I'm trying to match a color of a dining room set I have. I've been able to
almost duplicate it with about 4 coats of bombay mahogany polyshade and then
putting on a thick layer of stain. The stain I was using is by zar but it's
a milk chocolate brown (looks to be their darkest) and I need a dark
chocolate brown/almost black. I have minwax jacobean which looks about the
right shade. The zar is thicker than the minwax jacobean and goes on well to
reproduce what I was looking for, just not dark enough. When I look at the
furniture I'm trying to duplicate it looks like they put down one layer of
medium brown stain and a layer of some type of either VERY dark red on top
or a red and then very dark brown. You can't see the wood grain at all
(though you can see the texture). It's like they painted it with 10 coats of
various colored polyshade and it's streaky. It looks dark brown at some
angles but then dark red at other angles, I'm assuming because of the
streaks. From standard distance from the table it's that dark brown Asian
color (it's an Asian style table with bamboo inserts).

So I guess I am trying to turn the minwax into a glaze.

Sam

"Jim Mc Namara" wrote in message
...
I wouldn't add poly - if you need to re-stain to intensify the color you
will have sealed the wood (the main reason I don't use polyshades.) Just
curious - why would you want to thicken the stain? The purpose of stain
is
to penetrate deep into the wood. Thicker would involve pigments remaining
on the surface.

Jums

"Sam Hopkins" wrote in message
.. .
Does anyone know how to thicken minwax oil stain? Can I just add in
poly?
It'll be top coated with poly at the end.

Thanks Much,

Sam