Staining Mahogany or Kaya

[Kim]

Hi all,

Having just read Hesh's post in which he shows us progress to date on his beautiful Mahogany #15, I am another who has questions about staining mahogany. I did not want to hijack his thread so I started this one.

As an Aussie I am not use to working with the stuff, never even seen it before in the rough until I got involved in this craft. Anyhow, I got a few sets a while back that are a very light salmon pink in colour, too light salmon pink to be left unstained. They also have soft stringy grain with rope like fibres which pull out when packing tape is removed. No point in an image at this stage as my camera is poor and the wood offers no contrast to define anything within that fleshy pink colour

Anyhow, these sets display some mottled patches of figure to a varying degree. In fact the wood was sold to me as "Mottled Figured Mahogany" but I suspect that it is actually Kaya because it is unlike the known Honduran I already have and nothing at all like the much harder Cuban Mahogany sets in the stash. (I like that Cuban, gonna ge me some more of that stuff )

Anyhow what ever it is, I recon that these "patches of figure" will be a bear to stain as they will probably darken too much in relation to the surrounding wood and end up producing a crappy stain job.

Can anyone offer some advice on how to proceed here, what process have you used when faced with this sort of challenge and how did it work out for you? Any advice or images would be welcome.

Thanks for your help folks.

Kim

[Hesh1956]

Hi Kim bro - are you looking to cover up the mottled patches and have a homogeneous look to the mahogany? Stain will typically exaggerate any figure or color variance.

I am thinking that your objection is primarily that you got some pink wood...... It probably would look very cool even with the mottled patches if it was just stained brown and you didn't have to look at the pink.

I have a recipe that I have used on mahogany necks, including one very pink one, that will match rosewood very well. It's from the free-for-download d***d guitar kit instructions on Stew-Mac's site if your interested.

Be advised though that satining creates some other possible pit falls down the road when finishing. Sand throughs of the finish require that you touch up the stain so if you stain, or mix a custom stain be sure to keep a small container of the exact stain available during the entire finishing process.

[Bob Connor]

G'day Kim

Here's a pic of a Khaya dready we did a while ago.

First we stained the wood and it didn't look too flash (it was too dark and looked unnatural) so I ended up putting some stain in the Z-poxy which worked out fine.

The Khaya is quite porous and some of the stain went through the wood and there are a few brown spots on the interior of this one still.

Again as Hesh says the problem is sand through but the Z-poxy is quite forgiving and not difficult to touch up or remove and dries quickly if your touch ups aren't quite the same colour.

This was applied after the bindings which were then scraped back with a razor blade.



I'm building a Mahogany Dready for a bloke in Tassie at present and he wants to keep the colour natural and I'm fairly pleased about that

Bob

[Dave Anderson]

Hi Kim, I posted in the other thread too and I'm just learning about stain myself. I do like the look of Z-poxy over rosewood ,I have never used it on mahogany yet. Here is a test I did with some of the Stew-Mac dyes.The top one is Vintage amber alone. You can see how the flame darkened.The middle is vintage amber and a small amount of red mahogany.The bottom one is red mahogany and a small amount of amber.Tomorrow I'm going to test some Z-poxy on mahogany as Hesh said.

[Kim]

Thanks guys,

Dave, I'm liking the vintage amber alone, when your doing the Zpoxy, would you mind wiping a lick over that sample to see how it comes up. I would be interested to see the before and after on the plain mahogany with zpoxy as well.

Bob, you and Dave achieved an excellent result on that Dredy, it has a nice warm amber and I like that a lot to.

From my description above, what is the consensus on the wood I have, does it sound like Kaya to you guys??

Cheers and thanks again for the input.

Kim

[Bob Connor]

Difficult to say Kim. Even with pics it may be hard to tell 'em apart.

Khaya tends to be a bit more open pored but the real test is working with it. Khaya tends to tear out when you carve it.

Having said that, every lump of wood you get is different so your mileage may vary.

Tonally I think there's bugger all difference between the two and I actually like Khaya a lot. Plus there will be a sustainable supply into Australia in the forseeable future.

Bob

[Dave Anderson]

Ok, Here are the samples from yesterday with Z-poxy applied. Sorry about the poor pics.The one on the far right is plain mahogany. I like the third one over which is vintage amber stain and Z-poxy. It's darker than plain z-poxy but not too dark IMHO. The 2nd from the right is just Z-poxy.

[Kim]

Thanks for posting Dave, I like the vintage amber the most too, but the plain with Zpoxy looks pretty good as well. The mahogany I have is much lighter than yours but I will need to do some experimentation.

Cheers


Kim