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I'm about to try again with KTM-SV. On my last attempts I used z-poxy as a porefill which popped the grain nicely and went on to bare wood. This time I'm going to use the Stewmac waterborne, which I don't think will do much for the grain. I will be using shellac as a sealer on top of the porefill. Should I wipe on a few shellac coats before the porefill, or go straight to porefill and then shellac, the objective being to pop the grain?

I strongly suggest you do as many tests as necessary on sample boards to answer your own question. Certainly try shellac (or something oil-based?) before porefil but always test.

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Dave
Milton, ON

Oh I will, I just figured someone else is already doing this and has info to impart.

When I used the Target EM6000 (same stuff as the SM color tone) I sparyed two coats shellac first, then pore filled (med CA) then sanded back to the initial shellac coats didn't worry if I went down to wood, then two more coats shellac, then the EM6000 coats.

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If you intend to use Z-poxy to pore-fill, I believe the most commonly heard advice by members is to pore-fill the bare wood (i.e., do not apply shellac prior to application of the Z-poxy). This would be my personal advice also. I think some have experience problems using Z-poxy over shellac. Regardless, Z-poxy works great on bare wood, and there is no reason to shellac the wood prior to applying Z-poxy. If you are using some other pore-filler, then I don't know what to tell ya except experiment and see what works.

Aaron

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Aaron Craig

What's Stewmac's advice? I'll bet they have a perspective.

I should have been more clear. I'm going to try Stew-Mac waterborne porefill.
Or at least I was. I'm not so sure now that I actually see it, it seems to be just as runny as regular finish. Plus all the bad reviews...

If you do use the Colortone pore-filler, let me know how it goes. They sent me some of that instead of the lacquer I ordered, and when they corrected the mistake, they just let me keep it. Based on the reviews, I probably never would have paid for the stuff. But since it was free, I might experiment with it on some scrap sometime.

Aaron

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Aaron Craig