Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi all.

I've got a d. spruceana / red spruce build going. The binding is just plain cherry, no purfling. I want to apply a rubbed stain burst to the top, do i need to mask the binding or will it scrape back? Also the cherry is maple colour now, how much will it darken? Lastly I'm going to use tru oil to finish over the stain and also tru oil pore fill on the rosewood and open pore finish on the sapele neck. I've oil finished several guitars but they have all been mahogany with an open pore finish. Any help with the order in which to go about the above and any other tips would be appreciated.
Thanks
Mike

I've not done this but I wouldn't expect cherry bindings to scrape back as well as plastic. It will absorb some stain and cherry tends do get blotchy when staining so it is hard to say how much will soak in. Try this on scrap and see how it goes. I would think you would at least want to seal the bindings with shellac before you do the burst to make scraping back easier. That may be pretty tough without a purling line though. Are the edges going to be black/near black? have you done the binding yet? I'd be tempted to add a purfling line as close as I could get to what I expected the edge color to be.

_________________
Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Thanks Bryan. Too late for a purfling line...

if it were me, I'd make some test panels with spruce and cherry bindings. See how easily you can shellac the bindings on one section. Stain them and then try scraping back. Take it from there.

_________________
Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

I do lots of wood bindings and a fair number of wiped stains. I always seal the binding before apply the stain. I even had a recent guitar where I wanted to apply a redish brown stain to a neck that was bound in wood with a light purfling line. I did the staining first, then bound it.

Can't tell you what color the cherry will turn, as always practice on some scrap. And I do worry a bit about hand applying finish over stains. I've only done a couple of guitars with TruOil and they were not stained but I would be concerned about color migration. My stains are all alcohol based and I finish in nitro so I seal accordingly. There is a guy on another forum who is about to do a wiped 'bust and then FP over that - it will be interesting to see if it works.

Thanks all. Sorry I was being unclear, I understand that cherry darkens considerably over time and I wanted to consider that for the overall colour scheme.

Freeman, you can stain then bind without having to sand or scrap the bindings flush? You are light-years ahead of my ability!

_________________
Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Ihadn't even though about that properly. Mind blown. Answering my own question, a coat of sanding sealer and then stain scrapes back pretty nicely.

If you were worried about stain migration from a hand applied finish you could spray a couple of light coats of shellac from a spray can as a sealer.

I have done what Clay suggests. I used an aniline die with water as a solvent, but applying anything with water OR alcohol as a solvent would have caused it to migrate. Used a fresh can of Zinzer spray shellac as I have no spray equipment. Misted on several coats, then hand applied a water based finish. Been 6 years and everything looks great.

Ed

Thanks all. Do you seal the whole top and rub stain on top of the seal coat, scape bindings then clear/ oil finish?

Sealing the top first can help things from going "blotchy" and if you you don't like the way the burst turned out make it easier to clean it off and redo it.

My understanding of the old hand applied 'bursts (Roger Siminoff has detailed information) was that the stains are applied directly to the bare wood. The color is absorbed by the wood, "staining" it. To make the sunburst two or more colors are applied, fading one into another by either mixing them before applying or by rubbing them with some solvent (DA). After that the surface is sealed with something that will prevent the stains from migrating. If you seal first the wood won't absorb the stain, it will just sit on top and (probably) mix into the clear coats applied over it.

The other way to do a sunburst, of course, is to add color to the finish itself and spray it on. This is a far more modern way to do it, think Fender electrics. The difference in appearance is that the stained wood with clear over will look deeper and the wood grain is usually highlighted.

This was done with three colors of Colortone dye using denatured alcohol as the solvent. It was sealed with vinyl sealer and nitro applied over that. This was my first attempt at a sunburst and very early in my finishing career. Plastic binding scraped after the stain and before the clear. I'm satisfied but it could be better



The other part of your question concerns bindings. With plastic binding it is pretty simple, neither stain nor tinted finish is absorbed by the plastic so you simply scrape it off and apply the color. Wood binding will want to absorb the stain just like the rest of the wood. I have tried to protect wood binding by applying a couple of coats of shellac with a brush, it works somewhat but the thin beige lines that I like to use seem to just suck it up. I recently built a guitar out of some cocobolo with a standard mahogany neck. I wanted to stain the neck redish brown to more or less match the coco. It also had wood binding - coco offset with a maple line. I routed the binding channel around the head, but did not fit the binding. Did a test run on some scrap mahogany and stained the neck (bad picture, sorry)



Here is the neck after staining - if you look closely you can see the binding channel around the head. The body is bound, but has no stain



Here is the head bound and finished

Keep in mind that a rubbed burst on spruce will look different than sprayed. The difference over maple is much less. But a rubbed finish over spruce has a specific look. Not bad, but different.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro