I second the use of shellac. I’ve been using shellac on a maple cabinet project I’m working on right now.

Maple is a proper bitch to sand because it’s so hard. I wouldn’t recommend sanding higher than 180 at most of else you risk glazing the wood, which makes it hard for your finish to work. Also any alcohol finish is going to dry extremely quickly and be very finicky to work with… Particularly on a very large continuous surface like a desk. It’s not impossible, but absolutely, definitely, practice first. Figure out your brushes, your mixture, your technique all ahead of time. When you hit that desk there’s no turning back and it’s go time.

I tried over a dozen different oil and gel based stains for the project, and shellac was far and away the best looking, due to maple’s exceptionally tight grain, and high tendency to blotch.

Good luck! I really enjoy working with maple, but boy is it a challenging medium.

did you get the conversion to 2e from that discord server? (I dont remember which)… I’ve always heard good things about that AP, and since I’m beginning to close in on the end of the one I’m running, I’m trying to keep my head up for what’s next.

I’ve run Age of Ashes, which… needs some massaging, and if you’re interested, I would recommend a pretty heavy rewrite of book 1 to reframe the motivations of the PCs. Once that is done, I think the AP would be magnificent. But without it… it’s a little weird.

Quest for the Frozen flame is awesome, and I’m dying to run it as more of a “one month interlude between games”.