Thanks, fender3x, I did manage to resist the temptation to add another coat
I just finished putting a coat of Crystalac grain filler on the front, kind of as a test to see if it caused reactivation of the stain. It did, but not much, and the stain on the front was fairly heavy (I did not give it the same treatment as the back and sides since I will put a decal on the front). Right now, I'm researching the Platina dewaxed shellac that you mentioned earlier. I see it comes in a "flake" form, so I'll have to see if that's something I can figure out how to work with.
I mix mine up in 1 pound cuts. I usually make a half cup at a time, which is 0.5 oz of flakes. If you doing it metric, you use 14g of flakes into 764ml. One nice thing about the flakes is that they last pretty much forever. Just drop them in alcohol and wait overnight for them to dissolve. I mash my flakes up pretty fine, and they are usually ready in a few hours.
To get the lightest color of shellac I think you have to make it from flakes (at least I haven't seen it any other way). The next grade darker (which is not much darker) is blonde shellac. That can be purchased as liquid in a 2 pound cut. It's Zinzer SealCoat which is sold at the big-box hardware stores. If you look at the fine print it says it's 100% de-waxed shellac. Don't by the Zinzer Shellac, however, because it is NOT dewaxed. You can use it as 2 pound, but I like mine really thin...which you can get by cutting the Zinzer with 1:1 with denatured alcohol.
The clear grain filler I have used is AquaCoat which (I think) is more viscous than the Crystalac product. It pulls a little, but I mash it back into the finish, and haven't really noticed a color change. Maybe it will work the same way with the Crystalac product. The nice thing about the water based clear grain filler is that it has no color of it's own so what you "pull" effectively becomes a "tint" as long as you keep most of the filler on the body.
I apologize, I was getting my brand names mixed up; I am actually using Aqua Coat grain filler, not Crystalac. It's the sanding sealer that is Crystalac.
Thank you for the link on how to mix the shellac flakes, it looks pretty straight forward. I did a test of the Aqua Coat on the front and sides of the bass body. The "face", or front, of the body was fairly heavily stained at the time, and it did reactivate the stain a bit, mostly due to me rubbing the filler in with my gloved fingers. I will avoid that and stick to using a plastic card edge from now on. However, the sides of the body (where the stain is at its present, permanent level of darkness) did not reactivate at all, and looks really good (it did darken a bit, as you mentioned it might). So, I think I'll stick with just using the Aqua Coat. For future builds, I will definitely put a protective layer of shellac in between the stain coats and filler, especially if I try to get fancy with the stain by using more than one colour.
Thanks so much for the advice, it is very helpful!
What helped me most with AquaCoat is to use small amounts and try to leave it all on the body. I just keep rubbing it in to small areas until it looks flat. I don't think you can eliminate pull, it "tints up" a bit...but you can at least rub it back in ;-) Like you, I also discovered that, except in very curved areas, that a hotel card key works about as well as anything to apply it.
The other advantage to using small amounts and trying to leave it all on the body is that you use less of it. It was expensive to buy, but I have done maybe 6 guitars and have still not gone through my original pint--so figuring that way it's not much more expensive than any other decent filler--at least not in North America.
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