>
>Dyeing wood is a major pain. If you really want to do it, you can
>get aniline dyes in a zillion colors, made specifically for wood, from
>Garret Wade or any other decent woodworker's mailorder catalogue.
>
>The results can be anything from glorious to a blotchy, horrible
>mess, and there's no way to tell before hand. The finishers I know
>avoid dye jobs like the plague.
As a professional woodworker I will agree with the above to a point. For
something as
small as model props usually you can get a nice homogenious dye job. Still,
if you are going to do laminated props of contrasting colors, using
contrasting veneers is best. Analine dyes can be bought from shoe repair
shops, they sell it as leather dye. Same stuff. Analine dyes mixed with
future clear acrylic to the color of varnish, a rich golden
brown, can be lightly airbrushed over painted light wood color to give a
very nice rendition of varnished wood, as in cockpits and the wood panels on
a Camel, etc. Real varnish dries to a rich golden red-brown that darkens
with age. Think of a violin. Usually in real life, except for some
furnature, the woods themselves are not stained, the overlaying finish has
the color. The translucent dyed acrylic gives the right multi-
dimensional effect as varnished wood.