Thanks so much for these videos, I just watched them; very informative! I definitely wrestled with the water based stain. Over the past 8 days, I stained and then sanded down 4 or 5 times, because I just wasn't happy with the blotchiness or darkness of the stain.
This photo shows the Cherry stain result of about my 4th attempt, but it was too dark for my taste. I could have gone with it and been happy, but the picture in my mind was a level of darkness that would show the grain off better.
These next two are my latest, and I'm pretty happy with the result, so I'm going to go with it and move on to the Crystalac water based grain filler. The first photo is after sanding it back down and then putting on a new coat of sanding sealer. This was in the hopes of preventing blotchiness, but it didn't seem to do too much in that regard. For the stain, I watered it down substantially, at about a 1 to 4 ratio of stain to water, respectively. The camera makes it look blotchier than it looks to the naked eye. Right now, I'm fighting the urge to add one more coat of equal dilution just to make it a little bit darker. I'll have to think on it
Thanks again for the advice and for sharing the videos!
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