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If I were to laminate layers of dyed veneer to make a solid 2mm thick rosette panel, when I surface sand would I risk exposing a layer of glue? I'm trying to figure out how to come up with some colored panels for rosettes that I can cut into different shapes. They would not be showing edge grain, as is typical when you use multiple veneer lines to make rings. I don't think it would be possible to just dye 2mm thick panels since the dye would not penetrate all the way through.
Thanks, Wendy

Can't answer the sanding through question.
Pressure cook the dye into the wood.

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A lot depends on the quality of the veneer and who??? made it ,most of my stock is .6mm or .022 and I/ve never had a problem with losing colour For thicker veneer 1mm I make my own from the natural colour of wood,,There are so many different colours out there , that one could easily design something around the use of these beautiful natural coloured woods. Dyeing can be done , it/s vy tricky though GAL had an older article abt richard schneider using a pressure cooker (yard sale) and rit dyes or transtint and other ngr stains. Not sure abt the bleeding through or sanding exposing a glue line. I/ve used titebond, fish and hhg to make rosettes .I/ve used contact cement / epoxy on a rosette so that it would not swell in the opening for a tight fit. Conversely I might use hhg or fish for a fit that was sloppy an had slack in the ring and water thin dollar store glue in the red/yellow bottle to wick in and fill the odd line that didn/t quite close tightly against the next layer of veneer. Sure others wil have a lot more to say.

I'm not talking about how to dye veneer. I want a solid sheet of colored wood for a rosette ring. I thought of the possibility of gluing layers of 5" x 5" dyed veneer on top of each other. My concern is that there is glue between each layer, and when I surface sand flush with the soundboard after inlaying I wonder if I might expose a layer of glue. The other option is to find a way to dye 2mm thick solid wood, but I don't think any amount of pressure cooking is going to get the dye all the way through 2mm thickness.

I recently did a similar thing with 0.6mm burl veneer that was too textured to sand flat without going through it. I inlaid low and top filled it level with WEST 105/207. Worked fine. (Apologies for the dust in the pic).

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

So Trevor, you didn't laminate layers of the burl, you just inlaid it shy of the top surface and "filled" the resulting channel with epoxy so the epoxy was what you were leveling when leveling the rosette?

Correct. The purfling rings form a dam for the epoxy. Pour the epoxy warm (to get the bubbles out) in dropping temps so bubbles don't blow from the wood beneath as the epoxy cures. "Pull" any bubbles that form across to the edge and up to the surface using a tooth pick, then they disappear in the levelling process. Make sure the channel is dust free before you start as dust in the bottom of the channel will hold bubbles down.

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

Are you working on a stained-glass rosette? I recently contacted Jason Kostal about wanting to play with the idea, and he appreciated the gesture. He also shared a few other bits of design advice.

Rod True walked through his process for dying the wood in his Tassie Blackwood/Sinker Redwood build thread. A quick search will turn it up for you. And Rod's is gorgeous.

With some help from Rod, I picked up the brake bleeding kit mentioned here last weekend. My plan is to copy that setup.

The only technical questions I have now are about what type of wood to use. It needs to be pale enough long-term to take on those subtleties without losing them down the road.

Nice rosette Trev .Thanks for the tip ,never thought of doing a top fill

Thanks for the answers. Trevor, I had wondered about using dyed epoxy but your solution makes sense, thankyou! James, thanks, I will have to check out Rod True's build thread and Jason Kostal's rosettes. I remember seeing both in the past. Actually, what got me started thinking about all this is a rosette I saw on Allan Beardsell's website.