good day everyone I'm Joshua Clement and this is how to finish poplar wood now a lot of people think that when you're trying to finish some wood all you do is put some stain on there and let it dry much like paint but there are a couple twists when you're trying to stain wood for this job you will need some stain a paintbrush designed for stains and some sponges or rags you want to make sure that these are lint-free first thing you want to do is make sure that there's no dust or debris on the wood itself also if it's a rough surface you want to go through and sand it down with a 220 grit sandpaper after you have your surface nice and smooth you're going to take your paintbrush and dip just the tip of it into the stain the stain will run up the paintbrush because the paintbrush will absorb a lot of extra stain we don't want to put too much on there so after you have it on there I like to start in the middle of my wood and work to the outsides that way I'm not splashing over and having run down on the sides of my wood now we'll just go through and evenly distribute the stain you always want to run the brush strokes the same direction as the grain of the wood that way you don't have things crossing each other with the grain of the wood and the brush strokes after the stain has sat on there for a little bit probably about one to two minutes you're going to take your rag or your sponge and wipe off the excess stain in the wood there's hard spots on the wood and soft spots they'll soak into the soft spots and absorb all the stain and then they'll sit on top of the hard wood to make sure that you get a nice even stain you want to wipe off all the excess now here again we'll just go with the grain and wipe off all the excess you want to make sure that whenever you're using stain you have the windows open and a good air circulation stain is very potent and I'll end up making you sick with a sore throat and a runny nose thank you all for watching and good luck with this project you