Does baltic birch stain well?

[Herb Linderman]

I am in the process of making a chest out of baltic birch and have quite a bit of it done. It is trimmed out with red oak. I used baltic birch because of its strength and the fact that it has a reputation for being free of voids.

I am now wondering if I have made a mistake by not using an oak cabinet grade plywood. I tried a few test pieces of scrap with some of the stains that I have on hand and it did not seem to look very good stained.

Does anyone have any advice or suggestions they have experience with.

[Mark Wooden]

Most of the birches tend to not stain well, they get blotchy.You'll need to seal it with shellac before you stain to get an even coloring. I've had the best luck by using wiping stains and building up to the depth of color I'm looking for. Glazing can help to improve the appearance of birch pieces also IMHO

[glenn bradley]

I agree. IMHO utility plywoods "paint" better than they stain. In this case I don't literally mean "paint" but, the coloring process has to take care of the materials normal behavior (possible blotchy outcome) and cover up any issues with the glue patterns telegraphing through. Baltic Birch and other plys that have a thicker show veneer do better than those sheetgoods we're all familiar with that have paper-thin outer layers. I have had success using a sealer (clear, dewaxed shellac in about a 1lb cut) followed by a dye. Depending on the outcome you want you could then seal with shellac and apply some glazing or other colorant before your top coat.

[John TenEyck]

I've colored a fair amount of birch plywood to match something else. The overall approach varies depending upon what the piece I'm matching to looks like, but it always involves beginning by spraying a coat of SealCoat shellac. Next I spray a dye toner of SealCoat shellac plus Transtint dye to match the underlying tone. Sometimes that's all that's needed and I can move on to the finish coats. More often, however, I have to seal the dye with a spray coat of shellac, and then applying a gel stain, sometimes even two coats of that. When that has cured I shoot another coat of dewaxed shellac and then the finish coats. In one case, I had to tint the first layer of finish coat, too, to adjust the final color so it would match.

This was a piece I did with just shellac/dye toners:

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and this one needed the full Monty:

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Without spray equipment it's not easy. The best approach I've found is to start by wiping on a coat or two of SealCoat shellac and then moving straight to gel stains. Sometimes you have to apply a lighter gel stain first to get the background color and follow that with a darker one to get the "front layer" color.

As always, make lots of samples first until you are happy with and can reproduce the results. Intentionally look for areas that might blotch to practice on. They are usually pretty easy to see with birch.

John

[Brian Holcombe]

I use Baltic Birch as a substrate for veneering because I prefer veneer core with many thin veneers over thicker veneers.

[Peter Quinn]

The Baltic birch I get has rotary sawn face veneers that while very strong are not particularly attractive, and generally they require a lot of sanding compared to appearance grade cabinet grade ply woods. Maple and birch can both tend to be blotchy, may require a stain conditioner or use of dye stains with finer pigments. It's dicey business combining Baltic birch with such dissimilar species as oak, I'd probably veneer it or avoid it.

[Justin Ludwig]

Like finishing maple, sand to 180 and use a spray no-wipe stain. If that's not an option, you'll have to use a conditioner before applying traditional wipe off stain.

[Phil Thien]

John those pieces look fantastic (as always).

Do you actually build all the pieces you feature or are you "just" finishing them?

Care to share how long it takes to finish pieces like those?

[John TenEyck]

Thanks for the kind words Phil. Yes, I designed and built those pieces, too. They were mostly sprayed, just the gel stain on the lower piece was applied by hand, so that cuts down on the time it takes, but I think both of them had at least 15 - 18 work hours over three days in them. Oh yeah, I wiped the drawers boxes with shellac, too. I often find finishing accounts for 25 - 30% of the hours for a project; learned the hard way. I set up a temporary spray booth in my shop and that brings any dust generating activity to a screeching halt while I'm finishing. Sometimes it's more boredom than work while I wait for something like oil based gel stain to dry. My approach would be a killer for a commercial shop, but it's OK most of the time at the pace I work. I can't use volatile solvents since I'm working in a basement shop, so time is the penalty I sometimes have to pay.

[Charles Li]

General finishes gel stain works great with out a conditioner. You'd probably get even better results with shellac first. I was satisfied with one coat but two coats is ideal. I've had poor results with minwax gel. It seemed no different than a regular stain and was uneven.

[Herb Linderman]

Thanks for the great tips. Looks like I am in for trial and error and work to get a decent looking finish. Maybe I should just drop it off at John's so he could perform his magic. I did try some minwax that I had on hand at it did not look good. Of course I had not prepped it with shellac either. I will try the shellac and some general gel stain. At least the scraps that I have are all pretty even colored so any results should be consistent in the project. There is a lot more to this finishing than I had imagined. Thanks to all for their help.

[Wade Lippman]

Yeah, you should have used oak veneer plywood. That's what it is for.

It will take a lot of work, but you can get the plywood to be the same color as the oak, but it will look almost painted