I am doing a canopy made of iroko. I painted the new wood with wood preserver and once dry I started to apply a white stain. I do not like the way the white stain is coming over the golden coloured iroko and thinking of painting with oil based paint. However I read that iroko, since full of natural oil requires some treatment first before it can take such paint. Reuben
I have no experience of painting iroko timber, to pretend I did would’t be doing you a service. Generally speaking though, timbers with a high resin content do cause problems with discoloration of subsequent coatings and this can be mitigated against with aluminium wood primer.
This isn’t a magic fix though since such primers are not moisture vapour permeable or very flexible and require frequent maintenance to keep in good order. In other words, you may need to repaint every couple of years or even less depending on how exposed this canopy is going to be.