> 1. Can someone tell me if regular walnut stain will give me the dark walnut look typically found on antiques, or should I use something darker? Walnut is one of the few woods that turns lighter in color, not darker, with exposure to light. So I am not sure what you mean by "darker found in antiques." And there is no such thing as "regular walnut" stain. Every manufacturer just labels and formulates their color palette with convenient names. Medium Walnut has absolutely no standard between vendors. That said, your choice of what you want it to look like is your own. Your choice of wood (already made as walnut) and top coat will also affect the resulting color, so don't rely on a sample board of oak & pine or the label. If you are concerned do a test of candidates. > 2. What brand of stain is recommended for doing this on a budget? So you are going to spend a month's worth of weekends and evenings doing this job and you're worried about saving $2-3 on a can of stain? Personally, I don't like most Minwax stains. > 3. What brand and type stripper do you recommend? You know what you put on there originally. If it's not lacquer or shellac, then go with a methylene chloride stripper. This will be most of what you find at the stores. Since this is a relatively heavy chemical, just pick up a few and choose the heaviest gallon. If you used a ubiquitous polyurethane the first time around, the alcohol, lacquer thinner, and "restorers" will be much less effective. They only really work well on lacquer, the most common commercial furniture finish, and shellac. > 4. There isn't much detail, but what is the best tool to use in crevices to remove the current finish? I have a number of scraping tools, but an easy one you can make is a sharpen a dowel like a screwdriver and use that to pry out the sludge. Use a putty knife in the flat areas. P.S. It is considered bad form (and against guidelines) to post the same question on multiple folders. For one thing, it makes any conversation hard to follow. Sorry to be hard on you, but I'd rather have you stop and think about what you are doing than to end up with another job you don't like and due to all the work, just decide to live with it for another 15 years in regret. Before you start, I'd recommend ordering or getting from your library, this book. Here is a link that might be useful: Strippers

Without seeing it, I'm guessing that you have not completely removed the finish and that it is not wood that has been stained (by some chemical, not a prior attempt of applying a "wood stain.") Formby's refinisher is an ATM stripper, essentially a variant of lacquer thinner. It works by dissolving the finish so you can wipe off most of it and smear around the rest. The solvents work well on lacquer and shellac (which are redissolved in their respective solvents, both of which are in lacquer thinner) and slowly on other finishes such as varnish. While you can continue with it, things will go faster with a methylene chloride stripper (see the link above.) And while we are at it, Formby's Tung Oil finish is merely a varnish thinned to wiping consistency. Not that it is necessarily a bad product, it is just not tung oil and contains no tung oil.

I have done this. We have oak railings in this house that were very ho-hum, so I decided to stain them darker with polyshades. I mixed Walnut & Bombay Mahogany & while I would have liked them to be a bit darker brown & less reddish, I'm very happy with the way they turned out. My railings did not have a really shiny finish, so I didn't sand or anything, just painted right over them with the Polyshades. I used a small cheap chipbrush, so I could just throw them away, since Polyshades is oil-based & I hate working with oil. It covered really well in one coat & I just went back & did a quick 2nd coat on areas that were a bit too light. I didn't even tape off the spindles or anything & it was quite easy to control the coverage. Here's a before & after..the best pics I have available right now. Now the railings are much darker than the floor & I think it looks much better & richer. And it really wasn't hard to do at all. Well worth the effort. Before: After:

I like strong design usually, but man, that last pic? What do those people do, hop out of bed in the morning, run down the stairs, blow a whistle and yell "Offensive pass interference, the ball will be placed at the spot of the foul. Automatic, first down!"