New stain and poly testing

As I mentioned in my previous post I bought some new stain so I tried it out last night. I bought a couple of little cans of polyurethane when I did my first ever stain and poly job on my sons step stool. I have a little can of Minwax Oil-Modified poly that I used on the step stool and a Varathane water based poly. Since I am using a water based stain I figured that I would try the water based poly too.
The seat and shelves really warped when I cut down the 1x10 to size so now the dividers dont fit correctly. They are sitting on the crown in the middle and dont touch at the front or back so I decided to glue and tack in some supports on the sides. I am using the dividers since they are sanded down to 120 grit like everything else. I am going to sand one more of them to 220 grit to test more staining. When I stained the step stool it was only sanded to 120 and I was really happy with the choice it turned out.

I put supports in for the shelves just to play it safe. I apllied glue and then just tacked them in with 1.25" brads in my nail gun.

I flooded the sample with stain and let it sit for 10 minutes.

The piece on the left is the one I flooded with a brush and let sit for 10 minutes. The one on the right I apllied the stain with a rag and just worked it in for a few seconds and then wiped right off again. It is a little liighter and less blotchy.

This is with 1 light coat of the Varathane water based poly. The directions on the can of stain said that I could apply poly after 1 hour. I waited 1.25 hours and put it on at 11:45 PM.