Several of us have used water based stains. I used Bear (baier?) water based stain on my boat. No problems yet with the bonding.

With carefull brush work, you might be able to restain after you plane without getting bleeding. Especially if the strips of wood have glue joints between them to block the stain from migrating. Treat it like a canvas that your painting with watercolors.

The epoxy bonds to the wood mechanically, so I don't think you'll have any problems with that as a result of using the stain. Only caution I'd throw into that is that in my own experience the water based stains dry far to rapidly, leaving a scum of pigment on the surface of the wood. If you don't remove that, you could have problems.

> Has anyone tried water based stains under epoxy (particularly one with
> pigment like green) If in doubt I will sand it clean. I may end up with my
> cool forest green strip looking like somthing that got moldy.