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My plan was to stain the maple neck, but now i relize that i propably have to paint it cause its gotten so dirty from me working on it. I do not think i will be able to get all the dirt off it with any liquid. Maybe acetone, but I cant use that stuff near the rosewood fingerboard as it will create a mess. I already did use it and got parts of the maple stained red.

Do you do anything to prevent the wood getting dirty? or do you use sandpaper to remove dirt(i dont want to sand to much on the neck), or is there anonther solution? I have some liberon furniture cleaner ment for cleaning shellac, so it is gently, havent tried it yet so dont know if it will work.

You can shellac it while it’s still clean to help w this


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Not sure how to clean it though:/


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A scraper would help to clean the wood...

_________________
Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

Your prep sand for finishing should remove any surface dirt and contamination, especially on a non porous wood like maple. If it doesn't you are not prepping any where near well enough.

_________________
Brian

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

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Maybe im not. Anyways whats your thought on using strong stuff like aceton on unfinished wood? It seems to me to be fine for non oily woods like maple.

Just out of curiosity, why would you want to use a solvent on raw wood. If it is to clean, sanding or scraping is the only way to clean light colored woods like maple or holly. A solvent will not clean, only push darker "dirt" into the lighter wood.
Photos would help us understand the problem. Do you plan to dye/stain the maple dark? If you have rubbed acetone into the maple by rubbing the rosewood/acetone "dye" into the maple, your only choice is to dye the maple as dark or darker than the blemishes you caused.
Normal procedure is to finish dark woods next to light with several coats of clear finish before dying the light wood. After dying, scrape the finish off the dark wood and proceed with your finish process. I would suggest masking off the rosewood, sanding the maple and then dye. Remove the tape and finish.

I’m with Brian. If sanding and a blast from an air hose doesn’t get surface dirt off, you probably haven’t sanded enough. Many years ago at Palomar there was an instructor who had his own way of teaching students to properly prep a surface. If they came to him with a guitar that was indifferently sanded the instructor would mark all over a guitar with a pencil. Sand the pencil marks off, then you are likely to have leveled and removed tool marks.

If you can get pencil marks off, you should be able to get surface grime off.


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Solvents seem to carry color into the wood, not out of it. When I have light and dark wood together I find that scraping after sanding cleans up the residue pretty well. If you are actually doing staining and trying to keep it out of other wood that can be very tricky - masking, coating with something like shellac and scraping all can be effective.

How about a picture?

I am sure that when i used acetone that the actone removed oils from the rosewood. If you try to rub a piece of rosewood with acetone on a piece of paper you will see the piece of paper becoming reddish this does not happen on lighter non oily woods. Its a stain, I might even try putting some scrap pieces of rosewood in a jar with acetone to create my custom stain.


I do not think using acetone to a lighter wood will add any color whatsoever, Acetone is often used with dyes.

I wasn't sure from your original post if your problem was contaminating the light colored wood with something, maybe dust from sanding something dark like a fretboard or binding or if you were actually asking about staining the wood and controlling the stain. The former is a mater of housekeeping and, like I said, protecting and scraping the interface line. Staining wood is a huge subject and I'm far from being an expert, but I have done a few maple instruments. The mandolin has dye dissolved in denatured alcohol wiped onto the wood, there are different absorption rates in the flame parts of the wood. The binding has been scraped free of stain. I'm shooting clear over the stain here



This is a maple bodied guitar but it has a mahogany neck. The neck has been stained to try to match the final finish and an alcohol stain was applied to the body to pop the flame. The finish over the top has color in it too, so there is a combination of techniques here. If I was going to do this again I would make the neck from some nice flamed maple.



And this is an interesting one - the body is cocobolo which is really oily - if you wipe it with a solvent soaked rag the rag comes away bright red. The neck is mahogany, I wanted to stain it to match the coco. Both have maple purfling which I wanted to keep pure.









The key with any finishing operations, particularly staining, is always to practice on scrap.

Thats some great work, was that burst on the mandolin hand rubbed or sprayed?

Yes, I contaminated the maple with rosewood oil due to using the acetone, rosewood particles (from sanding) and carbon from blue "handwriting" transfer paper.

I am going to clean it up with liberon wax and polish remover and by sanding.

Acetone is fine, just got to be carefull when applying it. I am going to use acetone to glue the new binding to the body. I need to remove the current binding so I can hammer on burled walnut veneer on the top.