Wood Stains

What's a common colour stain used for tiki bars?
I have my bar top made from pine, and I've burned it nicely. The rest of the wall is pine as well that has been aged to look like the inside of a ship (dents, bangs, wormholes etc) and now I'd like to add some oil/stain of sorts to make it a bit richer, and age it.

Home depot will let you test color stain just like paint. Pick out the color you want and they will put some on a wood stir stick. I've even been known to take a burned piece of scrap wood in with me and ask them to test it on that.

The Minwax VOC complaint stains in the gallon cans brush on, dry, and color completely different than exact same color in the quart size. I hate the VOC stain.

Varathane makes a stain called "Kona"...looks great on the can, but dried way too dark for my tastes.

I ended up doing the majority of my hut in one of the Minwax walnut stains.

Good luck

I'm curious to know what stains people are using as well. I've 1x2' furring ready to be distressed and stained this week with the goal of using to secure bamboo reed to a ceiling this weekend.

So I tried a couple and the one I liked the most over burned pine was a Danish Oil in Fruit Tree. It gave it a really nice contrast with the burned wood. I'll post some pics in my Tiki Bar update which I can link later on when I upload shots. I tried a cherry and a black walnut, but both looked out of place. The black walnut was super dark brown.

The stain I used:

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=51164&forum=20&1

I stained the furring I'm using to hang bamboo reed fencing to my ceiling with a kona. I didn't burn the wood this time. Used rough sanding disks with a grinder first to distress the wood then wiped off the excess stain almost as quickly as I applied it. Came out pretty dark, but I'm happy with it. Hope to get the reed up and post pics later today.