I did the final shaping and glue-up of the scrub plane’s tote a while back. That, along with the edge chamfering, left me with this:

I tested it, and found it much to my liking.

Because the tote will likely see heavy use, I decided to varnish it, and before doing that, I decided to stain it. I had a can of “golden pecan” (a pigment stain) in the cabinet, so I tried it out on a test piece of beech. It didn’t seem horrible, so here is the plane after two coats (with sanding between):

There is a little blotching. I believe that I should have probably done a washcoat. It seemed to have avoided a lot of problems on that old saw handle.

Though passable now, I feel that I should sand and do another coat of stain. The second coat evened things out a lot, so a third should do it most of the rest of the way?

After that step, I would like to even it out with clear varnish. Satin polyurethane again? It’s worked well for me so far.