Tea staining

[Tierney]

Inspired by the FWW article, I decided to try it on some softwood to repair a piece of flooring (50-60 years old - pitch pine perhaps), anyway after 8-10 coats I want to varnish it. My question is if the varnish is water based (I've got some Dulux Diamond Glaze), do I need to seal the wood before varnishing as the stain is also water based? I've got some liberon spirit sanding sealer that says on the label it is for use under wax, so would like to use that if poss.

Cheers,

DT

 

[houtslager]

never use water based finish on top of WB stains - they will leach out into the finish, same goes for oil / naptha based stains and oil / white spirit finishes.
If you are intent on using a WB on WB / OB on OB then I advise you to use SHELLAC as a barrier finish, give this a light knocj back with a fine sandpaper/flour paper and then continue with your prefered finish.

HTH,

HS

 

[MIGNAL]

The tip is to try it on an off cut first. That's usually the acid test. The other thing you may like to try is to wet the wood slightly before applying the tea stain. I seem to recall that it gives a more even, less patchy colour.

 

[Tierney]

Thanks for the tips, the delay in the update is because I've been distracted trying to buy something on e-bay which seems to have taken over my life - I got what I wanted but that's another story.

Anyway, back to the tea staining...

I sanded down to 220 grit, then wet it to raise the grain and lightly sanded

I made up the recipe as suggested in FWW magazine (I think it was about 8 teabags to half a pint of hot water), here is the wood after about 10 coats, it was damp when I applied the first coat:

as suggested by HTH I used a liberon white polish to seal the stain; which, came up like this:

A light sand and then 3 or 4 coats of diamond glaze came up like this (sorry different lighting):

conclusion - I thought it gave a nice even warm finish to the wood, it is a piece of wood to go next to some old floor boards; when I put it in place, I realised that the rest of the floor good probably do with being sanded back and re-varnished so haven't shown you that comparison!

Thanks for looking