# Stain & Finish Pine?



## Whitebassfisher (May 4, 2007)

I recently built a wood fishing rod rack for a friend, just a utility job with only paint quality.

I decided to make myself one, and took considerable time on it. It seems too nice to paint. But how well can pine be stained and finished? Due to cutting holes for the fishing rods with a hole saw, the grain is seen from every angle. I doubt it would accept stain equally, and feel it would turn out blotchy no matter how smooth it is sanded. Any suggestions as to staining? Maybe try a light shade/color? What type should I use so that if it does look strange due to grain that I can paint over it?


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## bill (May 21, 2004)

polyurethane would be my first choice

if you must stain, then after a good sanding and follow up with wiping down good with mineral spirits and apply a sealer


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## snapperlicious (Aug 11, 2009)

It's tricky sometimes because of the sap. You may have to do some areas several times.


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## Wado (May 15, 2011)

I have used this stuff on maple. It helped somewhat. Let me rephrase, it looked a lot better than untreated maple after staining. I tried staining some maple untreated and it looked bad so I gave this stuff a shot on four pieces I made for a bedroom. I will put the pictures up and you be the judge. The face frames were solid maple and the sides and drawer fronts were birch. The molding around the drawers on two pieces were maple. The stain these people picked out wasn't one of my favorites but we were trying to match existing furniture. Momma was happy so I guess everything was good. I have a lot of glare in the photo's, they look way better in person.


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## Whitebassfisher (May 4, 2007)

I decided to just go with clear, and it is going well.


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## Pasadena1944 (Mar 20, 2010)

Whitebassfisher said:


> I decided to just go with clear, and it is going well.


post a picture for us....thanks...


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## goatchze (Aug 1, 2006)

Sorry, I'm a little late to the party, but in case this comes up in a search later....

With pine, I've had a lot of luck using Shellac as the pretreatment. Below is a photo of a table I made some years ago. It's pine, made from 2x4 studs. We were going for an antique/aged country kitchen table look, if that makes sense. It was a leap of faith to sand it to a smooth, table top finish, then start whooping on it with chains, screw drivers, scraper blades, etc. But it came out pretty close to what we wanted in the end.

You'll have to look past the sushi and tapas for the finish, but it's a:

1. coat or two of shellac, cut with alcohol
2. coat of dark stain to fill in the low points, dents, between boards, etc. to try and give it a used/aged look
2b. repeated this until I was happy with the color
3. coat of light gold/red stain to give the wood some depth
3b. repeated this until I was happy with the color
4. several coats of danish oil as the finish

For the end grains, I put on a less cut coat of the shellac. This made the absorption of stain very, very slow. This was actually great as I could put multiple coats of stain on and give it long soak times. This allowed me to get the exact color I wanted on the end grain (a color that was slightly, but not significantly, darker than the top). Sorry, I've got no end grain photos.

So _it is_ possible to get pine to take a nice stain, to actually make the knots, grain, etc. pop a bit. But it does take multiple light coats, care, and patience.


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## kneekap (Nov 13, 2012)

It is the end grain that "gets you"...

The only way I could ever get around this problem was to use a sealer as a first coat. That way the end grain was sealed enough so that the stain appears even on all surfaces. Then I use a spray gun for the stain.


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