Greetings,
I shot a coat of Zinsser Sealcoat on a couple soft maple drawers expecting that in addition to performing as a sealcoat/grain raiser for the water base topcoat, that it would darken the end grain’s tone at least a little bit so the dovetails would get some contrast and pop, and a little tone effect under the WB. Instead the effect was the opposite: the DTs end/face grain are closer in tone and more washed out in appearance.

Any good suggestions on how to go about moving forward to correct this (without completely sanding the drawers back down to bare wood)?

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Additonal Details:
Two drawers of soft maple with dovetail joints ROS sanded to 150 grit followed by hand sanding @ 180.
One coat of Zinsser Sealcoat, sprayed with a conversion HVLP gun (Iwata LPH400). A wet edge was maintained and the drawers got good coverage.

This Zinsser Sealcoat produced the opposite of what I want to achieve. The DTs look washed out and obscured.

My original finishing schedule for the maple drawers:
-Sealcoat: one coat of Zinsser Sealcoat.
-Topcoat: x2-3 General Finishes High Performance Top Coat, Flat (for brevity ‘GF HPTC’). These are kitchen flatware/utensil drawers so will see a lot of action. These days I avoid the more toxic chemistry for health and safety concerns.

The main (only?) visual feature of these drawers is the Dovetail joinery, the pins end grain, on the drawer sides. The drawer fronts (false fronts) and rears will be out of view so don’t factor in. I want the DT’s to have some pop and be more prominent. I was under tremendous time pressure to get several projects completed ASAP, so I went with casual finishing advice instead of doing tests. Although I’ve never used Sealcoat it’s premixed, convenient, and economical so I tried it. What’s not to like?

After spraying the look is the opposite of what I was after. The end grain looks washed out. The tonal differences between end and face grain have been reduced rather than increased.

I’ve included some pics.
-1st: pic of the raw wood drawer wiped with denatured alcohol on the joint to darken the DT endgrain ... ballpark effect I want +/-.
-pic after shooting the Sealcoat.

The only thing I’ve tried to do to correct this is to wipe the joint with a rag wetted with denatured alcohol on a drawer front as a test, and although it did remove some of the shellac it had it no discernible impact on the endgrain. I fear I’ve simply sealed the endgrain.

I've a bunch of dewaxed Platina super blond flake and a very little bit of dewaxed orange flake on hand but due to time constraints and Covid-19 supply chain sluggishness ... grabbed a can of Sealcoat.

Lots of Lockwood H20 aniline dyes on hand but avoided using on the maple due to encountering and negotiating potential blotching.

Deeply grateful for any considered advice on how to tweak this into the direction that I want in the easiest manner possible.
Thanks a bunch for any ideas.

View higher quality, full size image (800 X 671)

I'm not sure the customer will notice. Who actually pulls out the drawers to see the dovetail contrast? Kind of like the back of the doors and drawer fronts. Who really looks at them? I think all they care is that they are smooth to touch.

But my only option would be to take a paint brush and add some color after sealer sand. So what's more important, taking an hour or two of your time to touch up or offering a discount if they complain?

Why oh why do professional woodworkers (I guess professionals) still experiment on finished product? For as long as there were two different kinds of clear finishes, anyone with any experience at all will tell you to practice on scrap. Then you just throw the error in the garbage and try again. So a century or more latter, there are still questions asking how to correct a mistake on finished work. I would have said a book should be written, but I guess with today's young uns, I need to join twitter and put up a weekly reminder I guess. There are 2 such issues going on here right now. Forehead slapping time!

To address your question. Since you've only done this to a couple, make a couple new drawers. Easy, fast, and you get the quality you want.

Your drawer photo #2 looks like any one of hundreds of hard maple drawers we do regularly. Im not sure if your popping the dovetail issue is just for yourself or for your customer? Usually dovetailed drawers are more an issue for the maker or just a checkbox as now the lowest cabs have DT drawers. But thats a conversation between you and your customer.

If its your own issue I'd say forget it and go on. Your dovetails look fine. If its got to be, I'd say your only issue is sand it back a bit and apply some stain to the pins and sand again to deal with the bleed that will happen on the tails.

As Rich said, you should have probably stained the pins prior to assembly.

Pride in your work is great, but if your customer is not demanding it, just cash the check.

Thanks a bunch for all the replies. I'm convinced to leave well enough alone.
: )

[OTOH, if one should desire to pop the DT's pins' end grain, what's the recommended technique in accordance with the above finishes?
If one uses stain before glue-up that would seem to prevent or complicate sanding the joint after assembly.
Would a quick drying oil (BLO) wiped on/off followed by a shellac barrier coat, then the waterbase top coat do the trick?]