So, I got a couple of custom orders (1xMMB4 and 1xMMB5 bass guitars) from PBG last year. What with one thing or another it's taken us a while to really get stuck into working on them.
The necks are full maple - neck and fingerboard. I'd looked into what stains to use and decided on Tung Oil. I got the Feast Watson Timber floor Tung Oil. I tried it on some pine wood to get some idea of what it might look like and I was happy with it.
This is where I might have stuffed up, though. I sanded the neck and then smoothed it out with steel wool 0000 grade. This seemed fine to me. I'm pretty sure I got all the steel wool particles off - but it's possible that wasn't good enough and I may have ended up with some on the fingerboard in between fret and fingerboard.
Anyway, I tried staining with the Tung oil and the neck starts looking grey with grey spots. I panicked and tried sanding off to try to get the spots off. I sanded with coarse grain sandpaper and then progressively smoother until I used 1500 we-and-dry. I thought I had got the spots off at least on the back but after about 2 weeks, the spots look like they are back.
So my questions are:
- Has anyone else seen anything like this before?
- Is there anything I can do about it?
- Is it possible this is in the wood itself?
Either way, I'm not going to use steel wool again on maple (I wouldn't have thought that was a problem, though). The steel wool was from Bunnings.
I'm hesitant to do the other neck until I'm confident this isn't going to happen again.
Attached is an image. It's a bit blurry, but hopefully, you can see what I mean.
Cheers,
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