Black on black finish, how?

So this will show my wood working inexperience, but for my current build I want to try to achieve a strong black stain but where you can still see the grain lines.

I don't really mind how they are emphasized, as long as you can see them.

The finish I had thought about is grain filling, sanding it back to smooth, staining the wood to black, and then clear coating somehow. I'm assuming the black stain will show up the grain fill rather than hide it?

The things I'm not sure about are what to grain fill with and what to clear coat with. The restrictions I have though is that the process has to be reasonably home friendly so nitro is out. I had thought about zpoxy for the top coat?

Thoughts, ideas, suggestions?

 

The black stain I have is the Crimson Guitars water based stain. It's a nice black but it doesn't penetrate very far and doesn't sit into the grain pores at all, I'll see if I can get a photo of what I mean. So I think I'll need to grain fill first.

 

This is what I mean:

IMG_20200913_181950 by SammyC posted Sep 13, 2020 at 6:20 PM

The stain just doesn't seem to sink in much, so I am wondering about grain filling first with a black product, sanding back, and then staining.

But I don't know if that is the correct way to do it or what products I should try.

I have lots of scraps of the wood to try on though

 

In terms of desired end look, I'm not fixed on any one idea.

I had been trying to grain fill with gold rub'n'buff but it was very hard to get a reasonable result and most oil based top coats just seemed to lift up the gold and smear it around.

So I'm happy with subtle and I'm happy with unsubtle!

 

Yep, both of those is the effect I'm wanting to create!

@Freeman Keller ok, good to know, thanks

@Laren what did you top coat it with?

 

@Laren amazing, thank you. What grain filler did you use? There's so many options it's really confusing

 

I should be able to get hold of Rustins Grain Filler Natural for about a fiver ignoring postage.

Ok, so that's the plan, grain fill mixed with black stain, then stain, then top coat with some kind of oil.

I've been using Osmo Polyx hardwax oil previously. It didn't work with the rub'n'buff but I can try it with this before buying something else

 

Yeah, that's inspired me to try that faded sunburst (for want of a better way of describing it)

 

Ok, first attempt at the black sun burst from above (what is the correct name for this colouring?):

IMG_20200927_145308 by SammyC posted Sep 27, 2020 at 3:20 PM

It's only been done on the right hand side of that block, ignore the rest!

Went really well, grain filled, sanded back, stained and then buffed slightly with 0000 wire wool to lighten the middle.
I'm now trying my oil finish to see how that affects things, but I can already see that it's lifting a little of the stain so might have to review it or my technique.

It's not very obvious from that photo but the grain fill isn't a complete fill like I was expecting. You can see the results below in another test:

IMG_20200927_151640 by SammyC posted Sep 27, 2020 at 3:20 PM

See the slight grain still present?

So am I being unrealistic in my expectations? Our do you usually need to do more than one pass of sand and fill? Or is it because normally you'd be using the clear coat to do some of the filling too?

I'm not unhappy with the slight grain showing, just want to understand what I'm doing, or not doing, when compared to the super gloss finish you see on commercial guitar bodies.