Failure is Always an Option

Last night after I put my second coat of stain on the slab and removed the excess, I got an uneasy feeling deep in the pit of my stomach. It looked like I had some blotching. Blotching occurs when you don’t sand and seal well enough and stain penetrates more in some areas than others. This isn’t to be confused with the really cool ‘tiger stripe’ pattern that is part of the wood itself and which I’m looking to highlight. This is poor surface preparation, plain and simple.

I left it to sit overnight and went upstairs to relax a bit before bed, telling myself I was probably just tired.

This evening, after some after-work errands, and daughters headed off to a cappella and then dance classes, I made my way down to the workshop.

And there it was. Blotching.

I decided to see if I could do some spot repairs, and spent at least half an hour with sandpaper trying to clean up a small area to see if I might make it work and then patch/blend with shellac and stain. I imagine if I were a professional finisher, I’d know all the tricks. But I’m not, so I don’t. No luck.

So there was nothing for it. Time to try again.

Stripping the Finish and Starting Over

It’s a good thing I had lots of discs for my random orbit sander. I started at 120 grit, and worked my way up to P220 with the sander. I cleaned up mostly with denatured alcohol to avoid raising the grain, except I used water between 150 and 220P, where I wanted to raise the grain. After that it was time for elbow grease, since I only have sheets of 320 grit.

You can use up a fair number of sections of 320 grit when sanding a slab this large. Good thing I have quite a bit on hand.

Once I had sanded to 320, I debated what to do. I decided to apply a coat of garnet shellac like I always have, and then I would evaluate. I had an idea I might use a second coat of shellac, this time in the orange shade.

So I applied my garnet coat and was back to a nice tone on the slab with the ‘tiger stripe’ running the length of it.

After that dried, I decided to try a coat of orange. A coat of shellac is so thin, I could easily sand it off if things turned out poorly. They didn’t turn out poorly. The orange shellac added some tones very similar to what I get with my second stain, and I like what I’m seeing.

The only question left for me, is whether to try to even out the tones of the sap wood on the front edge of the slab. I’m going to sleep on that one and make up my mind tomorrow.

It was a long evening, and very disappointing at the start, but I think things are back on track.