Best way to stain a maple fingerboard?

[bbcee]

I'm restoring an old tenor guitar that has a completely thrashed stained maple fingerboard. I've decided, instead of replacing it with an ebony one, to stay true to the original & use another maple one.

The color at this point in its life is sort of a greenish-browny-black. Thinking that whatever stain they used decomposed, I thought to use a dark tobacco brown, more rosewood-y than ebony.

What kind of stain would you experts recommend? I was thinking of a water-based stain equivalent to the TransTint sold in the US. With whatever stain I use, what would be an appropriate sealer? TruOil??

I searched in this thread for similar content, but didn't find anything. Sorry if this has been discussed.
Thanks in advance for any advice.

[JEStanek]

Can you post a photo of the existing board as a reference to start from?

Jamie

[bbcee]

Can you post a photo of the existing board as a reference to start from?

Jamie

Here are some - you can see it's just worn out, with pitting in the first position area and stain rubbing off in the upper section. Since I'm going to use larger frets anyway, seems like a good idea to replace the board.





Seems like a rosewood color will be an accurate match.

[Greg Mirken]

I see from your photos that there is wear, but I wouldn't call that fretboard 'thrashed'. It looks very appropriate on that guitar. Do you need to address other issues, such as excessive relief, that entail removal of the board?
Unless there is something else going on that I can't see in the photos, I think I would leave it alone.
Of course, I'm just a grumpy old luthier.

Greg Mirken

[Walt]

I ordered some black fingerboard dye from LMII a few months ago. It turned out to be alcohol-soluble black aniline dye. It did a good job of turning a rosewood guitar fingerboard jet black.
I wondered if there was a reason why they sent an alcohol-soluble dye instead of a water-soluble dye. Maybe the alcohol dye is less likely to react with sweat? I don't know, I'm just guessing. Perhaps an alcohol-soluble brown aniline dye would get you in the ballpark of a rosewood look.
Good luck and let us know how it turns out.

[bbcee]

Hey, some of my favorite people are grumpy luthiers - young and old.

OK, "thrashed" is pushing it, but yes, there's some other stuff I'm doing - the nut seating area needs some help - that would be easier with the board off. Plus, it's good practice, as I'm still an aspiring luthier. I can also put the old board back on if I'm not happy with my work.

@Walt, that makes total sense to use an alcohol-soluble dye. Duh. Glad I asked the question!

[Daive]

I recently did some work on 1930 national with black stained fingerboard it took many attempts with the board and frets removed finally kind of worked.I figured the board was soaked with 86 years of blues sweat and the stain was unable to soak in I used black shoe dye and indian ink and very carefully dressed the new frets without removing the stain.Dave

[bbcee]

@Greg, I forgot the most important reason: the fingerboard scale length is different than the nut-to-saddle scale length! Yes, it's a Harmony!

[Nevin]

You may want to take a look at the TalkBass forum. Many student level upright basses had maple or even beach boards which were dyed. I remember a few discussions of dying them to resemble rosewood.

[HonketyHank]

This maple fretboard is pretty popular over in another universe: