BIG Problem Need Some Advice

[Paul Zonneveld]

Hope you all can help me out of this one?!? I had my brother in law do some finishing for me while I was out of town and I need to know how to fix it now. I have a large entertainment center that is being finished in a spanish oak finish (pretty much black). I am using Old Masters Gel stains but when he applied the finish he did an entire large area without working the stain each time so by the time he went back all of the stain had set up. I now have a bunch of swirl marks and the like from the application. Any way to salvage this or is back to giving it a sand and starting again? Any recommendations would be helpful. To get the dark color I will need to apply the stain several times so hopefully all I really need is a brief sand. Thanks in advance.

[Steve Schoene]

Well, you can probably sand out the excess gel stain without too much difficulty. Gel stain doesn't penetrate deeply.

Gel wouldn't be my choice for getting a really dark color without losing the wood grain, but I think it is too late now, without removing substantially all of the gel stain, to use a dye as the first coloration. Do a sample and see if to get as dark as you want you also get a surface that looks virtually painted instead of looking like dark wood.