So.. we decided to rip up carpet and plywood to find original planks (pine) in one of the third floor rooms in our 1880 home. Fast forward to save you on reading.. I applied a penetrating oil based minwax stain (dark walnut)..
the floor looks pretty good considering the shape it was in when we started (tried to upload pics but wasn’t working).
The stain has been let to dry for about 4 days now (90° and 80%hum).. we brushed the oil on and wiped it as we went..
Here’s the question.. to the touch the floor feels dry across the room. If I rub a q-tip on the floor, there is some coloring on the q-tip.. is this normal? Does this mean the stain is still wet?
After dealing with the oil/smell/drying time, I really want to get this room done, but don’t want to rush the water based polyurethane before the stain dries obviously.
Best Answer
There is a good possibility that the pine boards in a 130 year old house are very dense wood. Old growth timber from that time was quite different from what we experience as "pine" today. As such that type of wood is much less absorbent than even some types of hardwood that you may choose today. The dense wood leaves more of the stain material on the surface as opposed to penetrating and thus longer to dry.
As case in point I used Minwax stain on some oak shelves I built recently. I wanted to use the shelves with just the stained surface without applying a shiny sealer like polyurethane. It took a good 10 days before the stain was completely dry. And that was in west coast spring weather. Such stain in 90° and 80% humidity could very well take longer to fully dry.