Tutorial for making dyes

[Guest Litchfield Custom Gutars]

This will make small batches, but unlike the stewmac dyes (which are good to have, personally my new ones came from LMI) There isnt a lot of dye. Most clears have a UV resistance in them Auto clear, acrylic and poly do. As far as using this advice, sure it will work if you follow the tutorial, but if you want to dye more than one guitar, buy the dyes. That's how small a batch you get. one guitar and a little bit.

And here's the real bitch. I love that purple, and now I get to play around until I have it again. Good thing I have A LOT of dye

[daveq]

I think I like the color but it's so hard to know for sure using PC monitors. It looks maroon to me.

If you're up for some reviews on it (I know you're probably not after today) read on (these are meant as constructive I hope they are taken that way - really):

1. I think you had the same problems I had when doing the natural binding. I can see the dye ran unevenly on the lower horn. Some might think it's easy to fix but in my experience - it's not.

2. If you look at the pic looking down the neck, the guitar's body seems to be very uneven. Not just the carving but the average body height seems quite wavy - is that intentional?

3. Are you going to use mounting rings? It looks like you free-handed the routing and like most of us - made a few mistakes.

4. Did you spend a lot of time finish sanding the body? I made that mistake recently and edned up having to sand the first pass at painting off when I noticed some small scratches. I ended up spending a couple of days sanding to make sure that didn't happen again. I've been told that finishing is mostly in the wood prep and I am now a believer. I think I see scratches in the upper left part of the guitar and possibly a few other places. I know you've got some buffing to do - that's not what I'm talking about.

How are you going to buff the area between the neck pickup and the neck? That looks like it's going to be difficult. I have not build a neck through yet and am not familiar with these little snags that you can run into.

Again, I do like the color. I hope it stays for you. I really don't mean these comments as a slam but I will understand if you take them that way given everything that's been going on. I just want to help by providing an objective view.

[JFC]

The famous food thread...

This is a "warning" post from me...

I did NOT follow litch tutorial, and I did not use the same food dye.

I guess what I want to say is, try the food dye at your own risk, for me it didnt work.

this is how I did it:

I dyed the wood (mixed the food dye with water) with red dye.

Then I cleared it using "duplicolor" auto clear (rattlecans) 3 bottles or so.

This is how it looked then.... and now...

Now, this is just a cheap samick so no biggie, but if I had spent months building the guitar...

Oh well

I do NOT blame litch or anyone else, as I said earlier, I should have known better

[westhemann]

And it works. I encourage you to do so. I do now too, but if only a small batch is needed, this works, without the "Now what the hell am I gonna do with all this dye?"

umm...transtint dyes are to be mixed with alcohol or water(other stuff too)in any size batch you want.....i use denatured alcohol...and i have made test batches as small as 1/4 cup

[westhemann]

Here's the promised pics:

During finishing:

Ten minutes ago:

As you can see the fretboard is off, going to fix some things that have been bugging be about it.

i am sorry but that does look faded...and i doubt it has had much uv exposure,as it is still unfinished,and also the sun in idaho is way less harsh than in my part of the country

[Guest Litchfield Custom Gutars]

1. I think you had the same problems I had when doing the natural binding. I can see the dye ran unevenly on the lower horn. Some might think it's easy to fix but in my experience - it's not.

Oh hell yes, first attempt at natural binding. Looks like **** even more to me than you.

2. If you look at the pic looking down the neck, the guitar's body seems to be very uneven. Not just the carving but the average body height seems quite wavy - is that intentional?

I wish! Oh, i wish The carve was winged horribly, and the neck heel is off center (intentionally) and it adds to that effect.

3. Are you going to use mounting rings? It looks like you free-handed the routing and like most of us - made a few mistakes.

Oh yeah, chrome ones. IF I decide I can salvage it into a player.

. Did you spend a lot of time finish sanding the body? I made that mistake recently and edned up having to sand the first pass at painting off when I noticed some small scratches. I ended up spending a couple of days sanding to make sure that didn't happen again. I've been told that finishing is mostly in the wood prep and I am now a believer. I think I see scratches in the upper left part of the guitar and possibly a few other places. I know you've got some buffing to do - that's not what I'm talking about.

There are so many runs, scratches, and the like that its sad. I finished it with some poly and it wasnt cured when I jumped in head first into assembly. MISTAKE!! No finish sanding. Another mistake. Learn from it PLEASE!

How are you going to buff the area between the neck pickup and the neck? That looks like it's going to be difficult. I have not build a neck through yet and am not familiar with these little snags that you can run into.

I will be able to cover that with a mounting ring, and of course buff it when I take the pickup out. For the tight areas, a toothpick wrapped in terrycloth will do that.

I absolutely love the color, probably why I am trying to salvage it. Here's a hint. Spend as much time as possible on prototypes and the like. Unfamiliar territry is the easiest to screw up!

No slam taken, you pinpointed a lot of things that bother me that I want to fix.

[Guest Litchfield Custom Gutars]

And I just noticed the neck pocket looks off center and really like ****.

Good God! I'm bashing my own guitar??

[daveq]

Litch - I'm really glad to see you have a sense of humor about it.

[Librero]

well, i followed Litch's procedure. my finish work still looks the same after six or seven months.

i really find it strange that this thread still takes some bashing up to now. it has worked for some of us. all it took was one person with a faded finish who didn't even follow the instructions for others to call this a useless thread.

When it comes to UV protection, you need all you can get.

not necessarily, i think. don't get me wrong. it doesn't hurt to have all the protection you can get. but i think the issue has been a little bit overrated here .

i mean how many of us leave our guitars outdoors, under direct sunlight all day, everyday? now, if it was a car we're talking about, then by all means, get as much UV protection as possible.

in my case, tropical sunlight does hit my guitar every afternoon for a few hours. it's summertime here, with really hot, intense sunlight. but the finish is still holding up pretty well.

[daveq]

I honestly don't think the UV issue is overrated. If you know you're never going to sell the guitar and you don't play out much - then it probably isn't a big deal. I always like to build my guitars as is they are going to be sold. I'd be embarassed if someone came to me a year or two after the sale and showed me a faded finish. I'd also be pretty upset if I had to refinish my own guitar in a couple of years because I decided not to use a more widely accepted dye.

So, I've seen enough bashing for a while but I do think it's important to point out the UV issue in the first topic for people who just don't know. At least let them decide given the facts. I think there were several people who were trying to point out that there really isn't much benefit in using the food coloring - so why take the chance on the UV issue if there isn't much of a reward (if at all)?

I'm really glad yours came out looking good. I think it's too soon to declare success in terms of the fading issue but I do hope it stays for you.

[Librero]

thank you, dave. it's really great how much care you put to your product.

i'm not declaring it as a success yet. but it's too soon to dismiss the procedure outright either, just because a single work got screwed.

like i said before, there's this dye spill i have outside the house which i'm also observing. i wish i had taken a picture of it.

just to be sure, since more than a few of us aren't exactly experts in chemistry here. are we sure UV is the real issue here?

isn't six months way too fast for a food color dyed guitar to fade the way JFC's guitar did, even if he didn't use polycrylic? there has got to be some other catalyzing factor in that case.

[jbkim]

This is an interesting read, hopefully it hasn't been posted before in this thread :

http://www.woodworking.org/WC/Garchive01/3_27colorants.html

Note

Most of the methods and recipes presented here are meant mostly for fun. They are not really meant for production use because they are sometimes slow and not necessarily inexpensive. However, I do use pigmented waxes of my own making, every day. I also use the homemade glazing stain (gilp).

The colors some of these homegrown finishes produce are not very colorfast, either, compared with modern dyes and pigments. There is a reason we use more modern chemistry when we use modern finishes. The results, in general, are far superior to materials and methods available 200 years ago.

Food colors are not lightfast, but will last for several years. Red and yellow fade the fastest.

[daveq]

nyjbkim - thanks for that link - that's a pretty interesting article.

Librero - I know what you mean about the 6 months thing - maybe there's something else going on that caused that? It does seem fast but I really don't know.

The single work being screwed is a big deal to me though. If it were mine that was the single work being screwed - ughh. Just think about all the prep work that was done, the time to mask everything, dye the wood, spray the clear (lacquer probably being the worst case - 1 week worth of spraying - 4 to 8 weeks of waiting for curing), buffing, and then AAAAAHHHHHH - I have to do it all over again!!

What I mean is - if I had not known that this was a non-standard dye and thought I was doing it the "right way" (since it is labeled as a tutorial) and ended up having to redo the entire finish - man, I would really be bummed.

I guess that's more than enough discussion on this though - just wanted to point out that a single work can still be a big deal to the person who has to redo the finish. Some will look at it as a statistic but I wouldn't want it to be me.

[Guitarfrenzy]

I hope this topic dies down soon.. it's getting old!!!!!!!

First off, if your crazy enough to use food coloring on a guitar body, then you deserve to have a faded guitar later down the road. Lack of common sense or experience will result in taking bad advice, but it will be a learning experience either way, just hate to see people who are starting out actually trying it if it doesn't work right. The first thing you know is that people will start talking and word will spread that people on Project Guitar are a bunch of amateurs who don't even know what they are doing.

Secondly, maybe Litch will retract his post so others don't mess their guitars off and get mad about it when something didn't work right. If he doesn't, then someone should if they feel that it will cause other people to harm their guitars.

Thirdly, the dye is no cheaper than using the right kinda wood dye. So what's gained in taking the food dye approach, even Litch said it wasn't any cheaper, just an experiment. I really don't think he realized that he might be straying people in the wrong direction, he just wanted to show how he did something using an alternative method. Which is ok, but I agree coming from a guy who has Custom Guitars behind his name, makes newer people think that it's a proven way of doing dying.

Fourth, I'm glad we finally had someone like Rhoads that won't just set back and let people ruin their guitars without calling their hand at it. Keep up the good work Rhoads, Wes, Scott, LGM, and alot of others for trying to keep a higher standard a part of Project Guitar. Brian has done a great job, but he is simply too busy to keep everything in order.

I personally would love to see either the post be renamed to "Dye experiment" or either taken off the site if everyone agrees that it contains questionable methods. I don't have anything against Litch though, I just think that he didn't realize the long term effects of using food coloring, and maybe still doesn't. But whatever happens will happen, I just hope after this mess is over everyone can still be friends.

[Maiden69]

I'm new, but I got a question. Do the dye's are uv resistant, I went to the site that WES recomended and here is a copy of the bottom of the statement.

"Not for exterior use. Each 2 oz. bottle yields about 2 quarts of dye-stain."

It states " Not for exterior use", thats like saying that it's not UV resistant. Like car paint the clear coat "urethane" is usualy the one thats UV Res. I will like to know because I have an Epiphone LP that has a cherry burst flame maple and I will like to put a veneer on my strat to make it look the same. And I was checking this tread to obtain more info, but I just got more confused on the subject. Why don't instead of bashing each other, just express your point and the pros and cons.

I most definately won't be using food colors thans to the Samick Guitar photos, thats the last thing I will want to happen to my guitar. Other than that this has been the best guitar forum that I have found on the Internet , thanks to all the moderators for this site...

[daveq]

Why don't instead of bashing each other, just express your point and the pros and cons.

That's exactly what I have been trying to do. If it came across as a bash somewhere - that's not the intention. I really tried to lay out the issues and present some questions and facts as I understand them.

I think Litch knows that I am not out to bash him here - just want to make sure people aren't mislead and have the opportunity to decide for themselves if this is something they should try or not. I am not a well seasoned finisher and would really hate to have to redo a finish when I could have easily avoided it.

[Librero]

The single work being screwed is a big deal to me though.

yes it should, assuming the only variable factor spanning several guitars is the food color itself. but in this case, it's not.

I personally would love to see either the post be renamed to "Dye experiment" or either taken off the site if everyone agrees that it contains questionable methods.

renaming the thread is a good suggestion. but to take it off the site isn't. so far, no one has really given any conclusive proof that this method is crap. it'll take a long time to have that, if ever.

if you give the rest of us a few years to see what happens with our food color dyed guitars, then you'll get your proof, assuming the dye does fade. mine is already seven months and counting.

if the color remains stable after that time and you're still not convinced, give us another three years, and then five...

[tsl602000]

if you give the rest of us a few years to see what happens with our food color dyed guitars, then you'll get your proof, assuming the dye does fade. mine is already seven months and counting.

you're missing the point: why risk fading if you can buy the correct dye for the same money?

[Librero]

you're missing the point: why risk fading if you can buy the correct dye for the same money?

because some of us already have food color dyed guitars. i might as well turn it into a quasi experiment, as if it's a terribly difficult thing to do at this point. a friend of mine used food color and water only on a cheap bass guitar body last month. i'll also be keeping an eye on that.

and also, the "correct" dye is not readily available locally to some people, like me. and i've really looked. i'm planning on ordering some online even if shipping doubles or triples the cost for a future project, but it'll be a while.

and since i'm at it, i'll put in my additional reasons for using food color. this won't apply for just about anyone else, of course. i know.

i do understand what Litch meant with small batches. at the time, i wasn't sure how deep i'm going into this new hobby of mine. i didn't want to fork out huge bucks for imported stuff unless i knew i was going into it all the way. now i know, and using food color as a dye provided a good medium for practicing my dye/transparent finishing skills without leaving me with a costly pile of stuff i'll never use in case i tell myself i don't want to do this anymore after the project. my skills are still not where i want it to be, but that'll be helped later on.

i don't regret trying it, regardless of whether it will fade later on or not. i might even like how it'll fade if it does. but of course, this last paragraph is simply a personal opinion.

[tsl602000]

and also, the "correct" dye is not readily available locally to some people, like me. and i've really looked. i'm planning on ordering some online even if shipping doubles or triples the cost for a future project, but it'll be a while.

I doubt it. I live in a country where fillers, paint, sanding sealer and stuff is almost impossible to get, but I can get dye in any paint store.

Other than that, if you're building a guitar that costs a few hundred bucks, why would you even take the risk.

Oh whatever. experiment en ruin finishes as much as you want....

Some people just don't want to learn.

[rhoads56]

you're missing the point: why risk fading if you can buy the correct dye for the same money?

because some of us already have food color dyed guitars. i might as well turn it into a quasi experiment, as if it's a terribly difficult thing to do at this point. a friend of mine used food color and water only on a cheap bass guitar body last month. i'll also be keeping an eye on that.

and also, the "correct" dye is not readily available locally to some people, like me. and i've really looked. i'm planning on ordering some online even if shipping doubles or triples the cost for a future project, but it'll be a while.

This is rubbish Libero. Aniline is produced and distributed world wide. It has been used in dye production for an extremely long time. It is THE standard. I live in the most isolated city in the world (check the guiness book), and within five minutes drive, i can source seven different brands, eight different colours, from four different stores. All but one of these brands are made in Europe, and the USA. Only one is made in my country.

So far, the only conclusions i, and others, have come to is this:

1. Using food dye COSTS MORE than the correct wood/lacquer dyes/tinters.

2. The ability to achieve a particular colour shade, is HAPHAZARD at best (use between 2-8 BOTTLES of food dye..)

3. The ability to mix a water based product with mineral or oil based finishes, limits its effective usage.

4. There is no conclusive proof that the food dye WILL NOT react with certain woods, or finishes.

5. There is one (in fact, i think it might be two) cases on this forum alone, that state that the dye has faded.

To date, ABSOLUTELY NO-ONE, has presented ANY evidence, that this method is BENEFITUAL, in ANY way. There are NO positives, a few UNKNOWN factors, and absolutely NO cost benefits, and NO usages benefits.

I actually looked for pricing of food dyes today, when i was out for lunch. I can buy the CORRECT ANILINE dyes, for the same price as three bottles of food dye. That was the cheap stuff. Some of it was EQUAL in price. Remember, you need 2-8 bottles to achieve the correct colour shade. My aniline power dyes, in a jar the size of a barrel shaped pencil sharpener, will make three litres of stain, which is enough for 25+ guitars.

why you two continue to argue, for a method that is haphazard, more costly, and unproven in the long term (with definate proof of short term fading, and sporadic results), is totally beyond my comprehension.

[Librero]

I doubt it. I live in a country where fillers, paint, sanding sealer and stuff is almost impossible to get, but I can get dye in any paint store.

You can doubt all you want. But you don't live here. Fillers, paint and sealers are quite common around here, in various levels of quality. But alcohol based wood dyes are quite a rarity, unless you want the natural colored wood stains.

Oh whatever. experiment en ruin finishes as much as you want....

Some people just don't want to learn.

It's probably true more than you know.

Contrary to what you may think, I do want to learn, and I am learning. Isn't experimentation a method of learning?

I am neither encouraging nor discouraging the practice of using food color. I just want to keep an open mind until there's enough to prove or disprove the validity of using food color. Circumstances permit me to find out for myself. I understand that it's not the case for others, but don't dismiss what I'm doing as a waste. It's not like taking some pictures with a digicam every six months or so is a big deal. If nothing else, I'm doing a favor for those not willing to try this method out. If the guitar fades, then here's an additional case in point against using food color.

If you're worried I'll be using food color and ruin many other guitars, don't be. It'll probably be just this one. I want the "correct" dye too. Since most of the stuff I'll need for my future project will be bought online, I suppose including some dye with them won't hurt my wallet much.

[Librero]

rhoads56,

there is no conclusive proof on either sides, really.

look, i don't want to argue in circles. it's not like i'm proclaiming food dye as the holy grail or anything, man. i don't think it'll ever be better than the real thing to the eyes of many. even i would prefer to use alcohol based dyes the minute i get my hands on them. at this point, i just want to know how well Litch's method can stand the test of time.

i'll see for myself on my guitar, and am hoping to see pics of Litch's guitars too as time goes by.

[daveq]

yes it should, assuming the only variable factor spanning several guitars is the food color itself. but in this case, it's not.

I'm not sure what you mean but I think I understand why you are arguing this one. Having people shoot down this method after having used it on you guitar can sound like people are shooting down your project as well - guilt by association kind of thing. It's similar to when someone says something negative about a certain type of bridge or wood that you used and sometimes feel like they are then saying something negative about your guitar as a result.

Maybe that's not it but the way I understand this issue is:

1. It is titled "Tutorial" which I think you said you agree may be misleading.

2. There are no real benefits to using this method but there are some potential risks (which could cost someone a lot of time and money as well).

So, I certainly am not saying that you or your guitar are substandard as a result of using this method - I just don't want anyone to be mislead in the future. When you said that one work failing doesn't justify declaring this method as no good - I disagree with that. You make it sound like one guitar's worth of refinishing is somehow trivial and not worthy of considering when judging this method which everyone seems to agree has very little (if any) benefit in using. So any guitar that has to be refinished as a result of fading in my opinion is worthy of considering when judging this method. As you probably realize, that is a lot of time and possibly a lot of money wasted - even if it's one guitar.

I really hope yours is an exception and remains looking good. Please post some pics sometime so we can see (not for the fading issue - just to see your guitar).

Peace!

[Librero]

dave,

well, like i said, i'm not really defending the method. i just want to see conclusive proof whether it's bad or not in the long term.

yeah, i didn't really think much about it before, but the term "tutorial" is misleading here, which is why i agreed that renaming the thread is a good idea.

i didn't really mean that the single case we have here of the food color fading is trivial. in fact, i agree that it is a plausible cause for further scrutiny of the method (i think that's what some people with food color dyed guitars are passively doing right now, probably even Litch). but i don't agree with using it as conclusive proof as a few of us have done. Had JFC used polycrylic and i was sure his food color didn't contain salt or any other weird ingredient, then this proof would be more compelling.

again, i'm not really defending the method or even my workmanship, since i still consider myself a newbie anyway. i'll accept any critique, no matter how bad, so long as i can learn from it. this sounds cheesy, but i'm out for the truth regarding the matter of fading. i can't argue with the costs since they're relative to one's locale.

thank you, dave. oh, and i already posted a pic of my guitar some pages back in this thread. it was my first project: a recondition job with the help of a local luthier.