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Another Tru-Oil question. Sorry.

ric426

ric426

In my defense, I was left unsupervised.
Supporting Member
Mar 27, 2002
1,503
1,832
Southeast Michigan
#1
Ok, I've been searching and reading threads all day and my head is swimming. I have a couple of straight forward (I think) questions.
Here's the deal. I have a jazz bass body coming that is ash with a very nice quilted maple top. I've used Tru-Oil with great success on many projects and since I don't have any spray equipment, I'd like to use Tru-Oil again for the main finish. The two things I want to address are:
I want to make sure the quilted maple grain "pops" as much as possible.
I'd like to achieve a deeper amber tone than straight Tru-Oil gives on light colored wood.

In my experience, Tru-Oil should give nice depth to the quilt figure, but if there are any tricks I can use to enhance it further without too much trouble, I'd like to hear about them.

In the past I've pretty much gone with straight Tru-Oil, but I'd like to get a deeper amber tone. Maybe some sort of staining or tinted sealer before the Tru-Oil? I'm open to suggestions. I thought about tinting the Tru-Oil, but from what I've read, that doesn't sound like a good idea, at least with something like TransTint. I saw some tinted Watco Danish Oil and wondered about using that before the Tru-Oil, but apparently that isn't recommended either.
Any suggestions?

FWIW, I'd like to try for a grain filled finish on the ash whether it's using a filler or the sanded oil slurry technique, but I can go either way re: grain filling of the ash. I've seen nice results with the grain filled and not filled.
Also, I prefer a satin finish rather than glossy, but Tru-Oil lends itself to that anyway.

Again, I'm sorry if this is yet another rehash, but my brain is saturated and I'd welcome some clear guidance.
 
#2
You might try a water-based stain or dye. A number of years ago a Danish woodworker friend had a whole range of dyes pre-mixed in small bottles, and he let me use some to dye a shotgun stock I was refinishing. Stuff worked great and, of course, using Tru Oil over it was no problem. I couldn't imagine a better solution. Here are a couple of links you may at least find interesting: Invalid Link Removed
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#3
From what I've seen, people will dye the maple black, sand back so the black only stays on the figure, then put a color and finish over it and the black makes it pop. I think it's the same for doing it with Tru-oil, but you should be able to do a search on "making figured wood pop" or "finishing quilted maple" even on youtube and just watch videos of people doing it.
 
#4
I like Trans-tint. Mix it with alcohol and it dries quickly. Then sand it most of the way back and proceed with filling or the oil-sanding with the Tru-Oil.

Just go to youtube like Lisa says, there's lots of vids on it. Though while black is a cool look, I think based on what you said about the color, you are probably going to want to use Dark Vintage Maple or Golden Brown.
 
#6
lbridenstine said:
...you should be able to do a search on "making figured wood pop" or "finishing quilted maple" even on youtube and just watch videos of people doing it.
Click to expand...

Great suggestion. Don't know why I didn't think of that. Maybe because it was late and i was tired.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx8mp3Ag36s

This one was very helpful and gave me a better understanding of the nature of the figured wood, which made the idea of dying the wood to pop the grain make more sense and gave me more confidence to try the dying/sanding back step before the Tru-Oil.
After looking at a few more videos I may even try a honey burst finish with TransTint.
 
#7
Thanks for all the helpful tips! I traveled to a Rockler store about an hour from home to get some TransTint and ran into a guy I know who is now working there and is also a bassist. He pretty much echoed what you've all said, so I wound up spending way more than I'd planned on and bought two different shades of TransTint (Dark Vintage Maple and Red Mahogany), some Bullseye SealCoat to seal the wood and start to fill the pores in the ash before starting with the Tru-Oil and pieces of ash and figured maple to practice and experiment on.
If all goes well I'm going to try for a honey burst finish. I hoping that the Red Mahogany over the Dark Vintage Maple with give a good shade for the outer edge of a honey burst, but I've got enough wood now to try a few different approaches. If it seems too sketchy for my limited experience, I'll just stick with one color this time and save the burst for a later project. I'm gonna try each color for sanding back to pop the grain under the Dark Vintage Maple too.
 
#9
Well, I put a lot of work into the finish and got it to a point where it was a combination of good enough and I don't want to do this anymore. It's nowhere near as nice as I was hoping for, but I learned a lot in the process. The main lesson was that next time, I think I'll pay the pros to do a nice finish. ;) I enjoy woodworking, but my least favorite part is the finishing process and it shows.
Anyway, here are a few shots of the result. It came out lighter than I'd planned and is kinda blotchy in some spots as far as getting the fade between colors even all the way around. But for my first attempt, I'm satisfied. If I do it again I'll do a lot of things differently...

WJBFullFront.jpg
WJBBodyFront.jpg

WJBBodyBack.jpg
 

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