Why Do We Stain Wood?

Series Summary

Creating a finish on wood furniture that has a beautiful depth of color and polished shine is not easy. It takes many steps and a lot of elbow grease. The product however is worth the work. Wood such as mahogany requires filler to flatten out the surface so that it can be stained, lacquered, and polished flat. Applying many layers gives depth to the finish and polishing with steel wool creates a hand rubbed effect that few are willing to achieve.

Refinishing your wood furniture can restore the beauty of an original finish or produce a finish that is even more spectacular than the first. But you will face many choices when choosing a stain. Should you pick an oil-based or a water-based stain? How many coats of shellac do you need to get the smooth finish you are looking for? Professional carpenter Steve Anthony will demonstrate how to choose the right stain as well as answer all of your other questions about staining wood in the excellent woodworking series. Learn how to give a professional look and feel to your latest wood project.

Video Transcript

"Hi there, my name's Steve Anthony. In this series we're going to be looking at how to stain wood. We'll take a look at various species of wood and how they individually respond to stain and we'll talk about some clear coat options as well. You might, you might wonder, why do we stain wood? Some people say, well the natural wood is, is the most beautiful thing in the world. And I wouldn't disagree, but, there are very good reasons for staining wood. Sometimes it's, it's necessary to, to give it a certain color that you can't achieve through just a clear coat, the natural wood itself is not the color that you would like it to be. Maybe you'd like to mimic another species of wood. I'll show you for example how you can make Maple look like Cherry which is an inexpensive alternative. But, the biggest reason is to bring out the grain characteristics of the wood. The beauty of the figuring of the wood itself. And we'll show in this series again how different stains bring out the grain patterns in different ways. And we'll go over a bunch of different options for you."