Dyed inlay application

[Dustin Thompson]

I am close to wrapping up a kitchen table that will have a black inlay on the top. The actual tabletop is cherry, the inlay will be maple dyed with black Transfast dye. The inlay will be 1/2" wide, by 1/8" deep.

My first question is, how deep will the stain penetrate? If I have to scrape 1/64-1/32 off the inlay to get it flush, will I be removing much of the color? Also, this will be finished with one thin coat BLO, several coats of dewaxed shellac, then waxed.

Does the finish schedule sound reasonable? Tips for applying transfast? Suggestions?

Thanks

Dustin

[Jim Becker]

You'll be removing all of the color if you have to scrape off more than a smidgen of the wood to seat it flush unless the inlay/stringing has been dyed using a pressure process that gets the dye throughout the material. They dye pretty much stays at or near the surface of the wood.

[Steve Schoene]

As Jim has indicated, inlays you dye your self will have dye only quite near the surface. I recommend commercial inlay boarders. They don't need to be the 1/8" depth to work well and be plenty sturdy.

This is one source that came up on google, I haven't used this company.

http://inlays.com/solid_color_inlay_strips.asp

While the url I gave does apparently have 1/2" wide strips, that is relaively wide for solid colors, and for narrower, or for patterned inlay, such as herringbone there would be lots of sources.

[Ryan Sparreboom]

Instead of using maple dyed black, why don't you just use a dark wood like wenge, ebony or something similar?

[Larry Fox]

This is one source that came up on google, I haven't used this company.

http://inlays.com/solid_color_inlay_strips.asp

I have used them to source inlay for a number of projects and have gotten outstanding service and product from them. They ship quickly, and their packaging is very good.

[Dustin Thompson]

Thanks for the info, guys. I will probably end up getting a contrasting species as opposed to the dye. I had both the maple and the transtint, so I wanted to see if I could make it happen.

If I happened to use ebony, would there be any problem with the shellac as a topcoat? I seem to remember something about shellac making ebony's color "bleed." How about wenge?

Thanks again to all, and thank you Steve for the link.

Dustin

[Dustin Thompson]

Bump-any input on shellac and ebony, or wenge?

Dustin