Working out how to best do a sunburst finish has been a challenge. My first couple of attempts got pretty messy, (at least if you’re within 3-4 feet…) but I’ve settled on a wood dying method that seems to work pretty well. When I start putting the shellac on, we’ll see if the burst moves any…

The problem, when working with wood dyes, (or in this case, leather dyes) is that there is a tendency to form hard edges. The trick to avoiding this seems to be thinning the dye with denatured alcohol and layering on successive layers to minimize the edges and then finishing by rubbing out the edges with an all-over layer with the second color. In the case of the pictured, I started with an all over coat with the light green, followed by progressively wider bands of the dark green, then finishing by scrubbing on more of the light green, the scrubbing intended to soften any edges that might have remained.