Official Luthiers Forum!

i want to dye some curly maple binding a deep blue. My first hope and preference is to put it under vacuum and dye it throughout. If that doesn't work I'm wondering if it's possible to 'stain in after installed. it will be a light spruce top and satinwood sides and back.

_________________
Mike McNerney

It sounds like a nice colour scheme if you can pull it off. But I think it would be exceedingly difficult to stain the bindings after they are installed, and to do it without touching the sides or the soundboard. OK - maybe not impossible using masking tape, and you are probably more skilled than me, - but I am pretty sure that I would stuff that up!
Staining the bindings under vacuum before installing sounds more hopeful, but it depends on how much penetration you can get into the maple so you will need to test on scrap first. It obviously needs to penetrate deep enough to survive some scraping and sanding. Cut your binding ledges a bit deeper and taller than the actual dimensions of the binding strip - so you end up scraping the sides and soundboard down to the level of the binding, rather than the other way around.

I've had to do the reverse before on a top where the customer wanted the spruce stained but not the perflings or bindings. with care, I was able to put down some automotive pin striping tape that split one of the dark .02" perfling strips around the top and use that as my (albeit very small) margin of error for putting down the tape and any bleed. Worked very well, though I doubt I will ever do it again if I can help it.

Also, a friend of mine who makes basses has been experimenting with dyes lately on curly maple tops, essentially taping off the portion of the top he wants to leave without dye and it's been working very well for him. I believe he put down a sealer first though. I can get more specifics on this if you'd like.


Almost forgot, I agree that penetration on maple will be difficult. I can't say I've tried it, but most pre-stained wood sold for inlay work (furniture or instruments) is poplar or similar. I have seen very thin sheets of maple sold as veneer wood, but it's usually less than .03" thick, so getting dye through that isn't as difficult as what your binding will be. However, as mentioned above a very careful binding job might require very little sanding, and make it work. I'd just be prepared for touch-ups, particularly if you are going to round over your bindings a typical amount.

You - might - be able to lay down the first few coats of finish, carefully scrape back the binding, and then apply the blue stain to the binding. You would need to use a stain that doesn't react with the finish and also doesn't penetrate the binding and bleed through into the other wood. A pigment type stain might work better than a dye stain, although it somewhat kills the chatoyance of curly wood. Then "mist" on the next couple of coats of finish to seal the bindings before going back to full coats.
* As with most finishing issues - test on scrap *

https://www.wechterguitars.com/

30 some years ago this fellow showed around a guitar with self-stained purflings that were brilliant enough that I still remember. You might try contacting him.

PS Somehow I am thinking that "dyeing" not "staining" is appropriate for bindings that are colored prior to installation, to get the most intense colors--but I have never done it.

yep that's what I'm using

_________________
Mike McNerney

I prefer to use dye stains for coloring wood most of the time, but for the job you are proposing I would try a pigment stain. The wood magazine article compared them to "thinned paint" which I somewhat agree with. Like paint they don't penetrate the way dyes do, and hopefully won't bleed onto the spruce and satinwood the way a dye might.
If you can pull off using dye stain it may give a nicer looking effect to the binding - as I mentioned, pigment stains often kill the 3D effect of curly wood.
No matter how you do it, I would suggest you test on scrap. Even if you manage to dye your bindings all the way through, if the dye reacts with the solvents in the finish it can migrate into the other woods. All of the things proposed may work, or none of the things proposed may work. Test pieces can avoid disappointment.

For what it’s worth, I’ve sprayed aniline dye in alcohol with an airbrush.
I used the 3M auto tape to mask and had no bleed-through.
I did about four light applications, allowing each pass to dry.

_________________
wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

Rather than use vacuum, from what I have read people typically use a pressure cooker to dye thin wood, keeping the wood in the hot water/dye solution for hours. I understand that even under pressure it's hard to get dye to penetrate maple very far. I think topcoating the wood, as people are suggesting, is probably more likely to work.

_________________
Tim Allen
"Never hurry, never rest."