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I have on many pieces of hard wood done hand rubbed water soluble aniline dye sunburst or faded finishes with great results, but have always done a sprayed burst on spruce. I prefer the control of a hand rubbed.

I am wondering if it is even possible to do a hand rubbed water soluble burst on spruce. On hardwood it is easy to control the intake of the dye by adding a water wash coat first. On a hardwood like Curly or Quilted Maple I like to use a black first to bring out the highlights of the figure, but I prep with a wash coat of water first to keep the wood from instantly absorbing the water soluble dye. I suspect...I'm pretty sure that a wash coat of water on Spruce is not going to keep the spruce from drinking up the dye to quickly to highlight figuring like bear claw.

I know I could always do a FP style hand rubbed burst but wanted if possible to stain the wood not the finish. This may not be possible on Spruce

Any tip I don’t know are am just not thinking of?

I don't know if it's water soluble, but Kim Walker does hand-rubbed bursts if memory serves me. They look fabulous, and more organic than a sprayed burst.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

This top is a hand rubbed burst. I pretty much followed the recipe laid out in the Siminoff book on mandolin construction.



The photo is a bit washed out, but it's the best one I have on hand.

The dyes were from stew-mac mixed with alcohol. I stained the whole raw top with amber and then red and brown at the edges.
Then washed them together with a clean rag with alcohol to blend the colors.

After I got the color where I liked it I finished the whole guitar in nitro.

Louis

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- Louis Freilicher

Oh No! Not another learning experience!

Hand rubbed bursts are usually much more subtle than sprayed burst but offer interesting and very warm colorations of the grain. Nice job there Louis!!! I used to use thick waterbased gel stains but they have been discontinued by the manufacturer. They were nice because they didn't absorb into the wood so quickly. Now I use a water based extender to think the colors and you can also wash the stain with the extender after applying it to lighten it up. I also use steel wool for this purpose.
Here are a couple shots of my latest handrubbed burst.

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Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.

Very nice look there John! I love the subtlety of the hand rubbed color and you really have captured a warm, vintage old world kind of look on that guitar.

I don't have pics of it yet but I have a size 0 body that I'm doing a shellac burst on at the moment. I bodied up the top with a session or two of garnet and then airbrushed on the red and blended it in with another body session. Then I sprayed some darker red/brown around the edges and blended it in with a body session. The overall look is a little more color intense while not totally obscuring the wood grain.

I'm currently working on building back the film thickness where I scraped the color down on the rosette and body purflings.

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- Louis Freilicher

Oh No! Not another learning experience!

This the way I think I will go about it. the client wants a opaque fading to near natural burst but have the natural area much more dominate area than is usually typical on most burst guitars. Going from deep dark opaque black, fading to dark mahogany, orange, amber to finally natural of course I will build from light to dark.

If I was not providing what the client wants I would go with somthing more on the order of what John posted. I really like that, John.

You can combine hand rubbed and sprayed dyes if you want the slightly uneven, 'lively' qualities of the hand applied method and a darker 'burst around the perimeter that you get more easily by spraying. To avoid blotchiness when rubbing dyes directly on spruce, I use quite a bit of water (more than on maple). Raise the grain with water, let it dry and sand back 2 or 3 times, before spraying the surface lightly with water and applying the first slighly amber base coats. Blend in the darker colors, then spray on a dry clear coat so see how everything looks under a finish. You can now spray on more dark around the perimeter if it is not dark enough, and repeat until it looks right.

This F5 was done by this method (all water based dyes and shellac).

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Here's a preview shot of my 0-18 style box with a shellac burst. The color that I sprayed was tinted shellac and not pure dye. I believe Arnt's method may get you closer to the look your customer is after.



In real life there is a bit more variation in the depth of color in the red area!

Louis

_________________
- Louis Freilicher

Oh No! Not another learning experience!

James Condino did a video tutorial on this very subject.

http://www.taunton.com/finewoo....d=30182

Sebastiaan