Official Luthiers Forum!

One of my customers has asked me to make a "Blue" violin for her. Translucent blue like I see on some very beautiful archtops.

My question is how to apply the vibrant blue stain on both the maple and the spruce top??? Of course my concern is that the color go on evenly

Violins are not normally sprayed with Nitro, they have a brushed varnish finish. I just thought I would throw that bit of info in.

How do you guitar guys do it?

I would think if you tried to stain the wood with blue you would come out with a different color. You may just have to seal it and spray it with a stained lacquer which I know is seriously frowned upon in the violin making circles. I can say that I know a fellow who has built a few and refinished several after regraduating and sprayed them all with nitro and they sound great. All the cheaper student instruments you see in music stores are either nitro or a "pre-cat" varnish I think.

Maybe someone else will weigh in here with a little more knowlegde on the matter. Good luck.

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"We might not be big but we sure are slow"

Barry,
I just mixed some blue last week and tried it on a scrape piece of spruce and it come out just as blue as blue. I used LMI's water soluble aniline dyes. I don't know if you're using a spirit varinsh or oil and what effects it might have. But, the directions that come with the dyes say the best results are found on hard and close-grained woods like maple. It also says that it is suggested the instrument be sponged with a weak solution of the mixed stain, allowed to dry, and then sand down the raised grain.

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"After forty-nine years of violin building, I have decided that the search for a varnish is similar to the fox hunt. The fun is in the hunt."
Jack Batts Maker and Repairer of Fine Violins

Behlen's "Violin varnish" works well mixed with aniline dyes. I spray it mixed with roughly 50% denatured alcohol. It's also a good primer for oil varnish. No idea how this could be accomplished with a brush, I assume it would be pretty hard to get an even colour.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

The alcohol dyes are soluble in shellac solutions, so, maybe you could get your color right with ultra blond shellac and dye mix, used as a base, then coat with the varnish as finish coats.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

The liquid metal-acid dyes in the little bottle (TransTint or ColorTone from StewMac) are more colorfast than anilines. They come in a bridge solvent that is compatible with just about any solvent in common use. They come in blue.

You use some kind of spirit varnish (shellac plus other resins), right? If your client wants a blue sunburst, you will need to spray it, but most spirit varnishes can be sprayed. I suggest a seal coat of whatever your finish is, then a sprayed color coat of the same stuff, then topcoats applied by whatever is your favorite method.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Son-of-a......Did you build that Howard?

I want one! That's beautiful

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"After forty-nine years of violin building, I have decided that the search for a varnish is similar to the fox hunt. The fun is in the hunt."
Jack Batts Maker and Repairer of Fine Violins

Howard, you have shown a photo of exactly what I want to do except for the sunburst. Is that sprayed nitro?

Trans tint should work with your oil varnish Barry.

There was an article in Fine Woodworking about a mandolin maker, who I can't remember, that french polished a colored finish on his mandos. It looked great.

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Ken

Here you go Barry, it was James Condino http://www.taunton.com/finewoodworking/Materials/MaterialsArticle.aspx?id=30182

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Ken

Thanks Ken, I FP the last two violins and it worked well but it looked like a violin type finish with violin colors.

Thanks for the link to the article!!

Very nice looking piece, Howard!

I'm getting ready to do a blue archtop with Englemann top and flamed maple sides, back and neck. The problem here is getting the spruce and maple to come out the same translucent color as the wood colors come thru. I've done some test panels on both woods using a base coat of white tinted nitro and then blue ColorTone mixed in lacquer thinner. Seems to work fairly well but the downside is losing some of the wood figure. Customer isn't concerned about the figure so guess that's okay with him.
I understand that some of the Chinery Blue archtops had white base coats as well as bleached wood. Kim Walker and Bill Comins are two that come to mind.

I have an alter ego that occasionally takes over and when I come back I find a single cut carved top electric guitar in the shop. Or maybe its those pesky elves.

You can rub a sunburst. Kim Walker does some nice ones (did he rub a blue one I wonder?). But it is so much easier to spray color in the lacquer, and the color is much more even and more transparent than rubbing dye on bare wood. Rubbing them in your spirit varnish apparently may be viable; I have no experience along those lines. In that Fine Woodworking article the guy rubs dye on the wood. Kim told me he uses a wash coat of shellac first as a size, to even out the color when he rubs dyes. I gather the OP does not want to do a burst. That would make putting dye on by hand a much easier proposition. As the saying goes, practice on scrap.

This burst is ColorTone blue (I think these are exactly the same product as TransTint; from what I can see it's same manufacturer, different labels). The alter ego may have added some black around the outer part. He doesn't leave very good notes behind, and I can't remember anything he does. But it must be nitro, there's no shellac missing. One thing I notice is that the color can go towards purple depending on the light.

Same git:

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Tell the alter ego that is an ugly guitar, you don't want the ego growing out of control by telling him the truth, that it is beautiful . Does the alter ego make violins?

The thing about violins is the color has to be near the surface to look right. So a "rubbed finish" is probably more in line here. Violin makers call it the "ground" and it is usually golden yellow under some brown varnish. Shiny violins are associated with cheapo. And it is hard to get the concentration of color to be enough with the thinness of a good high quality violin varnish.

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Ken

Just thinking here, and I may be out of line, but if they're wanting it blue, seems they'd be willing to give a bit on the tradition in finishes! Just seems to me.........!

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

yeah imagine showing up with a violin in pink green and purple stripes, and someone looks carefully and says "this finish sucks, the ground is not too close to the surface, and it has not been rubbed - this is so way out of tradition"

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Build log

I did a green violin once for somebody by using alcohol soluble dye in shellac. I French polished it on over a ground of clear oil varnish. It wasn't too hard to get the color even, and it can all be wiped off with a little alcohol on a rag when they get their sanity back. you can do a 'burst that way, either by building up the dark areas or wiping of the light ones, or asome combination.

Thanks Alan. I saw some photos of a modern design 5 string you made for someone that I thought was very beautiful! Graceful lines and a cutting edge design.