Looking for suggestions on how to resurrect this. Please bear with my ramblings...

This morning I did a test using the stain coat of the colourless DT (more like pee coloured than colourless) over the test pieces I did for making the colour mix (a couple of posts ago, top of this page). The rag went green as soon as I rubbed it on. I waited for an hour or so and did a second coat over the same area - same thing, went green, but not as much. I've just tried a third coat, and there was some green staining on the rag after rubbing it on, but much less than the previous two times. However, there isn't as much dye on those test pieces as there would be on the body.

But at this point I'm 100% certain that attempting to put the DT on the guitar body will cause the dye to reactivate and wreck the finish (smear it at the very least). I guess I could experiment on the back, but I don't want to get to the point where I can't remove the DT if that's the only way to go. I've oiled enough cricket bats in my lifetime to recognise the smell of linseed oil - and while the DT doesn't smell exactly like it, it was the first thing that popped into my head when I caught a whiff of it. So I'm assuming it's something along those lines, and if it gets into the wood I won't be able to take it off. Perhaps it will take the dye deeper into the wood and by the time I get to the third stage it might be set. Lots of 'ifs'. Of course, if the timber wasn't so fragile, I would have been able to rub the dye in a lot harder and we probably wouldn't be having this conversation.

At this stage I can probably wipe off the dye and start from scratch with some other type of finish, but to be honest, for the time being, I'm well over it. It's dangerously close to becoming matchsticks. I always did want to try a Pete Townshend on some poor guitar, this one could well be it.

Any suggestions where I can go from here? Most obvious thing is to wet it down, wipe off the dye and start sanding again. But I feel like I've done so much sanding, if I do any more I'll end up in China.

Shame, the top looks really nice today.