Brush strokes in finish

I’ve never tried that brand of finish, but generally gel finishes, that you wipe off, will have to be built up, by applying several coats. The first couple are going to be rather dull, but the shine will come as the coats of finish are built up. Remember, since you’re wiping most of the finish off, there’s not much left, so be patient.

-- Tim -- http://tmuli.com

Is the Gel topcoat the equivalent to minwax polyshades ( a tinted poly?). If so, I can tell you what I ended up doing. First I applied an ordinary oil based stain. Then I followed up with polyshades by minwax. I thinned my minwax poly using a 2 part thinner 1 part poly mixture. Then I used a rag to apply the finish. Super thin coats. The directions specifically said “do not thin” but to be honest, everything I tried looked AWFUL until I thinned it. If you want to see the results, you can check them out here:

To be honest, this finish could have come out even better but I was in a hurry to get it done because I had other projects that urgently needed to be completed. On the other hand, I would not have used this except I was trying to match a color. My suggestion is don’t use this stuff. If you really need to, try my suggestion on some test pieces. It will take a lot of coats to get a deep color.