Charles Neil's Pre-Color Conditioner - Product Review

The future? Charles Neil's Pre-Color Conditioner and Minwax Wood Finish. Is Neil's conditioner the answer for blotchy stain situations?

Over the past decades, I have made many furniture projects out of pine. It was my wood of choice for a long time, but that changed some time ago. I began having increasing problems getting a pleasing result when staining pine. I once heard how lumber, especially woods like pine are being grown more rapidly which is problematic because this favors softer, less dense lumber. This softer wood, often with wild grain, is more likely to accept stain in different ways yielding a blotchy look. Even pine that isn’t of the rapid growth variety can stain unevenly along with maple and cherry.

To combat this problem, "pre-stain conditioners" were developed to slow down the absorption of stain into wood. In theory this causes a more even color in woods like pine, but these conditioners have a side effect: this lower absorption causes a medium brown stain to become a light brown stain. And depending on characteristics of the wood, blotching can still occur. So, I have had limited success with conditioners.

I subscribe to Marc Spagnuolo’s "The Wood Whisper" website in my feed reader. Marc recently featured a post about a new kind of wood conditioner which reportedly works as advertised. There were glowing testimonials from fellow woodworkers in Marc's comment thread - "it worked wonderfully" was one comment.

One of the reasons I specified pine for my Tornado Bed project was a new confidence that I could stain this bed and get good results. Hopefully, at least one of my staining problems would be a thing of the past. As my project developed, it became time to give Charles Neil’s Pre-Color Conditioner a try.

The test
I placed an order for a one quart supply of Neil’s conditioner through his website. The total cost with shipping via UPS came to $28.28, sort of high I thought. The whole process from order to delivery took about a week.

Following the directions, I applied a coat of conditioner and let it dry for an hour. I sanded with P320 paper, used a tack cloth to remove any dust and applied a second coat. I let the conditioner dry overnight.

For the Tornado Bed, I decided to use Minwax’s Wood Finish in English Chestnut. I had never used this color before, but it just spoke to me. I thought this would also be a good test for Neil’s conditioner due to the penetrating qualities of oil based stains and this color being moderately dark – blotching should easily appear under these conditions. I applied one coat with a clean rag and here is the result:

Hallelujah! The results are almost perfect.

As you can see, no blotchy color – none. After problem after problem; frustration after frustration, this pre-color conditioner easily tames pine. It worked very well with an oil based stain and it did the same with some water based stain I had on hand.

Neil’s conditioner is a piece of cake to apply, dries in a reasonable amount of time and cleans up with water – in short, it is easy to use and works; which means it’s worth every penny I spent on it.

My purpose here is to see for myself if this conditioner is like others which sort of get the job done. I am happy to report Charles Neil’s Pre-Color Conditioner is what every other conditioner should be - totally effective. If you would like a more in-depth report on what Neil's conditioner, see Marc Spagnuolo’s post here.

To order Neil’s conditioner for your own use, click here (there is a demonstration video you can see as well). I fully endorse this product and look forward to using it in the future.

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Update July 3, 2011: I used Charles Neil's Pre-Color Conditioner for a second time today. Some thoughts:

1. For pine, use two coats of conditioner. The instructions in Neil's conditioner say two coats may be needed, but since I have a lot of pine to cover, I thought I might be able to get by with one coat. One isn't enough to stop blotching; although one coat still works better than the Minwax Pre-Stain Conditioner I used to use.
2. Allow extra dry time for oil based stains. After allowing stain to dry overnight, when applying a wipe-on poly, the stain started to come off. I started to panic a little, but with continued wiping, the color evened out pretty good. I am not sure of the effect on water based stains
3. This conditioner can sag. If not caught, sags look like left behind spots of glue (from what I understand Neil's conditioner is like a diluted white glue). During application, this product looks like water based poly and absorbs quickly into pine. Just watch any area that got a higher amount of conditioner. I applied it with a brush; a lint free cloth may be better.

My conclusion at this point is that some further experimentation is necessary to get the hang of using this conditioner, but I feel like this is still a very good product.

Update October 17, 2011: I used this conditioner again over the last few days and while I still believe Charles Neil’s product is the best conditioner I have ever used, my technique for applying it needs improvement.

First, remember that pine is especially porous. Even after spending a lot of time preparing pine for finish, some of the surface can be more porous than adjacent areas without warning. When applying conditioner with a brush, view the surface at an angle in which light is reflected off the wet conditioner. After a minute, note areas which have become dull quickly. These are the extra porous areas in which conditioner has rapidly soaked into the wood. The overall surface should still be wet. Add an additional couple of brush strokes with conditioner to the dull areas in an effort to get a uniform application. Watch light reflecting off of the wet conditioner to make sure it goes on evenly.

Second, in corners, don’t allow conditioner to build up. While applying it to boards that form a corner excess from each board can collect in corners which will show up as a lighter color when applying stain. Controlling this can be problematic when corners encompass large areas or you have a lot of small corners to color. I am becoming a fan of finishing boards prior to assembly. Pre-finishing virtually eliminates corner build-up of conditioner (and stain).

Tornado Bed: starting the headboard

The goal. By the end of the weekend, my goal was to have the cross members (in blue) fabricated.

I made pretty good progress during the week on the Torndao Bed, even though I had a heavier than normal travel schedule. About mid-week, I decided to go ahead and glue-up the boards needed for the bottom cross member. This enabled me to cut all of the cross members to length with the same set-up at the table saw. I did just that Saturday morning...

A handy jig. My cross cut sled is one of my most important table saw accessories. It helps me make quick work of accurately cutting this long board.

A template. I use the first board (closest to the blade) as a guide for marking the length of the remaining two boards.

Sized. Here, I have the three cross members cut to final size.

Getting the process right
With this bed, I have had to really concentrate on performaing the right task at the right step in the process. For example, it is always better to cut similar components at the same time (not literally at the same time, but one after another in a group). In my early days of woodworking, I would often fabricate these components separately, in some cases on different days, after changing the set up on my table saw. Cutting boards separately often slows the process and can cause one board being slightly different than the others. Organize your cuts - this speeds the process and yields fewer errors.

Another example has to do with a mistake I almost made. I was about to cut the cross members to final size, before running them through the planer (the opposite of this is better). In the past I have sized a board only to later realize I should have run it through the jointer first. When jointing, snipe can occur at the end of the board. Leaving the board long gives you the ability to simply cut away the snipe. The same is true with a planer. Joint or plane first, cut to final size last.

After bringing the boards down to final dimensions, I then formed the tenons on the ends. This is simply a process of first using my cross cut sled and setting a stop block on my saw fence.

Another large board. Here, I am setting up for the first tenon cuts on the large, lower cross member.

A critical cut. These shoulder cuts must be the same distance in from the edge. This set-up makes it easy.

Bringing it all together. These joints are a little tighter than those on the footboard.

I had to do a little chisel work in the mortises and trimming the tenons to fit. Once that was completed, everything slides right into place. It is such a relief when this goes well.

Success! As I started to pull these parts together, I thought I may have some trouble, but everything went well.

Coming up next: final fabrication of the rest of the components needed for the headboard. I’ll need to cut a slot in the middle and upper cross members to receive the panels, as well as the stub tenons of the stiles. I’ll also have to cut a slot in the stiles - it should be an interesting week in the shop.

This project is being built in response to the historic tornado outbreak that occurred in Alabama on April 27th. On that day, 63 tornadoes struck our state which claimed the lives of 247 people and caused between $2.45 billion and $4.2 billion in property damage (click the image at the right). The Tornado Bed will be given free of charge to a needy victim of the April 27th tornado event.

This is father’s day, and while I have written a few times about my daughter, Beth, I have never put up a photo of her. Here she is; my wife is taking the picture.

What could be better. My sweet daughter bakes me a sweet cake for father's day. I am very fortunate.

My daughter has a growing fascination with baking deserts which isn’t helping me lose weight, but she is getting quite good at it. It was a woodworking Father’s Day. Beth gave me the items needed to connect my planer to my dust collector and my wife gave me a subscription to Fine Woodworking magazine. After church, I got in a nap and then spent about two hours in the shop - a great Father's Day.

Now, a note about the Tornado Dresser: I had planned to make both a bed and a six drawer dresser as help towards the April 27 tornado recovery effort. Donations for the bed have been great with most of the material cost being covered. But new donations have stopped, and not only is there the dresser left to fund and build, but there will likely be the need for a box spring and mattress for the bed. On top of that, I have a small project to tackle prior to my daughter moving back to college, so the dresser is looking a little iffy at this point. I may still build it, but if I do, it will be later in the year.

To view all posts on this project click here. This is post six in this series.

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Have a question or comment? Leave yours by clicking on the "Comments - post yours here" link below. My email is jobranch@yahoo.com or you can contact me through Twitter or Facebook. Subscribe via email or RSS by clicking here.

Some popular projects:

1. My coffered ceiling project. 2. The Scott Bookcase. 3. The TV Console project

Tornado Bed: Moving to the Headboard

Beefy. Note that each cross member is comprised of two boards. I like the heft this gives to the bed.

Something that has been a little extra work on the Tornado Bed is that every cross member is made from two boards glued together. While this step probably adds some strength to the bed, it is mainly a design consideration. I used an existing bed I own to give me some design ideas and when it came to the thickness of these boards, I decided that a 1 x material looked to thin. So, as I move from the footboard to the headboard, most of what I have been doing during the week is simply gluing boards together. It looks something like this...

Maximum clamping. Here I run out of small clamps, so if you look closely, you can see short lenghts of pipes used to make small pipe clamps.

I am wondering if I have enough clamps for the rails that join the headboard to the footboard. These will be 80 1/2" long. The boards in the photo above are about 60" long. I have been looking at my options for inexpensive clamps because I think I'll need more.

I also have been considering a change in the glue I use. As I began gluing the footboard components together, I thought about open time. I did not want to repeat a problem I had with the TV Console project where I needed more open time to position all the parts properly. Long story short: after a little research, I decided to stick (stick - get it: glue, stick?) with my yellow glue vs. polyurethane glue which has a very long open time.

Success. The footboard glue-up goes well with no cussing and such. My six foot pipe clamps which I rarely use come in handy here.

Saturday was mostly about thinking through the panel construction for the headboard. While I had drawn the bed in SketchUp, I had not actually included the joinery. There were no mortises or tenons in that drawing. Fabricating the panels was the next order of construction and I did not want to find out later that I had made them too small, so I sat down at the computer and worked out all the joinery.

A little complicated. The joinery is a little more complex than I had imagined in my head. Glad I worked it out in SketchUp first.

With this illustration I did two things for the first time: (1) I imported a texture and applied it to all the elements in this drawing. This is a medium brown quarter sawn pine which is much more realistic than the stock cherry color I typically use. (2) I used the x-ray view to help me work out the joinery at the posts and it was very handy for this – I made a change that otherwise would not have know to make.

Sunday mornings in the shop are a lot of fun. I usually have at least an hour or more before getting ready for church. This morning I worked on the panels – I need 1 x 8 inch material to achieve the 12 ½ inch wide panels. I cut the boards to rough length, ran them through the planer and then glued them together.

Components. Here are all of the parts needed for the headboard panel. I'll continue to fabricate the components to final size during the week.

The glue was dry enough to work on the panels after church. I got them sanded up to 220 grit and cut to final size.And that is where I am currently. I hope to have the headboard ready for glue-up by next weekend.

To view all posts on this project click here. This is post five in this series.

________________________

Have a question or comment? Leave yours by clicking on the "Comments - post yours here" link below. My email is jobranch@yahoo.com or you can contact me through Twitter or Facebook. Subscribe via email or RSS by clicking here.

Some popular projects:

1. My coffered ceiling project. 2. The Scott Bookcase. 3. The TV Console project

Tornado Bed: making the footboard

Room to work. The recent relocation of my planer and drill press gives me the needed room to work on the footboard.

I like cars. As I write this, the TV show Rides is on and I am watching Chip Foose build a one-of-a-kind car called Impression. This car is a piece of art and the show had me glued to the TV. What impressed me most is that not only is the car a piece of art, but each individual component is too. This show has motivated me to look differently at my woodworking projects. I want to move more towards looking at my work in this way, as art. But, I need to master some hand tool skills before I get to that level. Something to work towards.

Getting to the next level means I'll have to come to grips with the lumber I use. A thought I have is this: can a woodworker make a respectable project from lumber found at Lowes or Home Depot? I tend to favor these suppliers mostly due to conveniece. I would like to design a future project featuring cherry as the wood; doing so means I will have to order it. My only reservations with ordering wood are not being able to pick my boards and being able to order enough wood. If I order too little, I won't be able to simply drive down to the local home center and get more.

One thing I have learned is that making a project from home center lumber, which stands up to scrutiny, means very careful wood selection. In general, quarter sawn wood is the wood of choice - the grain is straight and more pleasing to the eye. The opposite of this is plain sawn wood which frequently yields grain that is in some cases wild and can be very distracting. See the photos below…

Visible. These faces of the posts will be visible from the front of the bed. Grain has been selected so that nearly straight grain is shown. Note the how nice this looks.

Out of view. This side of the posts will be largely out of view. I use less pleasing, very wavy grain here.

For the bed, the best looking grain faces the front of the bed. Also, the sides of the posts have nice straight grain. All of this is plain sawn lumber, but I have select the most pleasing grain to appear on the most visable parts. I have seen some really nice looking boards at Lowes and Home Depot, but these boards are in the minority. Lumber has to be carefully selected for both pleasing grain and color.

Making tenons. I move my fence to the left of the blade and use a stop block to limit the length of the tenon.

The upper cross piece of the footboard is three inches wide and the mortise is 2.5" so I only need to remove a quarter inch from each side of the board. I simply nibble away the wood on my table saw.

For the tenons on the lower cross piece, more wood needs to be removed (one inch), so I use a hand saw to remove the bulk of material and then clean it up at the table saw.

Traditional joinery. After a little fine tuning the tenons, they easily slide in place. I plan to pin these joints with oak dowels.

Currently. The footboard dry fitted. Luckily, it is perfectly square.

Next up: I'll sand everything and then do the glue-up. Then, I'll add the pegs. I hope to begin the headboard next weekend.

This project is being built in response to the historic tornado outbreak that occurred in Alabama on April 27th. On that day, 63 tornados struck our state which claimed the lives of 247 people and caused between $2.45 billion and $4.2 billion in property damage (click the image at the right). The Tornado Bed will be given free of charge to a needy victim of the April 27th tornado event.

Note to Self: The other night, I made a quick trip down to my shop to glue up a couple of boards. I needed to cut them to rough size and in the process I dropped a board on my bare foot. The pain was particularly intense and still hurts two days later. A lesson I learned: always wear shoes in the shop, which in my case means tennis shoes. But, I wonder if work boots like those construction workers wear would be good and a little more likely to soften the blow?

To view all posts on this project click here. This is post four in this series.

________________________

Have a question or comment? Leave yours by clicking on the "Comments - post yours here" link below. My email is jobranch@yahoo.com or you can contact me through Twitter or Facebook. Subscribe via email or RSS by clicking here.

Some popular projects:

1. My coffered ceiling project. 2. The Scott Bookcase. 3. The TV Console project

Tornado Bed: Completing the Posts

Two more posts. As you will see, I moved my planer to a dedicated rolling cart regaining much needed workbench space.

For me, the long Memorial Day weekend typically is filled with a number of family events and this one was no different, but the long weekend also meant some great shop time - virtually all day on Saturday. I’m glad to report the Tornado Bed (illustration here) is on schedule since I was able to complete the construction of the footboard posts.

The process for the foot board posts was the same as shown in my last blog post, so I am not going to repeat it here, except to say that after completing the final post, my technique for ripping and fitting the 45 degree angle cuts on the end cap has improved.

Small adjustments. I use painter's tape to zero in on the exact angle.

I used a process of making micro adjustments to the 45s by adding layers of painters tape to the opposite side of the end cap. This allowed me to find the precise angle for a proper fit. I trust this method more than simply adjusting the blade of the table saw.

A project within a project
It is my goal with each project to make an improvement to my shop in some way. For instance, during the Beth’s Built-In project, I made a couple of new saw horses. With the Tornado Bed, I have already utilized my new thickness planer several times, so it really needs to find a home somewhere besides the end of my workbench. I decided to spend a couple of days constructing a mobile cart for this new tool.

A great resource. "201 Tips for Woodworkers" - this was a Christmas gift from my wife a year ago and it has turned out to be one of the most useful woodworking gifts ever.

I mentioned in my last post Fine Woodworking magazine’s special publication, 201 Tips for Woodworkers. In the section on shop storage there is an article titled "Rolling Base for Bench Tools" by John White. In this example, White's cart is fitted with a bench top thickness planer. So instead of re-inventing the wheel, I decided to simply duplicate White’s design.

In process. Once again, I use my table saw as a work surface because my actual work bench is too crowded.

Construction was pretty straight forward: birch plywood cut into components and screwed together. I originally bought 2.5" casters and returned them for the four inch version - the 2.5"ers were too small. The best thing about making this cart: I paid for it with money my Mom gave me for my recent birthday.

A new home. My planer and it's stand. I have discovered the benefits of mobile power tools.

In the future I plan to add in-feed and out-feed supports to be attached to the cart, replacing those on the planer itself. I am thinking of a melamine surface to feed stock into the planer supported by a plywood platform. I got it sort of worked out in my head. I also need to extend my dust collection system; connecting it to the planer. It creates some cool looking shavings which quickly become a big mess.

Currently. All four posts completed except for the finials.

For the Tornado Bed, the next steps will be more interesting. I will fabricate the cross pieces needed for the foot board. That will begin this coming weekend.

This project is being built in response to the historic tornado outbreak that occurred in Alabama on April 27th. On that day, 63 tornados struck our state which claimed the lives of 247 people and caused between $2.45 billion and $4.2 billion in property damage (click the image at the right). The Tornado Bed will be given free of charge to a needy victim of the April 27th tornado event.

To view all posts on this project click here. This is post three in this series.

________________________

Have a question or comment? Leave yours by clicking on the "Comments - post yours here" link below. My email is jobranch@yahoo.com or you can contact me through Twitter or Facebook. Subscribe via email or RSS by clicking here.

Some popular projects:

1. My coffered ceiling project. 2. The Scott Bookcase. 3. The TV Console project