sanding my stand

[dueces]

I am looking to stain my stand a Walnut color. I started to sand last night and had a tough time getting the oak stain or varnish off. The stand is the typical one you buy at your local LFS. It has a light oak color on it now. It might even be made by All-glass since that is what my tank is.
My questions is do i have to get all the stain off or is it ok to sand it a few times and get it nice and smooth. I used my corner cat sander with 80g and 220g to try and get the stain off. What is this stuff they put on the stands?
The new stain is going to be darker then what is on now. I plan on putting 3 or 4 coats of stain and poly on it and sand in bewteen coats.
If I don't get the stain off is that allright? Will it look crappy?
Thanks

 

[jmesmcm]

Unfortunately you need to get it all off or else the stain cannot penetrate the grain of the wood in the stand and it will look blotchy with light areas where the stain was unable to penetrate.

 

[dueces]

what if I just paint it with black water based paint. then put a couple coats of Poly over it.

 

[jmesmcm]

If you paint it just make sure that everything is sanded well enough that you will get good adhesion, a good scuffing using 120 would probably be ample, then depending on the paint you used the poly may not even be necessary and in fact redundant. Due to salt water environment I would probably recommend oil based paint though over water based.