Clearcoating Bed wood

ksungela

ksungela

Member
I just received the oak bed wood for the '53 chevy 3100 I'm working on. It came from Mar-K in Oklahoma. Looking for some advice on how to stain and clear coat. Is minwax an acceptable quality stain? Once stained, do I simply clearcoat as if I was going over basecoat? Do I need any type of coating between the stained wood and the U.C. to promote adhesion? I plan on doing both sides to fully seal the wood from moisture.
 
With minwax or sparvar type stains we let them set 48 hours and clear, never have had a problem this way.
 
I was going to ask the same question in a few months, so its nice to know universal will work good after a dry time on the stain.
 
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I can tell you from experience that letting Minwax stain dry as long as you can
is good advice. I use most all their different colors and some dry a lot slower than
others. I have had to wait as long as 5 days with some to get it real dry.
With woods like oak, the stain gets way down in the open pours and stays wet
a long time. Oak wood is like a straw, sometimes you can actually blow/suck through
the end grain of a short piece with red oak, white oak you can't.
Sometimes that's how woodworkers can tell the difference. Red oak sucks!:)
 
I think I remember JimC mentioning using intercoat as a sanding sealer. I would definitely contact him as he has both custom painting an woodwork experience
 
all good info above. the question you need to answer for yourself is what type of finish are you looking for? do you want the grain/pores all filled and the boards clearcoated so it looks like a sheet of glass/bar top or do you want the grain to be open with a clear finish on it? that is the first thing you need to figure out. it looks great but its alot of work and materials to fill the grain and you couldnt have chosen a harder wood to do that with. oak is horrible because its so porous. if you wanted that glass look it will actually be FAAAAAR cheaper to actually buy new wood like maple that will finish easier rather than get that oak really slick, if your not going for that look then the oak is fine. post up what your looking to do and i can better help. pic below of a piece of real teak i just finished today with universal. all sanded and buffed out. alot of time and materials to do it.
 

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Thanks everyone. I need to duplicate what's in the pic below. Mostly from a color standpoint and highlighting the grain, but also have a nice finish. Although its tough to tell how slick the finish is, I think I'm leaning toward not filling in all the grain. I'm assuming filling in the grain is a matter of more iterations of applying clear, sanding smooth, reapplying clear?
I will try different colors of minwax stain to get the right base color, but not sure if this will highlight the grain like in the pic. Any suggestions on how to make the grain darker and get that honey base color?
The wood I have is Kiln dried red oak.
bed wood2.JPG
 
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that is just a really light stain on the oak. it doesnt take much to make oak grain darken up like that. one of the lighter minwax shades will work. pecan maybe. its orangy like that. do a sample and if that is too dark then you cut it maybe 50/50 with mineral spirits to make the color less concentrated. as stated before, regular handyman type stains like minwax are oil base and take a long time to dry. let sit 48 hrs before you do a top coat. finish the oak out in 320g, stain it, let sit 48 hrs, spray 1 coat of intercoat clear on, let dry 15-20 min, very lightly sand by hand with 320 just to knock the raised grain down and smooth things out. i mean light. just use a sponge pad or something like that, 1 fast pass. you dont want to go through the 1 coat of intercoat and knock the color off. after that, blow off the wood with compressed air, tack off and apply no more than 2 light to med coats of clear. remember less is more with wood unless you are filling the grain. if the top coat is too heavy then it will look thick and sloppy around the grain pores. generally, wood finishes are limited to about 4 mils which is nothing. if i was you i would do a matte clear on it. to fill the grain on oak you cannot just do it with urethane clear. it will never work. well you can do it but after a short time in the sun it will shrink into the grain and look terrible. you would need to do an epoxy table resin on it to get it flat then topcoat with universal clear.
 
I agree with jc, red oak sucks compared to white oak, but that seems to be the common oak these days. Just not as warm looking of a wood as white oak. But it's still one of the simpler woods to stain since it only needs an enhancement . As far as the home & paint store stains, the minwax oil base is about the best for your application. Natural , honey oak ,& pecan (in that order) are the lightest colors & would all look similar.
Since you won't see the backsides you got area for experimentation. You could try lightly hitting the grain with a propane torch to darken it. Just a light scorch, not blackening the whole thing, then lightly sand, blow off & stain. This will give you a little aged enhanced grain look without getting too dark overall.
No need to really soak or double coat the stain on oak. You can speed the dry time up a little if needed hitting with hair drier & wiping with clean rag as excess material pops out the pores.
Nothing wrong with the minwax stain, but if you have a lenmar distributor in your area, you could get their lacquer stain. The lacquer solvent evaporates much quicker & you could topcoat between 15 minutes to a couple of hours after . Also I've mixed it in with matte clear for shading 7 found no compatibility issues.
 
Instead of trying to fill the grain with resin or multiple coats of clear, use a paste wood filler. You can get it on line from Rockler; I believe they sell the Behlen's brand. Paste filler is available in many colors, and the stain used is of a much higher quality than Minwax. To apply, you mix the filler in the can, then apply liberally to the wood. I use a plastic bondo spreader to force the filler down into the pores of the wood by working it back and forth across the grain. Usually, I let it dry for about 10 minutes, until it looks hazy; then I wipe it off, wiping across the grain of the wood so as to not pull it out of the pores. I let it dry overnight, then wipe again, this time with the grain, to remove any excess. To be safe, I wait another 24 hours, then start spraying the clear. It still requires a couple of extra coats of clear to finish filling the grain, but not many-maybe 2. I spray 3 coats, hard block sand to 800, then spray 3 more coats. Once that is hard blocked to 1000, I can tell if I need to shot any more clear before final cut and buff; usualyy, I will shoot 2 more coats, just to be sure I've got enough film build for final cut and buff.

No pictures, but I have been finishing furniture for 40 years, and car stuff for the last 3. I am constantly experimenting with different finishes and finishing techniques. In fact, that's how I found SPI; I was looking for a durable clear for tabletops, as my supplier, ML Campbell, stopped making a modified acrylic lacquer. The modified acrylic was more durable than nitrocellulose yet still had the warmth, clarity, and buffability of nitro, while all of the pre- and post- catalyzed lacquer products are too plastic looking and get milky when rubbed. The SPI clear has everything I need, so I have switched to it.
 
It's been many years but I remember using paste wood filler on American Chestnut (pre-blight) in our old house on some of the interior wood trim.
It worked well to fill the grain pores which I believe are deeper and more pronounced than Oak. Chestnut looks like Oak but more dramatic grain patterns. Too bad the Chestnut trees died off. Around here (So. CT) something similar happened to Elm trees also.
 
sprint, not really. i dont use it enough to have a preference. many times i have used west system with the 207 catalyst. 207 is the special cat for doing finishing like that. most boat companies and marine finishers use that for their teak. i feel it works and is nice but i would prefer something just a hair thinner which many of the table resins are. i have used the wood filler method that avanti mentioned as well. works fine if you dont need a natural clear finish on the wood. on something like oak with heavy grain you will see it in the pores since its colored. for the teak piece i posted a pic of i cant really use a filler on that as it would change the look. i need a crystal clear finish on natural wood. i have seen wood fillers out there that are clear but i have never tried them
 
Total Boat also has crystal clear table top cat.
I've been using their epoxy & tropical hardener for wetting cloth to reinforce plastic Caddy trim with zero smell vrs other resins. 90 degrees & stayed wet for an hr. Dries hard, almost no flex
 
Honestly I think doing a good job of filling in the grain of red oak would make it look a little less like real wood in this application. Though I say that I have a dinner table built from scrap oak 25 plus years ago stained dark & coated with table top resin. But white oak does have a different look & it's a more fitting application to not feel any grain in oak.
 
here you go. had to dig this up from the archives lol. this was a ford truck i did some years back. i finished the oak bed. its hard to see the finish in the pictures. only a couple spots you can see the gloss but these were epoxied then topped with universal. no stain on this oak. just clear finish. the bottoms of the boards were done in black epoxy to seal them up
 

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Wipe on wipe off.
If you wanna see what your sample will look like with a gloss clear, just get a rattle can of enamel clear. Jim's picture of the unstained oak appears to be a white oak , not red, so yours will naturally have a little redder tint to it. Going a hint darker will help kill the slight red tint of the wood.
 
yeah thats basically it. the thing with wood finishes is you need to do test samples if its a specific look and color your going for because there are so many variables. you can stain it but you might need to dilute the stain if its too strong so tests will be needed. you can go with a tinted grain filler as avanti suggested but ain you need to do test samples. any way you look at it you need to get the color correct first then do the topcoat. if you want it smooth like my pics you need to epoxy the oak, sand smooth and clearcoat it. if your not going for that look then forget the grain filler, stain it, intercoat, sand then topcoat it like i said in post #8
 
Great thread. I will be installing a wood bed on the 55 Chevy sometime later this year.
One quick question: Does applying the clear coat tend to give the stained wood a slightly darker appearance. A look similar to getting the wood wet?
 
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