easy to apply and relatively cheap to purchase. You can buy brilliant wood stains from companys like Liebron, Morrells, even Colron is ok at a fix.
Now if you use spirit based stain (based on meths) all you need to do is wipe the Beech stock over with a wet coat of meths this will level the absortion rate on the timber out as the bits that absorb more meths will dilute the stain more and the bits that absorb the meths less will dilute the stain less giving an even appearance.
Next you saturation coat the wood that mean fast wet coats (we normally spray it if we can) meaning you must start with a much lighter colored stain then the final color your trying to achieve if not your stain will make the wood darker than you want it. If you cant spray the stain wipe it on wet with kitchen roll keeping a wet edge that means putting lots on and keep putting it on till the wood will accept no more it helps to have the stock in a cradle so you dont put finger prints all over it.
Now as the stain drys some stain will leech back out of the woods pores, just wipe this off with a clean sheet of kitchen paper eventually you will have a evenly color matt piece of Beech. Allow this to dry for a day or so then your ready to oil or laquer or whatever.
No need for teabags/bootpolish/eye of newt.....
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