Sanding And Staining Maple Floors

Staining maple a light teak color can be done and done well but you need to practice your finish and staining system and sand with great precision.

Sanding and staining maple floors. Sanding a maple floor is not like sanding oak. Maple and birch are tight grained woods with very small pores and the density of the pore wall fibers varies drastically. Floors made of maple birch and coniferous woods especially pine or fir are all very difficult to stain evenly. Use a high powered light to investigate your sanding to make certain you do not have sanding marks.

The key is to apply a thin base coat to partially seal the wood before wood staining. None of it is rocket science but it will help you to read through all the sanding pages including first things first working with sanders and edgers and the sanding faq before you begin. When i sand maple no matter if i m doing it natural or staining the floor i finish off with 120 grit paper on my big sander. When fine sanding maple floors always reduce drum pressure to its lowest setting and slow the drum speed if your machine allows for it.

Sanding sealers dewaxed shellac and wipe on finishes will all do the trick. A step by step video for a home owner on how to use various wood floor sanders and how to apply the finish. Sanding a wood floor is a multi step process. Most hardwood floor companies won t stain maple the usual reasons being that it will be blotchy and uneven.

I recently was asked to look at a maple floor to fix. Most stain manufacturers make prestain conditioners but you ll get better results with the method we show here. This is even more true for older floors because of the hardness. We re using a wipe on oil finish as the sealer.

Maple like several others species such as walnut american cherry pine and douglas fir do not take stain as evenly as species such as red oak and white oak blotchy color can result from other factors as well such as inconsistent sanding procedures water popping or stain application. What works on oak doesn t work on maple. You are most likely going to refinish one maple floor every few years so you will not get that many chances to practice. Before applying stain to your wood floor you need to know what species it is.

That way you ll get a heads up on and hopefully the knowledge to avoid some of the problems you might encounter and some of the mistakes beginners make. It had every imperfection you can think of. Y es you can have your maple floors stained a different color. Because maple floors are characteristically hard and very straight grained they show every sanding imperfection.

Depending on the finish being applied anything finer than 100 grit may be too smooth always consult the finish manufacturer s directions.