Jim,

If I put a oil based satin on raw wood and after it has dried put a
oil based coat poly over it will it mess up the stain finish.
I think I read somewhere that the poly might soften the stain because
both are are oil based.

It kind of depends on the type of stain you use.

Penetrating oil stains soak into the wood, so the poly top coat usually
doesn't affect them.

Unfortunately, penetrating stains have a tendency to be blotchy on
softwoods. Applying preconditioner before the stain helps a lot, but
doesn't eliminate the blotchy appearance.

Gel stains don't soak into the wood as much, so they tend to be a lot less
blotchy on softwoods.

However, since the gel stain sits on top of the wood, brushing on oil based
poly can soften the stain a little. As long as you brush with grain, and
don't repeatedly brush the same area it's not usually a problem. But, it
does happen a little bit.

Thankfully, only the first coat of poly affects the stain that way. You
could probably avoid the problem by spraying the first coat of poly, but
I've never taken that approach. Even though brushing on the poly does tend
to pick up a bit of the gel stain, it rarely shows up in the finished
project.

For what it's worth, I recently applied water based Minwax poly over the
oil based General Finishes gel stain. The water based poly did not pick up
the stain the way the oil based poly did. I was concerned about putting
the water based finish over an oil based stain, but I've done two projects
that way now with no issues.

Anthony Watson
www.mountainsoftware.com
www.watsondiy.com