More finish color

A few posts ago I showed a test piece stained with diluted brown mahogany dye. I went and picked up more dye, this time bright red. I added a few drops to a new brown mahogany mixture.
















Here's the old brown mahogany piece.















And here's the new piece with a little red added.















Below, old brown-only is on the left. New brown-with-a-little-red is on the right. I'm staining these pieces by first sealing the wood with 1-lb cut shellac. Then I wipe on the diluted dye with a cloth. I dilute the dye with same thing I'm dissolving my shellac flakes with, 190-proof everclear. It's a challenge to get the dye evenly applied. I need to figure this out before I do the actual guitar.

I stained the piece on the left by wiping on a coat of brown mahogany dye. I stained the piece on the right, by first doing an application of brown mahogany dye, then a later application of the same thing, only reddened. This is similar to how I have read that Martin does it.















Hmm, probably pretty hard to tell in these pics, but the new piece really does look more like Martin's mahogany color. Developing...