I'm making a bench out of cherry, with a curly cherry top.  After about 40 finish samples, I locked down a process that gets the color needed.

High level, the process is waterborne dye, 2 thin coats of shellac to lock it in, and about 4-6 coats Arm R Seal satin.  Dying cherry seems to go better after sanding to 400g. 

From some angles, it looks alright:





But from a sideways view or at a low reflected light, there are many visible streaks in the finish.





The first two coats of Arm R Seal, I laid it on pretty heavily and let it soak for about 8-10 minutes before wiping it off.  By the second coat, I was noticing streaks.  The next two I applied with a shop towel.  After this, I waited 2 days and did some block sanding with 600g paper.  This showed a lot of high/low spots. 

I've never had a problem with Arm R Seal in the past - having used it for a number of tables, trimwork, frames, etc..  Not sure why I'm running into an issue here or what the root cause might be.  Does anyone know what might be happening?

Thanks, Tom.  I hope that this isn't the case here -- I suspect it would be pretty tough to sand off the varnish without cutting through the color. I already had to do that once due to some uneven sanding causing striping.

I often see this wisdom of 'build with gloss and finish with satin'.  Yet Flexner says it doesn't matter and that you could put gloss over Satin and get less of a Satin sheen.  I've never really tried mixing approaches before, and it's always worked out okay.  On the other hand, I never really 'build' much with Arm R Seal so maybe it's something I wouldn't notice.

I'm going to ask General Finishes themselves before I break out the Rotex. 

If you go to General's site there is are great videos which show the recommended methods for applying their various finishes. The video for Arm-R-Seal shows 3 ways to apply involving cloth, a terry cloth sponge, or a paint pad covered with a cloth. None of them indicate waiting any period of time between application and wiping off the excess. The excess is wiped off immediately after the entire surface has been covered with Arm-R-Seal. Although I'm not an expert on Arm-R-Seal, I suspect that the wait was the problem. By the time you started to wipe the surface some of it had already dried and the areas where there was excess hadn't dried. I think that would give you an uneven finish. If that is the case, I would try sanding the surface lightly with 320 or 400 grit paper (most likely by hand with a sanding block), vacuuming and wiping it down to remove the dust, then applying another coat as General indicates on their site, is likely to get rid of the problem. It may require doing this process twice. Once a finish starts to dry, I have found that it is very difficult to get the smooth surface desired when wiping it. Given the consistency of Arm-R-Seal, I would assume that it would be self-leveling once the excess is lightly wiped off before it dries. Any minor imperfections could be eliminated in subsequent coats.

I would add, I'm just guessing, but you could contact General. I think they would be responsive assuming that their staff is available for support during the Pandemic.

"The first two coats of Arm R Seal, I laid it on pretty heavily and let it soak for about 8-10 minutes before wiping it off. "

I have never wiped off Arm r seal. I can't imagine why you would want to. I lay it on and then let it self level.  I think you may be pulling the partially setup coat of Arm-r seal when you are wiping it off.

I have put on nine coats of Arm-r-seal and it never does that.

It's a technique I learned about from Darrell Peart.. he used to use Arm R Seal Satin on his pieces before he switched to Livos.

I've tried to reach out to GF but nowadays they route everyone to their facebook group, and the support is not great.

I did some sanding over the past few evenings to try and improve things..  600g had some corning and was leaving scratches, so I dropped to a 400 disc.. that seemed to be leaving a less consistent scratch pattern too, so I dropped to a used 320 sanding pad. I was able to get to a pretty uniform dullness but some spots seem to be showing signs of cutting through already.  I can do some touchup with tinted shellac between coats, but I don't want to have to do a lot of that if I can avoid it.

I did watch the videos on their website, where the guy is applying it in broad circles before doing a final wipe with the grain to even it up.  Hard to tell exactly how much he leaves on there, but he insists it isn't much. I think the challenge in that approach is knowing how much to put on the surface before you clean it up.