Furniture, Wood and Cabinetry Finishing - 50ies Era Paint/Stain Finish

I'm refinishing my typical 1950 ranch house pine cabinets and have run into a snag. I spent all winter testing different stains and finishes on an old cabinet door and began the actual work last weekend by stripping/sanding/staining the lower boxes. Well, it appears the boxes are a completely different wood than the doors, because they have taken the stain very differently than the doors. I swear the boxes are made out of scrap lumber. Look awful.

So here are my questions - first, is anyone familar with a finishing technique that combines an oil base paint with an oil based stain? Sherwin Williams has told me this was a very common technique in the 50ies, because it kept the character of wood cabinets, but covered up the fact that the wood used wasn't very good quality. Curious about ratio of paint to stain here--been working towards a light Danish walnut or teak finish, without a lot of yellow/orange.

Second, do I have another option like a gel stain perhaps? I'm going to need something opaque enough to cover up the difference in the wood colors. I'm willing to do some experimentation because I really, really don't want to paint these cabinets, so any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks much.

Gel stains are an option - glazing is another.

The transparency of the glaze can be controlled by the amount of color added to the glaze base.

Go back to the paint store and talk with them about these options.

They weren't any help at all on the specifics of how this was done. I'll look into glazes, as well as gel stains - thanks again.