Coffee Stain

The initial goal was a honey colored instrument to contrast with the rosewood fittings. It's hard to coordinate brown with rosewood so I thought this was a safe choice since I don't have a fine degree of control over the shade when I use stuff from the kitchen.

I made a dark cup of espresso and boiled it down till it was sticky and thick. The maple took this treatment well; the spruce did not, because the surface was rougher in some spots than others. I scraped instead of sanding in an effort to preserve the corduroy effect of the raised grain. However, my scraping evidently left much to be desired because the rough spots absorbed much more color than the smooth parts and it ended up looking dirty and awful. It looked more like burnt toast than honey. I panicked and tried to scrub it out with so much water that some seams opened up. Once it dried and my panic subsided, I realized I could sand out and scrape out the dark spots. It still isn't honey, but maybe it looks more like nice toast than the burnt kind.

Ready for varnish.