binding/staining question

Hi all. My friend is building a ukulele. Its a spruce top with maple back and sides. He is currently binding it. He is worried that if he applies shellac on the spruce top to keep the spruce grain from peeling off with the binding tape, it will later affect the staining process. Does anyone know the best order to complete this process? Thanks for the help.

hello, I'm the friend he is referring to. My concern is the shellac will not allow the stain to uniformly take, and may appear blotchy. I'm also going to stain the top a light blue and I have a concern that the shellac may cause the blue to have a green look to it, as the shellac is an amber color? If anyone has a experience with this, I would appreciate any input on the topic, thanks.

You will get a more even blue if at least some of the blue is applied in thin sprayed clearcoats, depending on what effect you are looking for. Since the amount of shellac you are applying is not much, the color should not be affected significantly.


A thin coat of shellac can work well as a pre-stain conditioner, to help with more even stain absorption. Technique is so much about exact specifics and details. Give two people the same materials, you could easily get two different results. Best would be to test your method before doing it in real time. That will give you an idea of what you are up against. If you need to test it a few times, or over the course of a few days or whatever, so be it. Knowledge is power.


There are numerous different ways you could do this. Some are better than others.

+1
In other words, practice on scrap. And if you didn't know this already, increasing the level of difficulty by staining may not be the best thing to do.

And, there are other ways to bind without tape if the stain is the priority, which is again, redundant.