ColorTone Questions

[kman42]

Hi, I'm looking to stain an ES1F kit in red, and I've bought some Tonortone Cherry Red and Mahogany red stains. I'm trying to anticipate the colour I'll end up with, and I have a few questions regarding the stain. I asked the seller but he said ask on a forum lol.
1. Are the sample pictures (from the DIY guitars website http://www.diyguitars.com.au/product/cherry-red-colortone-stain/) just using the cherry red stain, or would they have any other steps (eg a black stain underneath)?
2. how many coats should be required to achieve the colour in the sample photos? I did a test stain using plywood, and it came out a lot paler than in the photos.
3. If I want the colour darker, can I mix in some black stain to darken it? Or should I just do more coats?
4. do I need to let the stain dry between coats?

[robsmith]

I can't help with all your questions, but here's a couple I have had "fun" with:
2 - That very much depends on the wood you are trying to colour. Maple is fairly resistant to staining so needs lots of coats, but more open grain woods take the colour more readily. Also, the colour of the wood you are trying to stain has an effect on the stained colour, for example trying to get one of the African red hard woods to take a green or blue stain is all but impossible, and a yellow coloured wood will invariably make blues into greens. You've already found this with your bit of ply wood, but that may also have had some glue or waterproofing on it which affects how the dye is taken up.
3 - Adding black doesn't always make a colour darker, indeed can sometimes change the end colour :-( Generally more coats will give a deeper colour.
4 - It's always best to let the stain or dye dry before applying more dye/stain.
If possible try to get a small sample of the wood you are trying to colour and see how it reacts with the dye (colour & intensity).
One thing to be very aware of is that many glues will block the surface of the wood taking up dyes and stains and they can be really difficult to clean off the surface properly.

[McCreed]

I used (or at least started with) Cherry Red ColorTone on the TL in my avitar. I also purchased it from DIY Guitars.

I used the entire bottle (on Ash) and all I ended up with a "pink" guitar. Disappointed, I bought a set of U-beaut Wood Dyes (also water based) to achieve that nice cherry colour you see in the photos (link to finished guitar here).
The U-beaut dyes are 50ml bottles, which I used neat (undiluted) and it took about 20ml to achieve the colour I wanted.

If you read the paragraph at the top of their ColorTone product page it states: "Each stain has already been diluted to the recommended ratio and is more than enough to complete one guitar." This is why they sell so cheap (by AUS standards). If you buy it from other retailers, it's not diluted which is why it's more pricey.

Personally I wouldn't buy that dye from DIYG again.

[Rabbit]

Here's a pic of my Cherry Red HB-4. This is on maple, and it reached saturation. No more coats will make it any darker. I think I used 2 coats. On scrap I tried 3 4 and 5 coats... didn't make any difference.

[kman42]

Here's a pic of my Cherry Red HB-4. This is on maple, and it reached saturation. No more coats will make it any darker. I think I used 2 coats. On scrap I tried 3 4 and 5 coats... didn't make any difference.

Was this using Colortone dye? Cna you post some more pictures - some closeups?

[Rabbit]

Yeh, colortone... also from DIY guitars. Here's hopefully a link to the build thread, there's more3 pics in it:

https://www.buildyourownguitar.com.a...ad.php?t=10930