Thread: Applying Cabot's water-based stain and varnish on pine

feast and watson (also sold at bunnings) have a quick drying sanding seal that works well

Sorry for the delayed response been a bit under the hammer recently.

Cabots water based stain is pretty good. I have used it to match some antique walnut furniture which was fire damaged a few years ago and was reasonably impressed with it.

Pine takes a water stain pretty well and as a rule doesn't go blotchy if it's been properly sanded. That's usually a problem with spirit stains/dyes which are mostly designed for hardwoods and often don't play well with pine and other softer woods..

Wet the surface down with warm damp cloth to raise the grain after sanding or wipe over with metho soaked rag (either will do the job) leave to dry well (metho will be way quicker) and when dry wipe off any raised grain with a fine abrasive. Don't sand it just a wipe over should get rid of any nibs raised by the water.

If you sand it you will tear the grain again and have to redo the above,

The surface should be silky smooth to the touch if done right. You can then apply the stain with either a brush or rag/cloth. If brushed on, even out the colour with a clean cloth.

Whatever you do don't put down a sealer prior to water staining shouldn't be needed and ideally don't use a water based finish as the stain may bleed out into the finish and look awful.

Hope this is of some help to you.

Cheers - Neil

Thanks for the follow-up, Neil, but it's all done. I used the method described in the Edit of my first post. It was quite successful. Next time I'll take your advice on prep. that sounds like the silky finish I was after.

Thanks havabeer69. As noted in the post, I wanted to use what I had available so used the procedure in the Edit of post #1, but good to now for future reference.