Red Spruce Stain

[Tim Saxton]

Here I am coming back to this board again for advice etc.

I have the color and burst that I was hoping for on the quilted maple back and sides on my mandolin. As for the top....yuck!!

There is all this streaking and blotchiness to the color. In one way it looks cool but in another it seems hideous.

The red spruce seems to not take the water based anailine dyes too well. I raised the grain of the wood before application until there was no more hairs too.

Any ideas or is this just par with the species?

Tim Saxton

[Dave Cohen]

Carved, arched softwood plates are nightmares to color evenly. There are several different ways do do better at it. One is to use a hide glue "size" prior to putting on any color. That one is not very appealing to me. Another is to seal the top plate first with a wash of super blonde shellac, then spray pn your color w/ an air brush, or a small round jet from your gun if it has that capability. You can then try blending w/ a wipe of alcohol, though I prefer to leave the sprayed pattern alone. Still another is to spray a clear coat of your finish, followed by "color coats" of finish w/ color mixed in, followed by remaining clear coats and final rubbing out. That last is Bob Benedetto's finishing schedule.

[Chris Baird]

I've been doing some experiments with staining lately and I've found the best way is to seal the wood with shellac. I brush it on then carefully sand it back a little. I then can wipe on some of the base colors and finish it off with a little airbrush shading.

[Tim Saxton]

I just dont have the airbrush and other equipment.

Tim

[sunburst]

I rub in my bursts by hand. Red Spruce seems to be the hardest to get an even color without the blotches. Sometimes you have to live with some "character" in your top.
Quilted maple, by contrast, is by far the easiest for me to get a good burst, so you're dealing with a situation where the comparison might be making your top look worse to you than it really does.

To help even out the spruce, I use some small rags and judiciously apply stains to darken those places that didn't take as much stain 'til they blend in better. You can't do much to lighten places that look too dark, so you have to darken other places to smooth things out.
I usually do the top first and match the back to that because the back is so much more controllable.

I worked for a manufacturer for many years, and spent 6 of those years doing all the finish work. I've probably hand stained several hundred bursts, maybe a thousand. Practice helps! I still get surprises sometimes, but I prefer the look of a rubbed in stain to a sprayed stain, so I'm sticking with it. I do touch up the edges with the air brush sometimes.

[craigtoo]

Wow... Sweet burst...

[Spruce]

Avoid runout in your wood! #(or build with a one-piece top).

Wood with runout tends to absorb the stain differently in the 2 plates, and can create some difficult situations when trying to achieve homogeneity in a hand-rubbed 'burst....

[Tim Saxton]

Here is my back not in a finish just stained

[Tim Saxton]

Here is the blotchy streaking top.

[Spruce]

Well, there seems to be some runout issues there as well as some sapwood staining?....

Did I cut this wood?

But that splotch just above where the tailpiece will be is very strange...
Was there any discoloration in the wood before staining?

[Tim Saxton]

Bruce,

Thanks for the responses.

The back was cut by you but the top was cut by Old Standard Wood.

The top was very clear and nice. There were some red sap lines here and there in the wood. But nothing too bad. There was minimal color to it.

As for the dark splotch that seemed a little strange too. I applied the dye very evenly on both sides. Any how, it's cool and not cool. Any Ideas on what I can do with it?

Tim

[Chris Baird]

It seems you are either going to have to keep working it and make the whole thing darker or sand it back, seal it somehow, then start over. Or, you could just live with it. I'd sand it back and re-do it.

[Spruce]

I remember once visiting Tom Anderson's Guitarworks, and he showed me a guitar he was building for me out of curly redwood....

I licked the wood (I do this often to see the figure, OK?), and thought nothing of it until a month later he calls and says that the guitar is fine except for this big splotch on the redwood. #

I took one look at it and knew that I was basically looking at my tongue-print under the finish... http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif

Anyway, it looks a lot like your beauty-mark, only not quite tongue-shaped...

Was there any glue residue or other substances applied to that red spruce top that you might have missed on clean-up?
Weird splotch, for sure...

[Darryl Wolfe]

yes Spruce is right

[Darryl Wolfe]

It's looking a little bit better now...but will have to be airbrushed...the green splotches aren't really there..some kinda camera trickery

[thistle3585]

Spruce,
What is runout? Can you indicate a specific area in the picture? I hear about it, but not sure that I've actaully seen it.

[Jim Rowland]

Call me wierd,but I like it. Darken down the perimeters,graduate into a burst and get a good shine on her and I think it will be beautiful.
Jim

[John Bertotti]

I like it also. John

[Tim Saxton]

There was nothing on it that I can recall at all. No licking of tops etc.. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
I wonder if that could be from glue squeeze out when the tops were joined together? There was some of that, but I seem to remember Brian carving that all away. Anyhow, I am going to darken it up a bit and call it good.

Thanks for all the input.

Tim Saxton

[Jim Hilburn]

I've been there. One problem is your going to lose some wood to try to chase the stain. That could turn out to be a good thing,though.I would go after the center with either a Random orbital or regular square palm sander with 220. Now, I do all this stuff with spray guns,and I've had what looked like a hopeless mess with the dark outside sunburst and this awful looking sanded area in the middle, but suprisingly, it could all be filled back in with the gun.
On my first Stew Mac finishing video, when Don McRostie looked pretty young, he demonstrated doing a hand-applied sunburst on a banjo resonator. What was different from what your doing was a darker outside, and the use of alcohol stains. But he basically wiped on the center yellow, the started wiping on the dark stain far to the outside, and had lots of clean rags that he would soak in alcohol and "chase" back the dark stain as it approached the center. This is how the blend was achieved. Mainly, keep the dark stain away from the middle.

[Spruce]

Spruce,
What is runout? #Can you indicate a specific area in the picture? I hear about it, but not sure that I've actaully seen it.
Check this (http://www.frets.com/FRETSPages/General/Glossary/Runout/runout.html) out...

[sunburst]

Jim, that description is similar to the way I do them. Keep the darker stains to the outside and drag them toward the center with a wrung out alcohol rag.

I've had Red Spruce sap wood come out darker like that when there was no indication of anything different in the unstained wood, and I've had wood from the same tree stain smoothly. Go figure.
The dark streak of sapwood down the center turns out to be right under the fingerboard extender, the strings, the bridge, and the tailpiece and is surprisingly hard to see in the finished instrument.

I have no idea whatsoever what that strange blotch is. I've never seen anything like it.

Keep in mind that everything looks smoother after the finish goes on.

[Tim Saxton]

Any ideas on how long to wait before applying a finish over the dye?

One week seemed a little excesive.

Thanks

Tim

ps. I took Mandoplyr's advice and darkened up the top a bit and it looks much better. The streaking is there along with the blotch but over all it looks good. It sort of has an "Antiqued" look.

[sunburst]

Water soluable? Don't know. I'd say as soon as the wood is good and dry.
I use aclohol stains and could start spraying before the bindings are cleaned.

[Ed Ashley]

As to Tim's top, I had a european spruce top from StewMac that showed this rectangular shadowy dark area , about 1 and 1/2 by 3, when I used the light box on it, not really showing on the exterior. But when I stained it, it showed up very clearly. Some sort of anomaly in that piece of wood. I decided it looked fine. I would darken Tim's piece , blend it in more, and go ahead with it.

[Stephen Perry]

The most effective way I found not to "burn" spruce or get it splotched was to saturate the surface with alcohol, then blend aniline in alcohol in. Manipulate with a brush, pull out stain with a brush with clean alcohol. Works pretty well. I don't do that at the moment. I seal with a vernice bianca ground, then seal that with a couple of coats of orange shellac. Then I build up color with pigments in glazing compound (liquin or slow varnish) and finish with soft varnish. Of course, I'm doing violins, not mandolins, but I think I'd do the same thing on a mandolin!