that staining wood is a requirement for her completed project mostly they're confusing wood stain with a wood finish and I do believe a protective wood finish is a requirement for most woodworking projects another thing to keep in mind is that once you commit to a color and apply it to your project that deed is done there is no undo button unlike paint which just sits on top of the wood and could be sanded off wood stain penetrates deep into the fibers of the wood like a sponge absorbing water make sure you sand the wood well before applying stain any scratches will be enhanced by stain sanding will also help open up the pores of the wood so that they can better absorb the stain start out with NUMBER_TOKEN grit to remove big scratches and imperfections then move up to NUMBER_TOKEN and finally NUMBER_TOKEN grit sandpaper make sure you remove any sanding dust from the surface vacuuming is ideal to remove any dust from inside those wood pores you cannot just brush on a coat of stain like you would paint and just wait for it to dry you'll end up frustrated and disappointed when parts of it still feel sticky after a few days when wood has absorbed all the stain at once the rest just sits on the surface and doesn't like to drive to prevent this from happening you must wipe off the excess stain after applying it by the way this isn't just some woodworking hack the label on the can will tell you exactly how to apply stain correctly so read it the applicator you choose for applying stain doesn't matter you can certainly use a brush if you like but I would rather use a foam brush because they're cheap and disposable and they make cleanup a lot easier but goto method for applying a stain is to use a rag old t-shirts are great for this but sometimes I just use a paper towel for smaller projects the idea is to get plenty of stain all over the surfaces then wait a short time for it to soak in usually twenty or thirty minutes is fine then this is the important part wipe everything down with a clean rag if you want the shade to be a little bit darker you can apply a second coat this one won't soak in as much since the pores of the wood are mostly saturated so you can wipe it off after maybe NUMBER_TOKEN minutes or so I don't usually apply two coats wood stains have a nasty habit of distributing themselves unevenly on soft woods such as pine which causes blotching this is especially cruel since pine is most likely the kind of wood you want to stain to reduce blotching you need to apply a wood conditioner or sealer before applying stain stain manufacturers will recommend their own conditioners or you could use shellac as a sealer coat over oil based stains basically a conditioner will stabilise the wood to allow the stain to penetrate more evenly to use wood conditioner just quickly brush it or wipe it on and let it penetrate and then wipe it off just like you would with a stain the only difference here is that you need to apply the stain before the conditioner completely dries usually within two hours or so
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