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  #1  
Old 11-14-2017, 05:59 PM
Dirty Bill Dirty Bill is offline
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Default rosewood D-35 stain

Does anyone know what stain will match the Brazilian rosewood on the sides of my Martin. I need to blend in a couple of spots.
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Old 11-15-2017, 04:02 AM
mirwa mirwa is offline
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Stains just don’t match, even if you had some of the same stain the manufacturer used on the day they stained your guitar it still won’t match.

One needs to do test samples on similarly coloured raw wood for stain concentration and mix.

It’s a finishing skill that a lot of people struggle with in the repair field, so chances of someone finding a stain that has never used it before getting a perfect match is almost zero, professional painters /finishers do apprenticeships upwards of three years to become proficient at it.

Take it to a local luthier and see what they can do for you, let it be their problem, if you do this yourself you are likely to be very unhappy with the can of worms you open trying to make it match

Steve
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Old 11-15-2017, 05:15 AM
Aubade Acoustics Aubade Acoustics is offline
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I agree with mirwa, the problem with rosewoods i have run into is that over time they tend to lighten in color if a finish is applied and left untouched. Any scraping or sanding usually brings up oils and makes the new area much darker than the unsanded areas. Really causes headaches because it is not easy to darken or lighten areas of a single board and in most cases the whole board will need to have the finish removed completely.
Brazilian is especially bad about going dark the second you go through the finish and very hard to lighten back to match the surrounding wood.
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Old 11-15-2017, 01:40 PM
Dirty Bill Dirty Bill is offline
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Thanks for the help.
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Old 11-16-2017, 09:56 PM
Mr Fingers Mr Fingers is offline
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Good luck with your repair. The comments above are good ones. I would only add that rosewood comes in so many variants -- from purple to orange! -- that you can't even really treat it as a distinct color. If I had to do a repair, I would likely do a large area -- the whole surface -- for uniformity's sake, or try to get away with paint, rather than stain, if I had to do a spot. Good luck.
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Old 11-17-2017, 08:55 AM
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Martin doesn't stain rosewood, so I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to fix. Photos of the problem area might help.
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Old 11-17-2017, 11:38 AM
pickitluther pickitluther is offline
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If I was trying to blend in something like that I'd be using tinted lacquer in a small spray gun. I would test my colors first on scrap pieces of wood that are the same wood as the guitar. Unfortunately not everyone has scrap pieces of rosewood laying around.
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Old 11-17-2017, 01:46 PM
Alan Carruth Alan Carruth is offline
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As has been said, rosewood tends to bleach out with exposure to light. Some finishes will speed that up or slow it down a bit. I've seen BRW that was as orange as a pumpkin, and well remember seeing an old Steinway grand in BRW with the bleached out imprint of a window on the lid.

Color touch-ups are the most time consuming part of finish repairs. You always hope that the spot you're going to work on is lighter than the area around; it's easy to add color but hard to take it away. It might be possible with a wood bleach, such as oxalic acid, but that's fraught with risks, especially if you can't find a hidden spot to practice on. Stopping out thwe wood with something like hide glue, which will hinder the wetting of the wood surface by the finish, will go some way to lighten it up, but it looks 'flat' and 'veiled' compared with the wood around it. There may not be much you can do. You can, however, console yourself with the thought that in a few decades the repair will probably fade out to a better match.
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