Maple Train Table - Finishing

This was my very first finishing project. We bought a maple train table for our son’s birthday and I decided to save some money and finish it myself. I read as much as I could and went with Marc’s approach to dealing with blotch prone wood…I put a coat of shellac on first and then used General Finishes gel stain. I learned a lot during this project and I am not sure if I would go with that approach in the future. I felt it did a solid job eliminating the blotch, but the color was significantly lighter than intended because of the shellac. I might give this approach one more try and cut the shellac down ( I was using the de-waxed bullseye shellac that I was told was a 1 lb. cut), but would also like to experiment with other methods to see how things turn out. Also looking forward to growing my finishing skills.

Process I used: sand – shellac – sand – first coat stain – sand – second coat stain – sand – topcoat – sand – topcoat – sand – topcoat