Thoughts on preserving contrast in poplar, with samples

[bagman67]

Hey all, it's me, the guy with the poplar Velocity body purchased on impulse a while back.  My goal is to preserve the contrast between the pale blaze up the middle and the greenish wings of the body, but I'm not entirely nuts about just clearcoating it.  So I got a little plank of poplar with similar contrast between green and white and I've been experimenting. 


I welcome your thoughts and opinions on the experiments I've done here.



First, here's the body:

Lovely, innit?  But the contrast between the green and the white is not that strong.  Luckily, poplar project lumber is cheap.  Here's what I did: 


I masked off segments of the board and experimented with different stains and toners.


Here, from top to bottom, I used Behlen Solar Lux blood red, yellow-orange, and lemon yellow, and then at the bottom is a toner I mixed out of clear lacquer and yellow Mixol pigment with a little red.  I then sprayed the edge with a Behlen medium brown instrument toner to get an idea what I might get if I do a tobacco burst.

Clearly, the blood red stain completely masks the contrast, and the yellow-orange is not much better.  Further, the red hardly contrasts with the brown burst edge, so that's completely out. Lemon yellow, however, has some potential.


In my view, my own homemade toner comes in second behind the lemon yellow stain on this first side of the test board.  I like how the burst shows a little more red on my toner than on the lemon yellow, but the lemon yellow shows the white and green contrast better.  And for the sharp-eyed among you: that black spatter on the bottom of my toner was me attempting to see how a black burst edge might look, but I used an ancient can of black lacquer that I should have shot at something else first to test whether it had gone bad.  Live and learn, amirite?




On the reverse I tried this Mohawk amber toner but w I think it looks a little more cloudy than I'd like.  If I were after a butterscotch finish over ash, I'd go nuts with this stuff, but it doesn't show the grain as much as I'd like in this context.

 

[swarfrat]

This is poplar, about 3 years on, with a shellac finish. I took the position that nothing would really preserve the contrast, so I stained it with aniline dye  and picked colors that resembled/accentuated it. (Also my son wanted it to be green). It sits in a room where the blinds are never really opened, but it's not dark.



And three years ago looks more or less the same (except for the roundwounds - I got tired of the Pahoehoes's still stretching after being on for 2 years)

 

[Cagey]

According to this guy, while Poplar is a joy to work with, it can be a problem child to stain, which is why it's most often painted over. I don't know if any of this helps, but it's worth a read.

 

[swarfrat]

Oh yeah, I forgot all abhout that. Shellac, then aniline dye THEN more shellac. It needs a base coat or it blotches.

 

[zebra]

Here's a link to a post I made for a project dyeing poplar. 

https://www.unofficialwarmoth.com/index.php?topic=29635.msg418571#msg418571

It's long and wordy, so here's the TLDR:  I dyed black and sanded back (which really made the grain pop), then dyed green.  I didn't bother with a base coat and I don't think it got blotchy, but there was probably leftover base material in the wood from the initial finish.  The visual character of the wood really comes through.  Since then, the intensity of the green seems to have faded, and more yellow-browns are coming through.  But I also haven't seen it in intense sunlight either (my apartment has terrible lighting), so that might just be my perception.  (TLDR failure or what!?)

You can tell quite clearly that it's a 3 piece body by the way it took the dye.  I considered taping it off and doing the middle piece in a different color, but decided against it.  I think taking the time to dye black and sand back wouldn't necessarily accentuate the streaky-greenness of the body, but would accentuate the difference in the amount of figuring between the central part and the sides - which might also be a desirable effect. 

Enjoy that body - poplar has a really lively, resonant feel in the hands - the recessed TOM you went with will be a good match for that!

Good luck!

 

[rgand]

This is a good thread, Ian. Since I have a piece of poplar I also want to preserve the coloring on, I'll follow along with your experiments.

Thanks for the link, Kevin. I found it quite interesting about how he took care of the tendency for poplar to take a finish unevenly. I have that bookmarked for future reference.

 

[bagman67]

Well, upon opening up this morning to see what y'all had to say, I noticed that the main photo of my experiments did gang agley, as Robbie Burns would put it.  So I've fixed the initial post and PREVIEWED this time.


I have seen a lot of stuff suggesting that like alder, poplar stains better with a conditioner like a wash coat of shellac, so I may give that a go.


Thank you to all for your links and suggestions. I have plenty to read now!

 

[rgand]

Can sanding sealer can do that initial stabilizing so the stain takes more evenly?