Aurora Nightstand - Finishing Tests

Still no ebony. But today the shipment finally showed up in the USPS tracking system, so there's hope. I guess the eBay seller I bought it from was just a little poky in getting to the post office.

I really don't want to louse things up when it comes time to apply the finish on this thing, so I sanded up a few test boards for practice. For the stain, I used the mixture of General Finishes water based dyes recommended by Darrell in his article--seven parts orange and four parts medium brown. I put one coat of this dye mixture on half of each test board, and two coats on the other half. Then I wiped on five or six coats of thinned polyurethane according to the recipe in the Wood Whisperer's A Simple Varnish Finish DVD. Here are the results:

It's easy to see that the lightest board (the narrow one) needed the second coat of dye, but that two coats was too much on the darkest board. So the plan at this point is to apply one coat of dye to all the parts, and then put a second coat on the lighter ones only. I think this will give the best color match among the parts without going overbaord and making them all too dark.