Hello all, I have a staining question.
I have a maple bar rail that I recently installed, and I'm having a staining issue. After gluing it together and mounting it to the bar top, I finished sanded it to 400 grit. When I stained it, the curve section of the bar was much darker than the rest of the bar, but I could live with it. When I used a polyurethane top coat a day later, it ended up having a goop-ing effect that I then sanded down. I ended up sanding down the bar back to the wood (400 grit), and re-stained again. Now it's even lighter than before.

What can I do? Should I use a higher grit? multiple applications don't seem to matter.