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Hi all, I am soon to be finishing my latest build, I want to stain it black (mahogany body) and fill the grain with another color, whether it's blue green or red, I don't know yet. The filler I have is bought from StewMac, I don't see it on their site anymore, but it is a waterbase grain filler.
It says to mix with water before using it, so that is when I will color the filler, but I don't know what kind of consistency to get it to. I tried on some scrap, but the filler I guess was too runny? It did fill the grain, but it also colored through the black on the rest of the wood.... I would certainly appreciate some advise on how to do this properly. I am using Keda wood dyes for this project. I think it's fairly new on the market, not sure if any one has any experience. They come in powder form, and you mix with water to get the desired color. highly concentrated, so not much needs to be used for nice solid even colors, or so I'm told.

You will need to stain and seal your body prior to filling. Post done pics when it's done, sounds like it may be a cool idea.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

thanks Brian, in regards to sealer, what sort of product am I looking for, should I go to a hardware/paint store? The first guitar I did was in Tung oil only, and I did not use a sealing agent. I'm just not sure what to look for

What do you plan on using for a finish? That and the brand will determine what to use that will work best. I suppose that a coat of de-waxed shellac at around 1/2lb. cut would work in a lot of instances. I usually sandwich my paste fillers between two seal coats when doing lacquer.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

It's a powdered dye that's water/alcohol soluble. Then after the grain filling is done, I was thinking either poly or shellac. I have a can of poly already, so I may just use that.

Shellac would work well under either of those.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

I would think that you'd have to be careful. If you stain the wood, then use a colored filler you'd need to be really careful or really lucky to avoid sanding through the stain to bare wood when sanding back the filler. I'm sure it can be done, but I wouldn't try it in a million years. MHO.

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Is the filler Timbermate? The Colortone I think is basically the same thing. With the Timbermate, I found that if you get it the consistency of a thick pancake batter it's just about right.

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

That's part of the reason for the sealer between the stain and grain filler.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Yep. Read too fast and missed that part. But I still think you'd need to be real careful, especially if you've never used a paste filler before. Since the OP doesn't even know the proper consistency, experience with it might not be his strong suit.
Even so, experience comes by doing, and with the caveats mentioned, I say go for it. Nothing like success to build confidence....or failure to gain experience.

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

So, sealing after dyeing and before filling can help prevent sanding through to the dye?
And, it's OK to seal under and over the filler?
If this is true, I'll give it a try. I use Behlen sealer and instrument lacquer.
What would be a filler to try? I'm done with epoxy. Is there a good clear filler?
For some reason I'm hungry for pancakes.

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

Based on that I would recommend a paste filler like pore-o-pac. Will likely take 2-3 applications of filler to get a good fill with 24 hrs dry time between. I do it all the time on necks with a dye.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

timbermate is the stuff I am using, I have natural color and "mahogany", which if you look carefully behind the mahogany label, it says something like "red ochre" or something like that. Can't remember now.
I mentioned using poly or shellac in an earlier post, I don't know why I wrote shellac, but I was thinking lacquer, although nitro is not available in a spray bomb where I live, or anywhere nearby that I am aware of, there are other types of lacquer available. I don't have anywhere to buy shellac flakes either, but I have found sources online with reasonable shipping to Canada, or within. I know they have canned liquid forms of dewaxed shellac, are these suitable to use?

Zinnser Seal-coat is a good shellac sealer in a can. just make sure it is fresh. Works under most finishes.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

thanks again, I found the ZInnser stuff. would it make sense to put a sealer coat before my dye coat? Starting my finish this evening hopefully.

If you seal first, the stain or dye will not be able to penetrate into the wood and will likely cause adhesion problems. All staining must be done first.

_________________
Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

thanks again Brian. Would it be a good idea to seal my back and sides before dying the top, since I only want my top stained? I think this would prevent the dye from soaking in that may run down the sides?

I generally find it easier to spray the entire guitar body whenever possible. The time spent in masking, and the potential to pull up spruce fibers when you remove the tape are both negatives. If you have used a plastic type of binding it will be far quicker and easier to stain the top and then scrape the bindings clean prior to sealing. If you used wood bindings then I might be more inclined to say yes.

_________________
Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Would you apply a finish to an ebony head plate, or leave it raw?

I finish my ebony head plates.

_________________
Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

So I got my guitar stained black, and sealed in shellac. looks great. yesterday I whipped up three different colored fillers. The blue I originally intended ended up too dark, I didn't think you would be able to see it. The second color ended up being somewhat teal, as I was trying to get a lighter blue. this was kind of ugly. SO i mixed up a red, since that is what I see most often. the red looked awesome, nice and blood red. really nice. I applied this to my guitar, and it looked frigging great, an hour or two later, once it was dry, however.... it was PINK!
I got myself too excited, and I forgot to test this on scrap, which was a major bonehead idea. is there any way to fix it? do I need to sand it right back down to bare wood again?I tried putting a coat of red stain on top of it, but it didn't seem to change the color. Maybe I just needed more pigment in my stain too, who knows. Finishing is the only part of lutherie I find intimidating. So far, it certainly has not been very enjoyable for me.

What does it look like when you wet it back out? Does it turn red again? Sometimes the color returns when the clear is applied....Sometimes not. But hey, it takes a man to play a black and pink guitar If you ever get tired of this part of the job I do finish work for people, contact me if you're interested.

_________________
Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Thanks Brian, I ended up sanding it all back to the bare wood and dying it black again. I just put a coat of sealer on it this morning, and hopefully it will be good to take the grain filler this evening. If this doesn't work, the whole thing is going to be black, lol.

Good God, finishing this guitar is turning out to be a nightmare! After I sanded it back down to bare wood, I dyed it black again, put a sealer coat of shellac, from a can, let it dry, levelled any high spots, made sure they were not past the sealer coat, and filled my grain blue. Let that dry for 24 hrs, sanded it down level, and it looked AWESOME!!! I wish I had left it at that... I put another coat of shellac on it, since this seemed like the thing to do, and all my blue disappeared. the whole guitar is black... I thought whatever, it's fine, the black looks great anyway. So I sanded back my first shellac layer with 800grit. everything looked good. cleaned it up for a second coat, and after that dried, there were some fisheyes or bubbles or something in that coat. So this morning I started sanding back that layer to level for another coat. Most of the fisheyes came out no problem, but there are two sections that they will not come out, and the eyes are bigger. also, now when i look at the right angle, the finish is not level, it has high and low spots all across the top. I am getting so frustrated with this finish. the original effect is gone, it's full of fisheyes, and all these high and low spots... good lord. the high and low spots are all in the shellac layers I'm sure, as the wood was perfectly flat, and after it was dyed, I knocked back the raised grain with a paper towel until smooth again.

Time to get my hands on some spray equipment I think... I want to get this right since every other aspect of guitar building is 100% enjoyable for me... I'm at a loss of what to do here. I can keep sanding through the fisheyes, but I'm afraid I'll end up with spots of bare mahogany showing through... I should have gone with poly, but I used shellac as my sealer, and it says specifically not to use under poly finishes.
Somebody come hold my hand through this, please?!

Okay, I just saw this thread and I think I can offer some advice. I've done quite a bit of a finish like this where we stain oak black and use a contrasting color in the grain, usually a grey to brown color. My finish schedule is to wire brush the wood first which opens up the pores slightly (I like the toothbrush shaped, curly bristle, stainless wire brushes from Harbor Freight for this. The stiffer the bristle the worse the job it'll do, although the brass bristle brushes don't do enough). Then dye the wood black, which is not the end of the black as the dye still shows much of the grain. Then I mix some black pigment into a washcoat of vinyl sealer, which means I'm adding less than five percent pigment to the straight sealer and then thinning it down 100 percent with lacquer thinner. Spray that on and black out the wood. The idea is to get a good color layer down while not building any noticeable mil thickness. Generally you want to preserve the depth of the pores until after you get the color layer in there so you can get maximum contrast. After the color layer I like to spray a full coat of vinyl sealer over the top of it so you have a good boundary layer for the next steps.

I have generally used glazes for my pore fill layers but I also haven't been going for a closed pore finish at the end. I think you can use the Pore-o-pac stuff just fine, but the color is one thing to think about. When you are talking color it's better to be on the light side than the dark side. If you try and go too dark it ends up being lost with the black color behind it. I would experiment on scraps using pore-o-pac, I've also dyed sheetrock joint compound and used it as a grain filler (which sounds absurd but it works), or you could go with a glaze like I've used and then go with an alternate grain filling technique such as epoxy over the top of it. After you get the color in, and I'd also advise getting as much of the excess off of the surface as you can before it dries, I like taking the residue off with 0000 steel wool. I find sandpaper to be much too aggressive and you'll just end up going back down through your background color before you know it. Be very careful at outside edges, roundovers, corners, as the sealer is usually thinnest at those spots. Take your time, work with the grain and stop when you see the blackness of the wood come back.

From there you can start laying down topcoats, which usually means lacquer for me (not instrument lac mind you this is furniture that I'm mostly finishing). I can't speak to the compatibility of poly over the top of that as it's not a product I really use often, though I'm sure that info is out there. Shellac would bond to it but I'm thinking shellac is pretty thin so if you will be putting down a lot of coats. The reason I like to use vinyl sealer for this process is it seems to give a nice boundary layer for the pore coloring and subsequent steel wool cleaning, but it's also able to be sprayed onto and give good adhesion over 24 hours later.

I can say that it's taken me a number of projects before I've become really happy with this process. Experiment, experiment, experiment.