Quilted Highlights under Dingotone

[Zandit75]

Thanks Z
I was writing my reply when you sent yours and I didn't see it.

By the sound of it you are not expecting to have to fill your cap after the last coat. Do you intend to wax?

I'm not expecting to have a perfect glassy coat. I am not using Tru-oil, just the Dingo product.
Spalted maple is also a very uneven timber in the first place, so there are divets and crevices in the grain that would be very hard to fill even if I did use a filler like Timbermate.
I am looking to put a couple more top coats on before leaving it for about 3 weeks before polishing it with micro mesh pads, and super fine car polish.
I'm expecting to still have some unevenness to the finish.

[Zandit75]

Hi Z

I should have added that as we all agree the guitar is looking magnificent.

Am I the first see her with four coats? I am honoured.

Haha, yes you are actually, I'm about to add them to my build thread! Thank you for the praise!

[dingobass]

You can always just use the neutral timbermate as a slurry to fill.
Then attack it with the DT and the figure will still pop nicely.

Looking the biz there Zandit!
This is the level of gloss you can get with DT.

[Andy40]

Wood porn!

BTW Greg

I noticed that the other part of your question was whether you can use a waterbased stain to pop the grain under the DT.

The short answer is, yes you can, because you intend to use the DT stain coats, then intensifier then finish/or tru oil finish. DT finish wont work over a waterbased stain itself, but if you have the foundation of the stain coat and intensifying coat, it works fine.

Personally I think using a waterbased stain will be harder to do than the timbermate option.

First, it will provide no grain fill, not an insurmountable problem, just be prepared to have to put more final coats of DT on or tru oil at the end. The timber will also take more stain without any grain fill.

Second, no matter how much you blotch away, the timber grain itself will soak up the stain, meaning that most likely, you'll need to sand back the timber to get it to pop as you wanted. Timbermate is a little bit different, mostly it fills the grain and only stains the wood a little. So I think either way you'll be sanding whilst holding your breath anyway.

Greg, I know that you probably don't have a bunch of spalted maple or mahogany lying around to test, but find a couple of chunks of pine and test both theories of yours out (or any other combination). I've done a bunch of tests on pine fist because sometimes it just doesn't turn out the way you first thought.

If I missed any questions, sorry, just let me know.

Good luck mate.

[GregLane]

Thanks for all the help. I think I am making progress in my poor old brain.

One question left for Dingobass :

In your second video on the dingotone process there is a red guitar and a yellow/gold hollow body. Have either of these guitars had a dose of filler on the cap or did the DT process slowly fill? Can you use the DT top coat to fill and sand off a few times if necessary? Can you use the wax for any last little bits of filling?

Whoops I think that's three questions.

As for the rest.

My proposal for the body and the neck is to timbermate with a neutral (mahogany if close) colour then use the dingotone process (Karijini Red) all over.

I am not going to proceed with the highlight on the cap proposal. DB and Andy have convinced me I will get enough highlight using the DT process. Looking at more photos I am convinced.

Andy
I have a bit of straight grained maple and some mahogany from furniture projects so I will definitely be doing some tests now that I have a bit of an idea what I will do. I am sure there are lots of questions to come.

Glad to see you finally got that well deserved promotion from DB.

[dingobass]

Neither had any filler, mainly because I was lazy :P

However, after about five coats of intensifying coat and cutting each one back with 800 grit most of the grain had filled.
Then by the time I finished they both were reasonably grain filled... I highly recommend grain filling first, saves a bunch of time.

[GregLane]

Thanks DB.

But that leads me to seek one more piece of advice. Would you use a colored timbermate on the quilted cap LP? The quilting looks fairly mild on my LP although I have not looked at it damp yet. If so what colour under Karijini Red. I think the black is a bit contrasty and seems to dirty the wood on quilted but looks good on spalted where there is a black grain.

[Andy40]

Hi Greg,

I just realised that you had a quilted cap. I haven't done one yet, mainly because i don't prefer quilted tops. Please bear in mind that the spalted veneers are a bit thicker than the quilted veneers. As I understand it they are very very easy to go through. I think H's TLQ probably gives you a good idea what a quilt will look like without any popping elements.

Don't forget to check the quilted veneer for glue spots as you may need to contend with those first and see how you go with that. Dependent on whether there are any glue spots and/or how bad they are and/or whether you get them out, because if they are bad, you may need to change your plans before going too far down one road.

If there's one thing i've learnt in building these kits, and that is to stay flexible.

If there's no bad glue spots (or I got them out) and it were me, given how thin a veneer the quilt is, I would actually invest in a scrap piece of quilted maple to test on. A bit pricey, yes, but you only get one shot at it and you want that finish to last forever.

[wazkelly]

I know this is DB's area of speciality being posted under Dingotone but just felt compelled to throw in a couple of thought provokers....

Maple is usually a pretty tight grain so not sure how much benefit will be gained from adding timber mate to grain fill? Also need to carefully consider which Timber Mate colour you select as what is on a chart compared to the open pot compared to finished product once dry is an eye opener as in all 3 states they are different. Tend to like the idea of adding some of the base stain coat to Natural Coloured Timber Mate to make a slurry out of the intended base colour as in the TM line up this one has a slightly off white colour and you would therefore think it should come out just a bit darker than the stain.

All this sounds like a lot of work for probably not too much gain and begs the question 'How does the Quilt look after a wipe down with a damp rag?' as this gives you a pretty good indication of how the quilted pattern will stand out under some sort of a finish. I suspect it may look OK as is but from past threads with quilted tops they have been riddled with glue spots and also extremely thinly veneered. Pablo's Orange Tele comes to mind where even an experienced builder sanded through the cap.

One question for the DT experts, when applying 1st stain coat is there any way to wipe off as much of the finish as you can thus leaving behind stain trapped in the grain but mostly removed from the surface? This is how I accentuated the grain on my flame Tele but used inks as they were easy to wipe off, even up to 24 hours later and wondered if DT was as forgiving or does it just flood things out with subsequent coats?

[Zandit75]

I got to admit waz, i only applied one coast of base clear to my LP and there was no way i could have wiped much off. The grain sucked it in to every nook and cranny