How To Dye With Style

[humbuckr]

I read the re-ranch 101 article on finishing and have a more questions than when i started.

Any good posts or how to's for dyeing a maple carve top. I've heard that applying black dye and sanding the wood down can bring out the grain more.

i have a very average piece of maple that i want to use to brighten up the tone of a custom build i am doing using a mahagony body and i am debating whether its worth the trouble to do the dyeing if the maple is nothing special.

my original plan was to do a gold top.

thanks in advance.

btw - if anyone can point me to the 'donate' link i would be happy to pay for the free advice and throw in some of my own

[wardd]

Humbucker,

I followed this tutorial on my first guitar project. http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/3d.htm

It uses a two coat staining method where you apply a dark color, sand then add color over it.

Imortant: I first used some of the cutoff material to test different strength and methods of applying the stain.

Here's what mine looks like. http://209.56.91.10/TeacherPages/Ward/Guit.../GuitarPics.htm

It works great with the quilted grain, my theory is that the twisting in the grain of the quilt causes the first color stain to soak in more in some areas so when you sand and leave only a slight bit of stain left it accentuates the patterns.

Not sure how it would work on less figured wood.

As I said before experiment first.

Good Luck,

d ward

[humbuckr]

Here's what mine looks like. http://209.56.91.10/TeacherPages/Ward/Guit.../GuitarPics.htm