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Hi guys!
I'm playing around with the idea of tinting some veneer for a Rossette I'm making. I've never tinted wood but I have a few ideas that I want to throw out here to get your input and expertise.
So I have a plank of spruce that was used as brace wood in my last (and only) build. I plan on slicing it up to .5 mm.
I'm a model maker, in our shop we have tints that we use for tinting water clear urethanes, silicones, anything really.... and we have a pressure pot which takes the air bubbles out of anything we need to pour.
So, my plan is to mix the tint, submerge the wood veneer in the tint and put it in the pressure pot. The pressure should pull the air out of the wood and suck the tint in.

Here are my questions, what do you think of this method? I've seen a YouTube video where the guy used fabric tint and boiling water over the stove. Seemed like a long and kind of messy process. Especially if you want to do a few colors. But I know this method will work.
Back to the pressure pot method, I'm not sure what would be best to mix the tint with. Should I use water?? Some thin clear varnish?
As I'm writing this I'm thinking water would be best, then dry in front of a heater.
I'd love to get your thoughts on this... And I know that many will say, "just buy them!!!."
I'm the type of guy that types in his CC info and right before he hits "enter" he thinks, "hmmmmm.......can I make that???"
As always, thanks for any input!
Raúl

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I used to dye my rosette strips. I found that spirit based leather dyes worked best and produced the most intense colors. I used a plastic tubing that you could melt with a propane torch to seal the ends and just slid the rosette strips into them and filled them with the leather dye. I made a little stand to hold many tubes at once for making a variety of colors. You can seal the top with plastic wrap, dowel, cork, etc. I was using Poplar and the dye penetrated all the way through in no more than a couple of days. Don't remember the thickness of the Poplar but probably around 1/32 to 3/64 (a mm or so). Your method will probably work fine but I found that water based dyes took a long time to penetrate and didn't produce the intense colors I wanted.

I’ve stabilized (dyed) wood pieces for a few inlays. I made an easy vacuum chamber and used a brake bleeder pump as the vacuum source.
The chamber is just a 1l pickle jar with the bleeder hose fitting siliconed in the lid.

I used Starbucks sample cups to hold the pieces and dye. I used transtint dye mixed in shellac, which I think was good for the stabilizing medium.
Then made an MDF board with holes to hold the cups. That sat in the jar (jar sits on its side)

The vacuum held strong for 24 hr and here are a few pictures of the vacuum chamber and the finished pieces I’ve done.










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I like your wood veneer inlay on the fretboard. I wanted to do something similar, but allowed myself to be dissuaded. The consensus at the time was that it wouldn’t hold up to use. How is yours holding up?


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That guitar is one my nephew is building for himself. Loves the Brit rock artists and his dad is British so he wanted the flag.

The guitar isn’t finished yet. Being stabilized with shellac I think it’ll hold up ok and he’s really good with the tattered flag look so over time he’ll just love it more and more as the oils dirty it up.


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My Facebook Guitar Page

"There's really no wrong way, as long as the results are what's desired." Charles Fox

"We have to constantly remind ourselves what we're doing....No Luthier is putting a man on the moon!" Harry Fleishman

"Generosity is always different in the eye of the person who didn't receive anything, but who wanted some." Waddy Thomson

Very interesting! How much vacuum did you pull? How deeply were you able to get the dye to penetrate? I assume the shellac didn’t interfere with glueing.?.

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That jar was awesome and the gauge on the pump showed 23 in-hg

Material thickness was 1/16-3/32” (from memory)

The shellac caused no gluing issues. All gluing was with CA.

Once the pieces dried it worked just like normal and when sanding or cutting each piece it showed the dye penetrate all through.

The long red piece on the flag wasn’t submerged entirely and other pieces sucked up all the material so it didn’t dye all through but that was my fault.

If I wanted to do larger pieces I could just buy a few other jars from good Will and fill the jar.

Jason Kostal who created the stain glass rosette uses a pressure cooker and is able to do several colours at once which would be nice.

When researching this, I looked up as many videos etc on wood stabilizing, which is where I found the jar and brake bleeder pump idea.


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_________________
My Facebook Guitar Page

"There's really no wrong way, as long as the results are what's desired." Charles Fox

"We have to constantly remind ourselves what we're doing....No Luthier is putting a man on the moon!" Harry Fleishman

"Generosity is always different in the eye of the person who didn't receive anything, but who wanted some." Waddy Thomson

GREAT info!!
Running some test pieces now. Will report back!
Currently in the pressure pot @60 PSI. Went with water and tint for the first run.

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