Problems with filler

[gouzos]

I made a number of mistakes I would like to recount. Any suggestions are welcome.

I have a swamp ash body I plan on tru-oiling. I wanted to enhance the grain a bit so I decided to tint the filler which was neutral to begin with so I bought a dark brown powder dye from woodcraft.
First I followed the directions of the dye and dissolved it in water which I then mixed into the waterbased filler. Not good. The filler became runny and kind of grey.
For the next round I put the powder straight into the filler. This left undissolved globules of dye, but they sanded away just fine.

The first problem is that the dye tinted the wood in some depth (should I have sealed first?) and I had to manically sand for hours to get the body semi-decent again and not blotchy dark.

The other problem is, do you think the water I added to the filler will eventually evaporate under the tru-oil ruining the finish? About 3 weeks have passed already.

Thanks

 

[brownsound79]

did you wipe the stain after applying it..?? you should wipe it right after applying the stain..
sand the body first (320grit)..
if you seal the wood first,mix/dilute  the stain with alcohol (water-based stains wont get through the sealer)..

 

[jackthehack]

I'd leave it for the time being; you can always disassemble and sand it back to bare wood and start over if it goes funky; or if you get tired of looking at it.

 

[brownsound79]

or forget the rest.. go SOLID color.. (nice custom color/airbrushed art..)

 

[chuck7]

is there a difference in stain and pigment? 

 

[brownsound79]

pigment is for solid color.. stain is for the wood (clear finish/oil)

 

[tfarny]

Somebody on this board made a nice grain-enhancing suggestion which worked out great for my first build; first, stain the raw body with oil-based stain, THEN, use clear grain fill, then stain again. The pores of the wood will, that way, catch more stain, resulting in a mellow 'enhanced grain'. No water, no dye, no splotchy bits.

 

[gouzos]

brownsound79, you got it wrong. I didn't want to dye the body. I just wanted to darken the filler.
That's why it all went wrong.

 

[jackthehack]

Perhaps this will help answer your question better...

1.) I've worked with the pre-colored StewMac water based grainfillers and done a test on swamp ash with their clear that I made blue using some concentrated blue water based dye for an eBay body that never arrived. If you want to add color to the clear, use a water based dye concentrate as sparingly as possible and never dilute the dye or filler.
2.) Any application of colored grain filler is going to leach some color onto the rest of the wood. No way around that. When applying the colored grain filler, scrape/wipe back as much as possible that is not directly in the grain pores.
3.) After each fill you are going to have to sand back with #220. Use a sanding block or the 3M pads; using a hand sander consumes less time and elbow grease, but you invariably wind up sanding back too much back out of the grain pores with a power tool, especially when filling finer pores like mahogany.
4.) Corollary to 2.) & 3.), if you keep applying colored grain filler, sanding back the color from the non-grain part of the wood id always going to cause you to pull too much filler out of the grain pores, so to avoid getting into a frustrating vicious circle, after the first couple of fills, switch to clear grain filler. You will stilol have the desired color in the grain pores, but additional fills/sanding are easier.
5.) After the final fill will clear filler, sand back to #320 before applying sanding sealer/top finish coats.

There are some pics/description of this process in the thread below:

http://www.unofficialwarmoth.com/index.php?topic=821.0