Staining banded edges

[dpaton]

Just looking for a little advice here. I'm working on a new stereo cabinet, and there's a TON of edge banding I'll be doing with 1/2 x 3/4" red oak on the edges of some 3/4" birch ply. The oak will be getting a coat of Minwax 215 (red oak stain, to match some furniture in my living room) and the birch ply needs a satin poly clearcoat (to match some other furniture). The stain will also get poly'd for protection.

So my question is, do I:

A. Finish the edges before I glue them on, then go back, fill the brad holes, and fix the stain before I poly the whole thing.

B: Attach the edge banding, fill the brad holes, then mask the ply off and stain the edge before covering the whole mess in poly.

Right now I'm leaning toward A, but I'd appreciate the expertise of people who've done this before. I've finished a lot of wood, but never done a two-tone thing like I am now.

Thanks

-dave

[blame]

myself i would go for plan a i would be worried about the stain bleeding under the masking tape while painting i've seen this happen many times
just my 2 cents
blame

[Jeffrey Schronce]

A . . . .

and why brad nail? Do you have plenty of clamps? I would stain edge then glue then on with appropriate clamps. No real need for brads.

[dpaton]

and why brad nail? Do you have plenty of clamps? I would stain edge then glue then on with appropriate clamps. No real need for brads.

I've got a pile of clamps, but I have an extremely short timeline to get the work done (48 hours) so I need to be able to rotate the clamps around to other things as I nail and glue. 6 shelves, plus the carcass (and all the time to split, trim and sand the 10' red oak 1x3s I picked up tonight) doesn't leave me much time to leave the clamps on for the drying cycle. Given my choice, I'd be doing this over a month, not a weekend, but life demands that it happen faster, thus the brads.

-dave