Neck Laminations / Deep Penetrating Stain

[Nelson Brown]

I love the look of laminated necks, particularly with tight pinstripe black laminations. However, I don't want to resaw my few pieces of big ebony down for such a detail. I'd prefer to ebonize or stain a more common hardwood for this purpose. The problem with this is that it would still need some amount of shaping to profile after glue-up, which might might expose unstained wood.

I suppose if it were thin enough and took enough stain, it could be ebonized on all sides, instead of just the exposed edges. However, I imagine that could affect glue adhesion, depending on the stain.

Is there a way to deeply stain a common hardwood for this use? What wood and stain would you recommend?

[Jim McConkey]

Violin makers often use an ebonizing stain (some kind of India ink) on fingerboards to make them uniformly black. I have an old bottle from International Violin, but I think other luthier supply houses carry it, too. Search for fingerboard stain or fretboard stain. I have only used it for fingerboards, so I cannot tell you if the stain affects glue adhesion. Maybe someone else can.

[Nelson Brown]

I've done some experiments with India ink on rosewood, but it just sits on the surface. It doesn't go deeply into the wood. My interest is in making dark black pinstripe laminations contrasted with maple. I'm probably going to be using walnut for the darker laminations, given the base color and availability, unless someone has a better solution. I'm looking for a staining method that gets into the wood.

[Bob Gramann]

You can buy dyed black holly veneer from LMI. You have to be careful to scrape both sides before you glue it, but once scraped, the glue joints hold. I think they use pressure to get the stain to penetrate.

[Barry Daniels]

What Bob said. LMII's dyed veneer is good stuff and it comes in two thicknesses.

I tried to make some dyed veneer once using a pressure cooker and strong aniline dye. Cooked it for an hour but the dye did not penetrate to the middle of the veneer.

Many years ago I worked at Intl. Luthiers Supply and one responsibility was making their violin fingerboard dye. It was black aniline dye mixed into solvent. Nothing special about it, except for the name...Ebonholzibize.

[Nelson Brown]

OK, yeah, I guess that's probably the only real solution. .6mm is 1/42" veneer, which I suppose would have to be pretty glueable. I don't think I'm going to try to pressure cook my own veneer.

[Bryan Bear]

I managed to turn some red oak veneer black all the way through by soaking it in iron acetate for a few days. Then it had to be dried and flattened. . . probably would have been easier to buy dyed veneer though.

[Randy Roberts]

Nelson,

I'd be a little wary of using multiple died veneer laminations, but this one with just 1 layer of purchased, commercially dyed (I think LMI's), black veneer using 24hr Epoxy (can't remember who's) has had no problems over the past 14 years now. It has been mostly a wall flower lately though, rather than actually out dancing...

I've used around 30-40 sheets of the commercial dyed black veneer on various projects, and haven't had delamination problems on anything, but most of it was in furniture and so not under the stresses a neck might present.

I can warn you - Do Not use a center stripe the same width as your truss rod's peghead-end anchor. Once shaped, there is little beneath the truss rod, and if using epoxy it can cold creep over the years under load. and can result in pushing the small amount of wood under the truss rod outward, creating a bump that you don't dare sand out. "I once knew a guy" that that happened to.

https://www.mimf.com/library/Randy_Robe ... -2009.html

[Alan Carruth]

I once had the black from a dyed veneer leach into a spruce top when I used epoxy to clue it in. Not wonderful. Try a sample first...

[Bob Howell]

I am gluing up sandwich of 1" soft maple with 1" of 5-6 strips of red and white 1/8" and black veneer mixed. This is for Classical necks. I used dyed poplar thick but scraped.

I have laminated necks for steel string but put 3/4" soft maple in center and strips 1/16 -1/4" red-white hardwood and scraped black poplar veneer.

Now I am hoping I scraped all the black poplar strips. It comes in a very thick version and pear, ash and other hardwoods but I decided poplar was good as any other. Scraping was the key. I even used epoxy as glue. Nothing is over 7-8 years old so no real test of time.

Somewhere I read that when dying veneer black you must use a vacunm system to suck it into wood. Black Trantint on 1/32"poplar strips, failed for me. Discovered thick black veneer and moved on.