Staining Base?

[Jimboh]

I bought some Concentrated Liquid stain in blue from Stewmacs. It says you can use the solvents water or alcohol. What kind of alcohol is used? is it just rubbing alcohol you can get at you local drug store or is it a little more complex. Plus opinion wise which do you guys think is better Alcohol or water based? Can you use lacquer thinner with stain? and would it be better than water or alcohol. Any help would be great. thanks in Advance.

[ihocky2]

You will need denatured alcohol. You can get it at any hardware store in with the paint solvents. Water will give you a longer working time with the dye before it dries, so if you have streaks you can blend them out. But water will raise the fibers of the wood and they will need to be sanded down. Plus you'll want to give the water based a few days to make sure all of the water has evaportated. Alcohol will not raise the grain and evaporates quickly. But it gives you less working time. I've used only alcohol based and had no trouble with it. Even if you have blotches or streaking, you can take a rag dampened with clear alcohol and use it to do some blending. Also, if you use an oil based grain filler water based dye will only bead off of it. But the alcohol based will dye the grain filler nicely. I have heard of people mixing the dye in laquer thinner, but I do not know how well it works. Plus I would think the thinner will evaportate even quicker than the alcohol.

I was really intimidated my first time using dye on a project. I did test pieces on scrap and it worked fine, but it was still a worry in the back of my mind. If a piece of scrap gets screwed up who cares, but I just spent hours perfecting the body, and the last thing you want to see is it get ruined with a bad dye job. But it went very easy and came out very nicely.

[Jimboh]

Yah im a little intimidated for this project its my first one, but im up for the Challange. Thanks for the info though.