Ember Wood Dye

This weekend I had a bit of time to start the dying process on this body. Having never worked with wood dye before, it was a bit of a nervy venture, but you have to jump in at some point and I had procrastinated enough on this project. WIth this dye, you can use pretty much anything as the medium (alcohol, water, shellac, etc.). Using water would raise the grain of the wood (yes, even alder) and so I choose to use alcohol instead. I also used a brush instead of a rag since there are tiny splinters in the carving that would catch the material and perhaps tear out.

I have to say it was pretty much the most fun I've had finishing wood. The alcohol flashes away so fast that you can keep working the surface to get the exact color you want. Pictures don't do it justice, but once the glossier coats of finish go on this, I think it will be awesome.

You can see the black dots on the surface. Those are part of the grain of the wood (like the dark lines you see in oak). They collected a lot of the dye particles, which I could have avoided some of by doing this more slowly, but I think it will end up making the end product more interesting. I'm certainly not going for perfection. A lot of the carving is less than ideal anyway since it had to be done on end grain. The back and sides are finished with the same color right now, but I will be going over them with black dye in an attempt to do a burst on the front between black and the red. 

Since the body is several laminated pieces the grain runs in different directions, so I took shots from each end. 

I also couldn't resist popping some of the hardware in there just to get a glimpse of things to come. If that doesn't turn you on just a little, you're on the wrong web site. :)

After the burst is Tru-oil and that will also be a new one for me. My goal is to complete the guitar by the end of April.