General Finishes Water-Based Dye, 1 Pint, Empire Red - Perfect for Adding a Vibrant Red Color to Your Woodworking Projects

Kathy Reivonen: Went on good with a foam brush

Canada on Oct 14, 2023

Toyah Dowdy: All spot on!

United States on Sep 26, 2023

VictoriaVictoria: I love this stain color! I love the way it is easy to apply. It dries pretty quick and you can sand it off and try again... if you don't like what your workin on. Try it!

United States on Sep 22, 2023

Tim MTim M: Wanted to use the gold but opted for the safe choice with the Merlot. Took really evenly using 80 then 220 on this old thirsty night stand. No issues with raised grain but wanted a rustic look on this piece anyways. Used General finishes water based poly to finish. 3 coats in one day! Highly recommend!

United States on Sep 15, 2023

Jay B. Sigel: I needed a uniform stain for hard-to-stain hard maple. Hard maple is notoriously difficult to stain. So, I tried this and this relates my experience. Prior to staining, I did a test on some maple scrap planks. I had 5 pieces and 3 of them were shellacked. I tested the light brown and medium brown stains on the non-shellacked boards first. The light brown stained piece looked a yellowish brown, very plain. The medium brown looked black and sooty. The next day, the shellacked boards were tested and their colors were similar although a bit lighter and the dye-stain could be wiped off with a Bounty. I mixed together the light brown and the medium brown and tested it on a shellacked board and it still looked the same as if only using the medium brown dye-stain, that is sooty-looking.

The actual work pieces were large spinning wheel bobbins turned and sanded on my lathe. They were up to 3" in diameter made from multiple sheets of 4/4 maple glued up. Surface preparation was sanding up to 400 grit. They looked very smooth and polished. I applied the light brown dye-stain with a foam brush after vigorously shaking the closed can. The dye-stain dried in a minute or so. They looked...

United States on Jan 24, 2022

Michael Willerding: This is one of the few products that actually penetrate hardwoods such as maple. All their products create beautiful colours as represented.

Canada on Aug 19, 2020

Mike: This is a great base stain. The price is a little as you can buy for $25 from a dealers

Canada on Feb 23, 2020

rtrski: I am using this on ash hardwood, which has a lot of mix of grain densities depending on where in the tree the board was, and also a lot of color constrast between heart and sapwood. This color is almost driftwood-grayish in some places, almost a kind of aged (graying) walnut in others. Really satisfying.

Two warnings: first, as with any water based dye, this will raise the grain on your wood. Strongly advisable to pre-sand to your usual preference (I wouldn't go much beyond 220-300 grit), brush some water only onto the board to swell the grain some, and then re-sand, before applying this. You will want to apply by brushing on a fairly lot of it and then wiping down after a min or two to penetrate, to get good color. If you don't do the after-wetting pre-sand, expect to want to sand after first application and then apply again.

Second: DO NOT use any sort of linseed oil soak to try and 'pop' the grain after this. I don't know why but doing that, even after waiting a long time for this finish to dry, and then waiting a week or more for the thinned BLO to cure, resulted in a lot of orange peel and "fisheye" of the final top finish (polyurethane oil based). I tend not to...

United States on Jan 05, 2020

Amazon Customer: Excellent backing color

Canada on Oct 07, 2018