Busy Weekend

This technique is turning out to be pretty labour intensive in terms of sanding, cleaning and getting it all evened out (although the initial wood treatment is very quick) but the results are really beautiful.  Absolutely worth the effort.  I did the whole guitar, back and front, yesterday:

You can't see it in the picture but to the naked eye the colour after several treatments (and after 5 or 6 hours drying time) isn't black, it's a very, very, very dark purple.  I think it'll be close to jet black once it's got the Tru Oil on it though as that seems to make it darker.

I've spent the last couple of hours wiping it down with a damp cloth then some dry paper towels, lightly sanding the raised grained and repeating.  I'm still working out the technique but it actually looks quite nice when it's lightly sanded as it emphases the grain patterns a bit more.

Had a quick gander at how the final product should look too:

Unfortunately, the phone camera pictures look even worse in artificial light than it does in daylight.  I'll have to see if I can borrow a better camera to photograph the final results because the beauty really is in the fine details.

Anyway, I'm pretty pleased with how it's going considering I've not done anything like this before.  It's very therapeutic, in fact.