I stained the walnut back and sides first. As with the wood filler, I taped over the inlay on the spine and tail because I did not want them to be stained. I taped over the binding as well.
The color I used on the walnut was called tobacco brown. Here's what the back looked like after staining:
You can still see the wood grain but it is a bit darker. I'm not completely in love with it, but not too bad.
The fun part was staining the front. I started by staining the entire front with a color called vintage amber. I taped over the sides and the neck opening before spraying. I also stuffed some paper in the sound hole to keep from spraying the inside.
Next, I sprayed a red mahogany around the edges. This is done by spraying to the opposite edge of the face so that you only really hit the edge. That leaves a gradually thicker spray as you move to the edge.
I sprayed the red in a wider band than the brown I put on top of it. That leaves a brown-red-yellow sunburst effect. With the red and brown I covered the rosette as well.
Once the stain was dry, I removed the tape and cleaned off any stain that was on the binding. For effect, I propped up the neck on the body for this picture:
Some thoughts about this step...
I didn't mention it before, but I used a sanding sealer between the filler and the stain. Then for some reason, the front looked fine after staining, but the back and sides had some strange spots. I couldn't make them better by spraying more so I eventually sanded off all the brown and started over. Various parts of the body, notably around the edges of the front, seemed to have the grain raised up after spraying. I'm not sure if they got too wet with stain or if I just didn't sand them well enough. Hopefully, I can fix this after the clear coats. I'm not overly happy with the vintage amber on the rosette. I don't know if it would have been better unstained or not because I am also not thrilled with the look of the unstained inlay on the spine and tail.
