After going through the sanding process on the first piece, I stained it, again, and this is how it came out. Quite a bit different from the first time with no sanding! Lol.
Here they are side by side.
If you look close at some of the pics you can still see some swirl marks from sanding. I didn't spend a lot of time going from one grit to the next.
Adding to that, rough sandpaper will cut deeper in softwood than it will in hardwood, so I never got all of the marks out.
However, this gives an idea of how things work with stain.
