Well I've made a little more progress. I made some test pieces using the various dyes I had to get an idea of what direction to proceed:
The left piece is Red Mahogany, the middle piece is Bright Red and the right piece is Burgundy. I actually liked the Burgundy color the best but knew that after the Waterlox it would be very dark so I opted for the Bright Red (pretty much had my mind made up before the testing).
I next progressively sanded the beautiful veneer from 120 - 600 grit:
The color in these pictures is a pretty accurate representation of what the veneer looked like after sanding. Gone was the beautiful color. The wet spot on the lower picture is sweat from my arms from the glorious refreshing Midwestern humidity.
Next up was the dye:
These pictures were taken while the dye was still pretty wet. I did one coat and after drying they appeared pinkish and dull, so I applied another coat.
I still needed to fill some imperfections but I wanted to get an idea of what the final color would be so I applied one coat of Original Waterlox:
The color appears purplish in the picture, but depending how much light is applied determines the color. Under darker conditions it's a darker rich red and brightens with more light. I used McCormick's Red Hot Mexican Chili Powder (the only thing I could find that resembled the color) mixed with Epoxy to fill some of the aforementioned imperfections and that's where I stand now. More to come soon.
