Getting a blue stain finish is tricky, in part because yellow has a tendency to sneak in. I have a guitar with a Fender Antigua finish on it. When it was new it was essentially cream and gray. By the time I got it it had turned all the colors of snot, because the top coat had yellowed.
I was planning a blue with a build I am working on, but just could not get a color I liked. I think the reason is that I was trying to tint platina shellac. I could get it blue...but I was not able to get it to be a blue that I liked. A part of the reason may have been that there is just enough yellow in the shellac "move" the blue in a direction I didn't like. Or, more likely the combination of yellow in the shellac and yellow/brown in the wood migrated the blue. Ultimately I went a went in a different direction. But I would still like to return to this at some point....
The recommendation I am seeing on the interwebs is to sand back the finish, and then use a wood bleach to get the wood as light as possible, and start there. I like Trevor's idea of using a tinted water-based finish, because water based finishes typically do not yellow (or at least not much) over time. Oil top coats can yellow rather dramatically over time.
I actually had a similar thought in tinting the platina shellac. It's *almost* clear, and although all shellac has a bit of yellow in it, it doesn't deepen over time like other yellowing finishes. Alas, it is the nature of experiments that sometimes they fail. I am glad that I tried it on scrap before trying it on the body. When, at some point, I return to the experiment, i'll try tinting the water-based poly ;-)
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