# Staining some Cherry



## Kent Whitten (Mar 24, 2006)

If you are doing a toner coat, then it would be wise to under tint it and darken into the color you are looking for rather than taking the chance to overshoot it and miss. If it is not critical to have it exact, then sure, you can do it in one shot and clear coat it. 

I can't help you with the water based finishes though, I am strictly solvent based. Have you looked into trans tint dyes? That is what I used on this particular project if I remember you correctly. You can tint the shellac.


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## Leo G (May 12, 2005)

Those old looking pcs of cherry you are trying to match have aged and gotten the prized cherry patina.

If you copy this on cherry so it is close or exact the cherry will darken and in the end you won't have a match. So be careful on what you do, explain it to your client that it will take about 2 years for cherry to stop darkening.

Another thing to do is pre darken the cherry by letting it hang out in the bright sun for a few days. This will get you closer to the true color in the end.

And if you use a waterborne system and the original was a solvent borne system it will never look the same. It might be close, but you will notice differences.


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## CarpenterSFO (Dec 12, 2012)

Kent Whitten said:


> I can't help you with the water based finishes though, I am strictly solvent based. Have you looked into trans tint dyes? That is what I used on this particular project if I remember you correctly. You can tint the shellac.


Thanks. There's a dealer locally who carries the TransTint dyes. I'll work up a couple of samples - in the shellac seems like a possibility, if I read their literature correctly. 

This is probably more than you wanted to know, but about the solvents - we only occasionally do cabinetry work ourselves, maybe 5 jobs, maybe 10 pieces, per year, when what the customer wants and what we can do just happen to match up, i.e. it helps my business as a GC. It doesn't make sense to buy 5-gallon drums of conversion varnish, and the shop setup to shoot solvents or catalyzed finishes is too expensive for very small jobs. If it's a small piece (or multiple small pieces) and we're shooting water-based, we can just hang plastic in one corner of the shop and fire away. It's been working very well for us, but it has its limitations - for example, it pretty much keeps us out of the kitchen and bath. That's OK, I'm not a cabinetry guy.

All that being said, if you were recommending solvent based for a small shop, what would you recommend? This project is for living room shelving. We can set up a safe spray booth and I have a guy who's a wizard with HVLP. I don't mind spending some money trying something new.

Thanks,

Bob


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## CarpenterSFO (Dec 12, 2012)

Leo G said:


> Those old looking pcs of cherry you are trying to match have aged and gotten the prized cherry patina.
> 
> If you copy this on cherry so it is close or exact the cherry will darken and in the end you won't have a match. So be careful on what you do, explain it to your client that it will take about 2 years for cherry to stop darkening.
> 
> ...


Leo, thanks, I appreciate the help. The customer's pieces are a couple hundred years old, and they're way past the prized cherry patina - they're way into the dark brown/red range. I've shown the customer my samples of fully darkened cherry, and it's not enough.

I'm trying to avoid matching the antiques that closely - it would be a shame to take beautiful new cherry shelving and hide it under a super-dark stain. But I do need to darken it some. And I'm not going to try to match the finish surface at all.

Any more advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Bob


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## CarpenterSFO (Dec 12, 2012)

I'm trying to find some workable spot between production cabinetry shop and DIY artisan. It needs to be technically feasible for me, but it also needs to be economically sensible. If I ask down at the local wood-working store, they're going to suggest French polishing or some such thing.


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## Kent Whitten (Mar 24, 2006)

There are water based lacquers out there that is getting close to the resistance of solvent based. Especially since you are in CA, you might as well just stay with water based. For me, I can get 2 primer coats and 2 finish coats done in one day if I'm hauling ass. 

Look into Target coatings. See if there's anything close by you. Muralo is another good one I have heard of. Many here also like some BM products. I know ML Campbell has their line of water based and I have tried the lacquer. It puts a real nice finish on things, but you really have to know what you are doing or you get runs. 

The euro water based products seem to have better rep's than what we can get. ICA coatings is what the local guy swears by.


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## CarpenterSFO (Dec 12, 2012)

Not that anyone asked, but we gave the owner a bunch of samples, and he chose one that was dark brown, Transtint in Target Coatings SuperClear 9000 waterborne poly. It looks good, in a generic dark-wood sort of way - it's impossible for me to tell it's cherry underneath. The customer wants it dark.


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## Leo G (May 12, 2005)

Did you tell him that it would "look like cherry" after it darkened over then next 2 years?

Now that you have stained it dark it will still darker and in a year it will be much darker. Not that anyone would be able to see it was cherry because of the dark stain anyway.

Staining cherry dark is a sin, and I too, have committed this sin for others.


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## CarpenterSFO (Dec 12, 2012)

Random picture from the web of a piece of mahogany. This is what the owner thinks cherry should look like.


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## CarpenterSFO (Dec 12, 2012)

Just to finish up my part of this thread: it ended up being MacLac conversion varnish. The plywood parts took stain very evenly (Transtint in alchohol); the solid wood parts needed a shellac seal coat first.

Pix of one of the units. The pictures are way overexposed in order to show any wood detail. Viewed normally, it's too dark to see any grain or cherry color - as the customer wanted.


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