Stain on a pine body.

[Thomas James]

I bought a white pine Tele body. I want to stain it red. I am not a finish guy other than repair touch-ups. Has anyone here worked with pine? Trying to avoid blotches and dark end grain.

Cheers - Tom.

[Jeff Highland]

Pine is pretty hard to stain uniformly.

I'd seal it with clear then shoot tinted lacquer over till you get the desired result.

[Thomas James]

Thanks Jeff.  I am looking for a see-through finish to show some grain.

[Jeff Highland]

Yes the tinted (as opposed to pigmented) lacquer would definitely be the way to go for a see-through finish.

[Ned Knepp]

The idea Jeff gave is a good one and doesn't have to be opaque if you use transparent colors with the clear. It won't accent the grain like directly applying dye/stain to the wood but, frankly, that can be a bit hard to do evenly with pine. Sealing first will usually insure that the stain is much more even. Test it on some scrap pine pieces from the same species of tree, if possible and you should  pay attention to the grain direction while you're at it.  

Personally, I like sealing with shellac before starting with dye/stain, usually mixed with shellac for my color coats. I like to build my color slowly with low concentrations of color in the shellac. Once I have the look I want, just about anything can be sprayed over the shellac.  Even though I've become pretty comfortable with how I do it, I still experiment a bit on scrap to get the intensity / concentration correct. One of the nice things about a sealer coat is that it's much easier to remove the color if you find that you don't like it once it's on the guitar but it's still easier to test first.  

[Thomas James]

Thanks for your input Ned. I have shellac and dye. I will start experiments tomorrow. Got this body for $95.on eBay. Here's another photo. Heavy grain from near center of the tree. You really need to try Electric! :)

[Russell Vance]

Hi Thomas,

Vigorously scrub the body with acetone to remove oils and extractives and shoot a skinny coat of sealer or just just plain lacquer and then build up a base coat - flatten it out and then apply a shader (dyed lacquer with any of the usual suspects - Colortone, MEK, Transtint etc  ) or two and finish. 

It's pine, its yellow - it has bodacious grain without any need for further enhancing unless you want to make an artistic statement  about conifers - you can mess around with shellac if you need the experience and it'll work just fine (providing you keep it thin) and it would be a useful initial skinny dust coat but I'm with Jeff on this one.  It's simple and it works.

R.

[Thomas James]

Thanks Russell. I may go that route. The acetone tip sounds right. I just want some color and a basic finish. Not getting artistic or buffing to a mirror shine. It's a utility guitar. I do a bunch of open tunings. Thought I would try the light weight pine trend.

[Ned Knepp]

Rusty and Jeff are probably right about the sealer.  I completely forgot to mention that I keep my shellac very thin and it can take a lot of time to build my color coats. If I was set up to spray more than an airbrush, I'd probably do it their way too. 

[Glen H]

The advise given is dead-on, but if you still want to stain directly to the wood, there is a product I have used called Stain Pre-treatment (or something like that) by Minwax.  You can get it at Lowes.  It is made specifically for sealing pine or softwood prior to staining.  I used it on my pine trim in my house and it worked perfectly.  No blotches, no black end grain.  Of course, test it on scrap first to make sure it works as well for you.