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Should CPES be applied before or after stain?
Thanks, Jim

AFTER the stain. you want your stain to penetrate the raw unsealed wood and produce a uniform color. This can only be done on unsealed or uncontaminated freshly sanded bare wood. Once you have got the stain wiped off uniformly applied, THEN seal the wood. I would allow the stain to dry overnight before sealing. Pay close attention to light and dark areas as these will be amplified with varnish. It is wise to apply the stain like you want the finished product to look because it is what you see in the end. Varnish will not hide a poor stain job but will actually make it look worse. From experience after having four coats of varnish applied over a blotchy stain job on my transom I ended up stripping and sanding down to bare wood and start all over again because it just did not look very good. I still have the same problem on seat cabinets and next winter I will remove and redo by stripping sanding and restaining. Also be careful when sealing with CPES over freshly applied stain as the CPES can soften the stain and smudge it around if you really lather the sealer on. Danenbergs book covers staining and varnishing really well. Good Luck
Rod Syverson

Jim.. I agree to use filler stain first.... here is a post I made earlier on the subject.

Joel... FYI ... I stained BEFORE I used CPES... I had discussed this with Steve Smith, and I think there are pros and cons of either before or after. I stained before, because I didn't want to risk uneven pigment penetration. I believe I let this dry a full week before CPES. Then the risk was that the CPES would LIFT the stain, as does a remover. In this case it did not, so I was cool... 24 hrs later I began varnishing.

An additional benefit of using CPES just prior to varnishing, is that it acts as a bridge, to tightly grab the transom wood fibers on one side, and the varnish on the other. The claim is that it 'glues' down the varnish. I had super adhesion, flow and gloss using this approach.

By the way, I used Interlux Schooner, and Interlux Red Mahogany Filler Stain... (I had bought four different filler stains to play with to see which one I liked... Zspar Red and Pettit Red and Brown)

Good luck.

John Hart

Thanks for the info, Jim