Bleaching Rosewood

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sky Blue Lou
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Sky Blue Lou

Sky Blue Lou

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Anyone ever tried? Does it work? Mess up the wood?

I have an old beater Ibanez electric I want to trick out for fun. It has a dark rosewood board that I'd like to lighten up considerably to go with my planned blue/white paint job. Whattayathink?


lou
 
Not really a good idea. Some timbers bleach OK. All look fairly washed out as a result. It is impossible to control the resulting colour rosewood would be one of the worst choices in my opinion. On the rare occasion I bleach wood I ALWAYS test on scrap first and would stain or tint the finish.
Would not recommend it. Also if the timber is left unfinished which you rosewood fingerboard most likely will be you may have issues with chemicals leaching out over time.
 
Bleaching of any sort damages cell structure. Many bleaching agents also delignify wood (damages the connective tissue between cells). If you succeed in getting the visual results you want there is a good chance the surface of the fingerboard will be softer than it was when you started. This is a problen not just with increased wear but also with fret holding.

That having been said, A lot of the maple used in the industry for cheaper guitars has been bleached. A good finish penetrates the wood and replaces the lignin and fortifies the wood. This is done prior to cutting fret slots so fret holding is not so much of an issue.

Much of the color in rosewood is in the form of a variety of natural oils. It is likely that they will not respond equally to whatever bleaching agent you choose. These results are not predictable and may vary depending of the region of origin, not just the species.

Household chlorine bleach will not work for this application.

I don't recommend you do this.
 
Well thanks for the input guys. It's about what I expected. I might do it anyway just to find out. As I said it's not a special guitar by any means and worse case I'd have to buy a replacement neck. I just think the natural rosewood color is gonna look like shit with a blue & white painted body. This whole project is just something to mess around with. I've only got $300 in this guitar and I never play it anymore. I thought I'd do a take-off on the EVH tape job finish in blue and white mirror-reversed down the middle. Throw one blue, one white DiMarzio Fred in it and chrome Floyd Rose and hardware. Maybe some onboard eq or preamp toys...

Anyway, thanks again.


lou
 
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