Wood Matching Question

Looking at this picture now, it doesn't do justice to how orange the birch looks and is making the fir look a lot darker than it really is.

The fur looks brown/red in this photo. I agree, shellac may never be the answer. You have wood that you haven't touched with shellac? If yes, I would try stains. Home Depot has a wide variety of minwax stains. It is hard to know how wood will accept stain without trying.

Even Shellac varies based on the wood.

top birch with two coats of Amber, bottom with 4 coats.


See how how red the top is? 

I might also consider a Penofin Bamboo Oil. I have a lot of different stains here if you want a quick test board on raw birch I can show you a few options.


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one more thing, mixing wood has always given me indigestion. Adding to that, new wood of one type and old wood of another...
new pine above with Mixol tinted shellac, old birch below with Amber mixed with clear.


Below, Mixol tinted Amber. Three coats, then four in the middle then five on the left. But there is no guarantee your birch will do the same thing with multiple coats.


A side note you probably already know, you can't stain wood you have shellac on now.

Uneven birch finishing is what got me to finally take off my perfectionist hat and just work on finishing the thing. Two lots from the same manufacturer can take shellac so dramatically different, you need to be a fine cabinetmaker to mix up a finish that matches.

A late night experiment just for you.

Just one coat of a few stains I have in the paint closet.



A Second coat would make the colors deeper and smoother but this gives you a good idea. Minwax Gunsmoke is very dark red/brown. It may work. Penofin bamboo oil is my favorite. On old wood (stained 50 years ago) it looks like this...



Here are a few more options.
Rusto Light Walnut may also work. Only way to know is experiment.


Would you like to see how a coat of amber shellac changes the samples? I can put a coat on in 30 seconds tomorrow.

As far as blotchy goes, they make a wood conditioner (clear liquid) to put on soft wood (like pine and birch) first that helps. I've found that more than one coat of stain helps smooth things out. But it does gets darker the more you lay on so you really need to test first.

On my latest Shasta the rear panel, center roof and front all needed replaced. Basically every other panel. The roof framing was in excellent condition so I struggled to get the new grain and tint to match the old and eventually gave up, took all the roof framing out front to back just for esthetic reasons.

I've seen campers where the contrasting grain is actually a nice accent. But it needs to seem deliberate. Like all of one wall or the ceiling is unique. Not like a patchwork quilt. 

Thanks again nccamper! We need to pin these swatches somewhere for other people to check out.

I ended up getting really lucky today. I had plans to drive around town looking for the right stain for my birch. Though once I got to my trailer and had some more scrap wood available I wanted to give one more thing a shot. I tried the amber shellac with the Terra tint on bare wood and it did the trick! It's the right darkness for what I want but it doesn't have the yellow-orange tint to make it clash with the old fir.

It's always hard to get a good picture but this gives you an idea.


And here's a description of all that's going on here.


So you can see that the terra tint on top of amber shellac was still orange, but on bare wood is reddish brown. Also, despite what you told me nccamper, I tried some Mixol in clear shellac to see what it would do. It darkened it up a bit, but I don't think it's worth the effort.

One thing I really like about this is that since it's darker, I need to put less coats on and the grain shows through better.

Thanks for your moral support during my minor freakout, nccamper and danrhodes