While refinishing furniture tonight, I managed to blow my own mind.
I'm going to make a short story long.
I have a red oak dining room set. It's 32 years old. The table top consists of 2 end semi-circle pieces, and 1 middle leaf (I used to have 2 leaves, but I lost one in a flood). The finish was starting to look like shit, and the original factory stain was that golden oak color that used to be popular, fell out of favor for a few years, and now seems to be making a comeback. What happens to that particular shade over time is that it starts to what I call "orange out". It turns a hideous shade of orange, especially with oil based stains and clear coat which initially create a pleasant amber tone, but turns orange over time, especially certain shades of stain.
In addition, the tabletop had a lot of dings, water marks that could not be removed, and a bunch of imperfections that have developed over the years. The set is extremely well built. It has very good bones, but the finish was nasty. The finish on all of the chairs had worn completely away at the usual grab spots. There was grime that has worked it's way through the clear coat and could not be cleaned. the center pedestal and chair legs and leg braces are moderately to highly detailed, with grooves and curves.
So last June, I decided to refinish it. I started with the first table top semi-circle. Stripped and sanded it, and the raw wood after that looked stunningly beautiful, very nice grain patterns.
I decided to use a very dark gel stain. Gel stain is normally used to stain over stuff that already has finish on it, but you can also use it over raw sanded wood, you just get a little different look. I decided on the gel stain because I wanted a very very dark brown, but I still wanted to see the grain pattern. You can get a lot more dark pigment into a gel stain than you can with a penetrating stain like Minwax oil based.
Last year, after all the table top pieces were sanded and stripped, I gel stained it. It looked great for about 5 minutes, then all these hideous splotches started appearing. I can't even describe how nasty it looked. I had no idea what was going on. I've refinished a lot of furniture, but I've never seen this. I was heartbroken because just the table top stripping and sanding took me about 60 hours.
I did some research and discovered the cause. Silicone contamination. from dusting sprays. That shit is invisible until you try to refinish it. It worked it's way through several factory applied layers of clear coat, a coat of stain, and into the wood pores.
So here is the remedy. I had to re-sand the table top pieces again. Then you apply 3 coats of unwaxed shellac to seal up the contamination. Then you gel stain it as if you were gel staining over an existing finish. The process of gel staining over an existing finish is different than gel staining over raw sanded wood, so I had to teach myself how to do it. Then you have to dry brush the excess off and feather it by using two different brushes, while dabbing the dry brushes into a rag soaked with mineral spirits.
Staining with regular oil based stain is one of the simplest things you can do. You put it on with a rag, you wipe off the excess with another rag. If you want it darker, you put another coat on. Gel stain is different in the case I'm talking about it. You have to be a fast bastard. You have to get it on there quickly, and dry brush it off quickly. You seriously can't fuck around, because you have to put it on very thick, and you have to develop a light touch when removing the excess with the first dry brush, and then feather it with the 2nd dry brush. I found that putting music on helps your speed because you can kind of dance and develop a rhythm when doing all of this. It can be a real pain in the ass.
Now, here's the thing with the 3 coats of shellac. Shellac is alcohol based, it dries completely in about 15 minutes. It's very watery too. You can apply shellac with a rag, but if you are using it to seal something, you need to use a brush because it penetrates the wood pores better. When you do this, you have to move even faster with shellac than you do with a gel stain, because even if you move quickly and keep a wet edge while applying it, your going to have dried drips and lap marks, so you have them sand them out between coats. If you don't, and you end up applying the gel stain over a tried shellac drip, you're going to see it from a mile away.
Anyway, the pedestal, legs, and table top are done except for the clear coat, and they look beautiful.
Here's what blew my mind. Whenever I shellac or otherwise clear coat something with a brush, I do not keep dipping the brush in the original quart or gallon container. What I do is take a 1/8 cup measuring cup that has a long handle, dip it into the quart, and put an amount of it into a cottage cheese container. Then, I keep dipping the brush into the cottage cheese container. I do this because there is sometimes some sawdust or other forms of contamination on the piece, even if you spend a lot of time prepping and cleaning it first. You always miss spots when cleaning the piece. That means you end up contaminating the brush slightly with sawdust, If you then dip that brush back into the original container of say, polyurethane, you contaminate the whole quart or gallon, rather then just what you put in the cottage cheese container.
So tonight started with the first coat of shellac on the first chair. I took quite a few scoops out of the shellac quart and put it in the cottage cheese container. Then, I brushed the shellac onto the chair. It took me two hours because I had to make sure there were no drips, especially where one piece of the chair meets another, and also in the grooves, etc.
I've been doing this shit for a long time, and always, without fail, your going to put either too much of the product into the cottage cheese container, or too little. Tonight, I put the EXACT amount that I need to do the chair, and I'm talking down to the drop. Exactly. TO THE DROP. That cottage cheese container was clean as a whistle when I was done, and the chair was done to near perfection, with no heavy or light spots of shellac.
I understand that if you've never done something like this, it's hard to appreciate how high the odds are of that happening. It seriously has to be several tens of millions to one.
I had to tell someone about this. My wife would care less, and so would my non-internet friends, so I figured I would tell you. But you might not care, because I just realized what a long, boring ass story this is, and that I'm a talkative bastard who can't shut up about the oddest things, and takes forever to tell a dumb ass story.
Oh, one more thing. I remodeled my kitchen back when I was in my 50's. At the same time, I remodeled several other things in my house. All of that took me 9 months. I've been working on this set since last June, and it's still not done. a lot of that has to do with my garage had to be over 60 degrees and it was usually in the 50 degree range in the winter, but still...I'm never doing this shit again.
THE END
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I could do it too. 
This has been more difficult then doing my kitchen. The amount of time this has taken is embarrassing.
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Can’t stand that gel stain. Never fails to disappoint in my experience.
When you watch instructional videos, they make it seem so easy.
I was in a diy forum once, and this woman was doing some gel staining, and asked for advice. I told her how to dry brush it. She went out and bought some ridiculously expensive brush, tried it out, and somehow ruined her project.
She came back to the forum furious. Said that I made her buy this expensive brush. She reamed me out.
I just said "I don't know what to tell you".
Dry brushing is the recommended way to do it, but I didn't tell her to go out and buy a $25 paint brush.
She said the first coat came out all streaked. I told her the second coat will fix that, and it is normal.
She blamed me because the bristles were falling out. I said "How is that my fault"? 
Doing so will ruin your life
Actually, you CAN do it. I had to teach myself since I had never used this type of stain before.
I taught myself how to remodel my kitchen. Master carpenters will tell you that kitchens are a whole 'nother animal. What I ended up doing with mine is refacing the stiles and rails, but not with iron-on veneer. I used solid wood. Factory finished. New solid wood doors through and through, no MDF panel.
Before I even started, I was up until 4am, every morning for three months, just doing research. It was incredibly difficult for someone who has never done it. There were a lot of issues I had that turned it into a non-typical reface. I refaced builder grade cabinets into furniture grade, and you would never be able to tell that it is a reface.
They are literally some of the most beautiful cabinets I have ever seen. To make them look that good, you have to do some tedious work.
Example: To get a perfect tight joint between the stiles and rails, you have to back-bevel your cut about 2 degrees, and then back into the fit by repeatedly making the cut until it's so tight that you have to snap the rails in between the wood refaced stiles. If you do that, you get an impossibly tight joint that looks perfect. If you don't take the time to do that, then the cabinets will look like refaced cabinets instead of factory built.
Figuring out how to make a story stick that tells you where to drill the Forstner cup holes in the doors for the soft close hinges when the inside edges of your face frames look like swiss cheese because the contactor who originally installed the old hinges had to drill several holes to get the hinges right, and now you have to avoid blowing out those holes when you drill the holes you need , X 32 doors.
Discovering that you need 180 degree hinges instead of 110 degree hinges on your pantry door. Figuring out the right mounting plates to purchase for your new hinges when you add a 1/4 inch thick piece of wood to an existing 3/4 inch thick face frame. How to scribe a fit for your end panels. Adding finished cabinet bottoms and scribing them to fit while working upside down and by yourself. Learning that a 45 degree miter cut sometimes has to be a 43.3 degree cut in order to fit perfectly because you are working with stain grade stuff so you can't use caulk to hide any gaps. A MILLION little things like that.
The point I'm trying to make is this: I've been told by several contractors that it would be impossible for me to hire a contractor who could do as good a job as I did. That's because it is my house, and to make stuff look like that, you have to put the time in. And you have to want to make things perfect. I've even had contractors ask me how I got the joints to look factory finished. And the thing is...I knew NOTHING about how to do this.
I wanted a beautiful kitchen. I wanted it to look perfect. I didn't want to pay a big box store to do a shitty reface with veneer instead of wood, and use sub-par cabinet door and drawer fronts, for a STARTING price of $500 per linear foot of both upper and lower cabinet runs.
When you have time after you retire, do something you think is impossible for you to do, whatever that may be. It will change your life in incredible ways. 
several different directions. They are mounted to a metal retro fit plate due to an additional 1/4 inch added to my existing 3/4 inch face frame. They close like a dream and they look nice.
My old hinges were the regular style, but the contractor who installed them in the '90s apparently had a terrible time getting them right because he drilled several holes in the face frame edges before he finally got the old doors even. They were not morticed, they were simply screwed into the doors and the face frames.
I actually do not know if I have the skills to determine a fixed mortice location on a refaced face frame, considering the up and down, side to side, and in and out tweaks I had to make to get all of the doors aligned with each other. It would probably be easier to do on a new cabinet build such as yours, but I was doing a reface of the stiles and rails with pre-finished 1/4 inch hard maple over oak face frames. So you mortice both the door and the face frame to accept the hinge? Do you use a template and a router, or lay them out by hand and chisel out the mortice? Are your cabinets full overlay, partial, or inset? I'm curious because I bet those hinges do indeed look nice, and I'm wondering how you accomplish your door alignment. I've morticed several doors and door jambs before with a chisel, but you don't have to get those aligned with a door right next to it, which has to align with the next door, etc....
I've never tried wood dyes. Maybe some day I'll have an opportunity to give it a shot!
I have the same exact table. Movers tried their worst to destroy it, but only damaged the glued-up pedestal. I reinforced that, and use the table daily. But with a tablecloth because I can be a klutz at times, like when I am awake.
I will read your article in great detail! Tomorrow, because it's late. Excellent work. Now, where are those sanding sheets?
on softwoods like pine, for example. Otherwise, you'll get a a blotchy stain job with a penetrating oil based stain. If you can sink your thumb nail into the sharp corner edge of a piece of wood, and it leaves a gouge, you have to use wood conditioner before staining.
Wood conditioner doesn't do much on hardwood such as oak. For silicone contamination you have to use no less than 3 coats of unwaxed shellac, and you can't find the stuff in a spray. The spray stuff in the yellow can is waxed, and if you use waxed shellac as a base, your stain is going to get messed up.
So sanding sealers and wood conditioners do not seal off the silicone contamination. I don't know of another product that would do it besides unwaxed shellac, but a professional might know of something.
It was a very interesting and entertaining story. You write well. Your descriptions were completely clear and very easy to follow and visualize. I could picture every step in the process as I read, and I say that as someone whose experience with furniture finishing/refinishing is limited to watching fix-it shows on TV and looking over my husband's shoulder as he made and finished a bookcase years ago.
We have a chest of drawers that I'd love to refinish but don't feel anywhere near capable of attempting. It's oak and solid as a rock, despite being quite old. (I don't know exctly how old, but we've had it since the 1970s, and it wasn't new when we acquired it.) Unfortunately, it's got a finish on it that was probably ugly when it was first applied and is now chipped, discolored, and certifiably hideous. The drawer pulls are metal, and they are speckled with rust and even more hideous than the finish at this point. I wish I could refinish it, because I think it could be a handsome piece if it was done properly. But I know it would be a huge amount of work, and I really don't think I'd be able to pull it off. I'm hoping maybe my husband and I can do it together after he retires, but we have to figure out a way to afford for him to retire first. 
I'm pretty sure I don't want to mess with that stuff. 
I'll take a look at your other suggestion, thanks.
... where did you have Thanksgiving dinner? Christmas dinner?
Anyway, congratulations. I keep staring at some dining room chairs that need reupholstering. Some day, I'll do something about them.
It was 3:12 PM.
It's amazing how something like that can compel you, out of force of habit, to check the clock yourself. So I glanced at the clock beside the TV.
It was 3:12 PM.
So I'm like, "How did they know ?". 
There's your coincidence.
Great story. Give yourself a pat on the back for your persistence and ability to teach yourself new skills.
Looking forward to seeing a photo of it all done!
