After a third coat of the blue dye, I applied two coats of Birchwood Casey’s Sealer and Filler. Ash has huge grain, even after two coats you can clearly see the pits due to the grain in the top photo. Applying the filler in an even manner is tough, the first coat ended up with drips on the sides which have been hard work to deal with. Sanding back has to be done in a very careful manner, or you go through the stain. I did this in one spot, however I’ve managed to locally patch the colour using some dye on kitchen roll. I must be missing a trick here, as everyone else says “just sand back”.
This is the first point the “real” colour of the guitar comes through. It’s a strong dark blue which so far looks like it could work. I quickly pushed in the neck to grab some shots of how it might look. The shine is lost once the sealer is sanded back, though it comes back when the tru-oil top coats are added. I’m expecting to at least one more coat of the sealer, then onto the 8-12 coats of tru-oil.