Red Flame Top

[Arseneau]

I'm doing a flame maple top on a 5-string bass and I bought some red aniline dye from Lee Valley (powdered stuff) and I have been messing around with scraps trying to get that cool deep look that you get using black/sand back/blue.

I learned from the tortoiseshell thread that you shouldn't use black under anything but blue, grey, etc., which totally makes sense.

So what do you use as the "darker" coat for red? Brown? Just a more potent mixture of the same red dye? That's what I was thinking and I tried it on scrap, but I haven't yet found the right proportions to get a good contrast.

Any suggestions? The look I'm aiming for is something like this:

[mikhailgtrski]

Drak says he darkens up his red base with a little black.

A strong mix of dark brown or red mahogany will also work. One of my test pieces with the dark brown base turned out really close to your pic. It looks like there's a little yellow or amber in there along with the red.

Mike

[Mattia]

Red+black worked fine for me...

[Pr3Va1L]

It really depends on where you get your black...

Because black often is very dark blue/purple (but not always)

You're really better off with a very dark brown.