Note to self.....

....... always test on scrap first! Today I failed to follow this advice and I almost ended up with a bright red guitar as a result.

I spent some time sanding down a few scratches in the guitar and then decided to go ahead and brush on a coat of shellac on the camatillo and on the neck binding. I first made some 2lb cut shellac and using a small art brush covered the maple on the fingerboard to seal it from the neck stain. I then proceeded to brush it on the back with a foam brush. It took me a few seconds to realize that after I had the back covered, the shellac was causing the red coloring in the wood to bleed like crazy. This is when I went into panic mode! I used paper towels soaked in denatured alcohol to rub the majority of shellac back off, then wiped with naphtha. That had the shellac off, but all of the back bindings and the center sapwood strip now was red. Fortunately, the red coloring was only surface deep and could be sanded off. After a bunch of re-sanding I have the bindings back to normal with only a few spots where the red got too deep into the grain to clean out. The center strip is also back to the yellowish tan it originally was, but it also has the red coloring deep in the pores that I can't get out. So after a couple of hours I am back to square one! I guess shellac doesn't like camatillo very well. I guess I will just proceed with the pore filling, staining, and lacquering like normal. The wood is somewhat oily, but it doesn't seem any oilier than regular EIR, and the lacquer I use sticks fine to it. I guess I will find out shortly! Before I do that though, I may try spraying some shellac on some scrap to see if it will coat the wood without causing the pigments to bleed out. I really would like to have a binding coat if possible.

No, it isn't bad lighting, that really is the red coloring I talked about. Look at the center strip just above the inlay and you can see the streaking of the color.

Here is the binding with the red stains.

After a couple of hours work, I had it back to normal. Here is one of the rags after wiping it down with alcohol. I have a pile of these all looking the same red color!