staining neck before or after decal/engrave

[Old Tooth Hopkins]

Hi all,

Would it be advisable to decal/engrave before or after staining with dingotone?

Leaning towards engraving (laser), but what the engraver does is turn the top .1 mm to ash (burn) which shows a darker colour. Don't know whether that would affect the staining.

This may give an idea what I am trying to do..

http://www.instructables.com/id/Liqu...dstock-made-a/

Thanks all.

[Fretworn]

Decal would be after staining. Engraving I unfortunately have no idea.

[wazkelly]

Tricky question as it would make sense to laser cut 1st but then you risk partially filling up with stain and finish coats?

Doing laser cut after applying DT??? Don't know and suspect too much heat may not be good for any stain as it may discolour but hopefully not burn.

[fender3x]

Don't know about engraving, but I made the mistake of applying the decal to unstained, unfinished wood. I think it needs both stain and at least a light coat of clear before the decal. The wood needs to be sealed before the decal goes on or there will be a color difference.

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[Old Tooth Hopkins]

Decal after finish. That sounds about right.


Quick googling seem to come up with mixed advice with engraving though.

1. Some say finish before engraving as some ash and residue from laser engraving will get stuck on other parts of the neck. The once it’s been engraved finish again.

2. Some say engraving before finishing as the finish cause some unintended effects when the laser comes.

Looks like it’s experiment time.

Step 1: find a spare piece of maple

Step 2: dingotone a small section of the maple.

Step 3: masking tape over a small section of the dingotoned maple.

Step 3: engrave over dingotone and over unfinished section.

Step 4: compare the four sections (dingo with tape, dingo without tape, unfinished with tape, unfinished without tape.

P.s laser cuts through the tape, just need to increase the intensity a tad. Will post results here for your perusal.

[blinddrew]

Experimentation appears to be the way forward.

[Old Tooth Hopkins]

Experiment Over - with some telling results!

I went to Bone Timber in Adelaide and they don't stock any maple. I got some meranti and they said it's a similar type of "hard wood".

My colleague on the other hand, actually had some maple offcuts so I used them instead!


The first picture is laser cutting on unfinished maple - one with tape, one without. It's clear to see that the one without got a bit of the ash smudge on it.



Putting on the oil - there is a bit more gloss but during the rubbing some further smudging happened - because I didn't sand before laser cutting, the smudge fills up the cracks very soon. Leaves a dirty look. The one with the tape looks alright



Next, pre-finished and pre-finished with tape



I've only done one layer of oil due to time constraints, but it appears that cutting on unfinished or pre-finished doesn't make a lot of difference (pre-finish at 12 hours to dry), but the key is TAPE. without tape the smudge makes it very dirty looking.

This is what it looks like after the 2nd coat

[kevsta]

If you're going for a decal, do it before your finishing coat.

Stain coat > Intensifying coat > decal > Final coat.