Staining Plywood

larry merlau

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Location
Delton, Michigan
sometimes surprises you no matter how much you have done it.. i had a couple of end tables to make and they had a plywood shelf above the drawer..
end tables 004.jpg end tables 005.jpg end tables 006.jpg

so after having trouble with today's thin veneered plywood in the past i was trying to be careful in my sanding regime, took and sanded it with a hard padded RO sander at 150 grit and then hand sanded with wooden block with 180 grit.. good to go and ready to stain,, well i almost glued these in place before the staining, and as you can see in the pics below, i am glad i didnt!! the first pic is the underside and the bad side of the plywood. the next 2 are the good side but wasnt.
IMG_8101.jpgIMG_8102.jpgIMG_8103.jpg

so now i needed to fix this, either remake or pull some other trick out of the hat:) i left the shop that evening in a not happy mood.. couldnt sleep and almost got up in the middle of the night to remake them.. but decided against it. came out the next AM and took the worst one and tried a idea out.. and to my great pleasure gave me this return.

IMG_8105.jpg IMG_8106.jpg

and allowed me to achieve this: X 2

IMG_8121.jpg Now here is the fix, i took and put on a new 120 grit disc and sanded the plywood tops till all was natural color wood except for the lowest grain, then sanded it with block sander with 150 grit.. stopped and re-stained. Liked what i saw and did the other shelf. tried this on the worst one first!!
 
Looks good from here! Sometimes, all it takes is a few deep breaths and a shot of scotch to figger out a solution!

It's good to see you here again! :thumb:
 
So, looking at the 'bad' pics, it looks like what I could see was some 'waves' going across the grain that caused the stain to take unevenly?

So the fix was to just sand the waves out?

So basically, it was being cautious to not sand through the good face that caused you to not necessarily remove enough material to allow the stain to work evenly?

It's this kind of thing that I think makes all the difference in the world. Someone that has the experience and eye to not only notice and be able to fix it.

Great job Larry!

Those tables sure do look nice!
 
Nice looking tables Larry. So if I'm following you, the finer grits were closing off the grain too much and not absorbing?

i think what happened Darren is the sanding i had done burnished the hard spots where the glue was spread out in fat lines underneath the top veneer, which lead to uneven absorption

So, looking at the 'bad' pics, it looks like what I could see was some 'waves' going across the grain that caused the stain to take unevenly?

So the fix was to just sand the waves out?

So basically, it was being cautious to not sand through the good face that caused you to not necessarily remove enough material to allow the stain to work evenly?

yes and no brent as i mentioned in the reply to darren the burnishing caused the problem and sanding to lesser grit allowed the stain to work properly, just by staining a board to different grits will alter shades of most stains.
 
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When things start to go south, a break form the action stirs up the old brain cells. Well done Larry and a beautiful couple of tables.
 
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