Furniture, Wood and Cabinetry Finishing - Help with a mystery stain

My husband and I are refinishing an old oak table. We stripped and sanded the table, did a test spot to see how dark we wanted the stain and then cleaned the spot off. We used acetone to clean the surface before staining and there was nothing on the wood. BUT, now there is a darker area where we did the test spot. How did this happen? How can we fix it?

Thanks

Wood fibers absorb stain. Perhaps sanding down to raw wood will remove the stain if it is too dark. If veneer, the thin layer of oak will not take much sanding.

As suggested above, the stain did what it was supposed to do, it stained the wood. Stain is not a surface color, it goes into the wood, how deep depends on the wood type and how long the stain remains on the wood. The only way to remove it is sand the wood to below where the satin has penetrated.

We cant do that. There is a design in the wood. What if we stained the table more AROUND the spot so we didnt darken the spot but instead darkened the table?

>>We stripped and sanded the table

>> >>The only way to remove it is sand the wood

>> >> >>We cant do that.

You can't sand it more? Sounds strange, but okay. Are you dealing with a veneer that makes you afraid of sanding off too much? If it's solid wood, there should be no problem with sanding a little more.

Instructions usually read "test stain in an inconspicuous area"... like on the BOTTOM side of the table, not the top. But you've obviously learned that the hard way. If you like the color of the stain, you can probably just stain the table and the spot will blend in with the rest of the table. If it doesn't... well, you should have sanded it out or attempted to chemically extract it then sand it. There's no way around this one. Either sand it, or don't sand it... stain it, and hope for the best! Allowing the stain plenty of time to penetrate before wiping, or using 2 applications of stain may help a blotch blend in and disappear.

I think we actually got it fixed. We sanded just the area down to raw wood again and just did 2 coats of stain. The problem was we had done 4 or 5 coats of stain on the entire table, so the spot just got darker than the rest of the table.

Thank you for everyones thoughts. I cant wait to be able to use this beautiful table.