You hadn't hand sanded!?!?

A stained maple job can be done successfully without water popping but requires much more detail sanding.

I would have cut the floor with 60, 80, 100, and 120 grit on the big machine; 80 and 120 grit on the edger. Then palm sanded the edges with 80 grit, hand-sanded (and I do mean manually by hand), then palm sand again with 120 grit. Then I'd buff with 120 grit hard disk followed by 180-220 grit tape. Vacuum, tack and stain. Beautiful!

Using the steps above will leave you with a lighter color, but it will be clean. Yes it's a lot of work, but you get what you pay for.

Water-popping is a much more efficient way of staining a maple floor with decent results. The same stain used above will take much deeper and darker. The maple's "true" grain will be revealed, which is also very beautiful but has a very different appearance than the non-waterpopped ultra-sanded floor.

Why can't 100 grit screen remove scratches from 80 grit paper?

Staining maple, my only input is that you stay away from the buffer if possible. Do a good job sanding, starting with as high a grit as you can and work it up to about 100. When all your prep work is done, bring it back down to 80, then water pop it, then apply your stain. Using a Trio or just a plan orbital sander in lieu of a buffer will ensure a much better job.

Every so often we recieve a request to stain maple floors and we do so with success. Water popping the floor is imperative. We use a 1/2 water 1/2 denaturalized alcohol solution for this step. We then wipe on an oil based stain and allow it to adequately dry for 2 days before we apply 3 coats of finish.

Good luck!

Jorge Boror

That is a common way to stain maple. Even with that, it still is not that uniform in color and will have some "splotchy" areas, IMHO.