dying a maple board ... :-|

[Matthew Tucker]

OK so I'm after a useful luthier hint here, and preferably not a disparaging comment about low-end basses.

Young fella brought in a CCB with a painted maple fingerboard. I have stripped the horrid black paint, dressed the board, reshaped the treetrunk it was attached to and now the fingerboard and neck is in playable shape.

I could just leave the board natural-coloured, oil it a little, it would work OK, but look ... odd.

I thought I might be able to dye the thing black again, because the maple takes up stain very nicely, but I'm wondering whether anyone has a hint on how to dye the fingerboard without the dye bleeding past the neck glue line onto the neck. Masking tape won't work. And so far my tests with making a knife cut along the glue line are not very successful, the dye bleeds anyway. Maybe i should fill the knife cut with a tiny squeeze of epoxy and then scrape back down when it's set? Then apply the dye?

Has anyone got a neat way of doing this?

And, YES its a crap bass, and NO its probably not worth the effort, but YES for various reasons I'm doing the job.