[Pics & screw-torial] My failed attempt at "ebonizing" a rosewood fretboard.

[xenophobe]

the solvents (aliphatic) used in Minwax stains is basically mineral spirits...mineral spirits does NOT eat into itself like lacquer thinner (acetone, etc).

DO I NEED TO PROVE TO YOU THAT I HAVE FUCKING DONE IT AND OWN THE VERY SAME PRODUCT I AM TALKING ABOUT?

Jesus fucking christ. Yay you're a fucking carpenter, so the fuck am I.

You can run multiple coats. If you press too hard it eats through it.

Derp.

[Number Of The Priest]

I was browsing at The Home Depot yesterday and contemplated buying another Minwax ebony marker and some sandpaper (and then some nail polish remover (acetone) at Walmart) to try xeno's technique below:

This is what I'd do.

Sand, get it rouged to I dunno 100-200ish.

Clean with acetone or MEK. Naptha leaves residue, rosewood is naturally oily so using naptha to prep rosewood isn't really good. It does not take stain very well, you need to open up the grain as much as you can and dry it out.

Apply.... and then polish the fretboard with dry 0000 steel wool. Hoping you can seal some of that into the grain. Then apply another coat or three with the minwax pen.

I would not scrub the fretboard. Just try to get a coat to dry where it won't easily rub off. I've done one neck like this and it's fairly stable and stain has not rubbed off on my fingertips. But I am not acid fingers... your skin pH may be responsible for how well it works for you.

I hesitated on purchasing anything. There were several different grit choices of sandpaper and sanding sponges falling between 100-200 grit. Anyone try the sponges? My hunch is that they could fit into the wood spaces between the frets... unless sanding the frets is OK and they don't need to be protected. Otherwise, how would you go about sandpapering a fretboard that has frets installed? Do I need to attach the sandpaper to some sort of block that has a hard corner so that I can sand the entire fretboard surface right up to the frets themselves? I am not concerned with sanding away the inlays on this cheap guitar; in fact, a totally blank "ebony" fretboard would look nice on this guitar.

[Guitarkid8]

I would use the big sheets, fold them to get into the edge near the fret.

[Sunbane]

You need to protect the frets from getting scratched up, unless you are going to level them afterwards. I'd guess you would tape them up or something.