Stain On Fretboard For Inlay

[John Abbett]

All,

I inlaid my rosewood fingerboard with some hard maple, some little triangles on the base side of the neck. The look pretty nice. The guitar is all maple (335 type) and will be dyed yellow burst to dark red, or maybe just dark red. In any case, I was thinking I would dye the maple inlay to match the color of the body/neck/headstock face. I currently do most of my bending on the treble strings, so bending won't happen much on top of the maple. The frets are fairly large, I won't be pushing them down to the fretboard that much, do you thing I will have trouble with the dye scratching off? The transtint powder dye that I've been using goes pretty deep.

Anyone ever done this? I can always touch it up. I'm not planning on putting a finish over the top. I don't want flaking problems in the future.

-john

[ihocky2]

I'm not sure how much flaking off you'll get, but how about how much dye will bleed back onto your fingers as you are playing and getting sweaty? I would be more worried about them getting grungy looking first. Look how quickly a maple board gets nasty if it is not finished.

[John Abbett]

I plan on staining them deep red. So, if they get grungy, they will be grungy deep red. Not that big of a deal. I agree maple gets nasty.

I have a ebony board that I put the Stu-Mac black dye on it, it doesn't come off on my fingers at all.

Do any of you put finish on the fingerboard? I usually just oil and buff.

-John

[Six String Theory]

If you have maple inlays you probably are going to need to put some sort of finish on them anyway, so that would cover the stain and prevent stain from wearing.