I have a entertainment center/stand that I'm just about ready to finish but I am fairly novice in wood finishing as I've only every used things out of a can ie Minwax and various polys.
It is made from ash as I have kids and wanted a hard to dent wood and around here Ash is cheaper than oak. The flip side is my wife likes her furniture dark so not staining is not an option. My plan is use dye to keep the end grain from becoming overly dark and at the same time have some good control over how dark the wood gets it gets by controlling the dye concentration. My understanding is that ash and dye may have some issues due to the pores and it may require a pigment. Finally given this is family room furniture it will likely have sodas/cups etc on it so I need a final finished that is robust. I have used the Varathane water based poly before and I like it so that is what I was planning on doing. There are a lot more steps in here than my usual so I wanted to run this by more knowledgeable folks to make sure this is correct.
1) Wet wood with water to raise the grain (I'm using a water based dye)
2) Sand wood after it is has dried.
3) Apply dye stain liberally from bottom up
4) Coat with a dewaxed shellac to seal the dye in
5) Apply pigment if necessary to fill pores (suggestions on product to use?)
6) Apply final finish (shellac, poly...)
Thanks.