Staining is considered a difficult task since it is often hard to make the stain appear even and smooth. While staining, if the paint is applied unevenly, you can see the lap marks on the wood. Lap marks are actually the appearance or an increased gloss in which wet and dry layers
overlap during paint application.
What Causes lap mark?
Lap mark occurs as a result of failing to maintain a “wet edge” when applying the paint. It can also be caused due to the use of low class, economy paint. Both these situation may lead to the formation of lap marks on the wood when working with stain.
How to Prevent Lap Marks:
While doing the stain job, it is important to apply stain toward the unstained area and then back into the just-stained surface. This is technique is commonly known as brushing or rolling from “wet to dry” and this would produce a smooth and uniform appearance without lap marks.
Staining Wet-on-wet:
Another important rule of staining in order to prevent lap marks is to apply material wet-on-wet. You can do this on an interior wall by rolling a little section that allows you to overlap the edge with the next section prior to the first one manages to dry. In other words, you should not let a surface of stain dry before you blend it in with stain from another adjoining surface. This prevents creating two layers of paint as well as different color at the overlap and at the same time helps you avoid unattractive lap marks.
You can also work slowly and remove the paintbrush from the wooden deck gradually at the time when it runs out of stain. This is a great way to prevent lap marks. Furthermore, you can blend these marks by wiping out the stain from dark areas of the lap mark and by adding more stain to the light areas.
Remove the Lap Marks With Thinner:
In order to remove lap marks from a stained surface, you can soak a clean cloth in paint thinner and rub the cloth over the dark areas of the lap marks. As a result, the lap marks will slowly begin to disappear and remove some of the stain. However you need to be careful while doing this process since the soaked cloth may remove too much stain.
Another easy way to prevent lap marks while doing the stain job is to dip a cloth into the wood stain and rub it over the lighter areas on the lap mark.