Buy some solar lux (brand) aniline dye stains in a) brown mahogany. b) red. Mix Brown Mahog into solar-lux reducer instead of alcohol. Add red drop by drop until the color is just warm enough, knowing that garnet shellac is going to make it darker and redder. Do lots of samples.

I recommend the reducer because it makes dye a lot easier to control working over head. (it also somewhat reduces blotchiness, but quilted grain is so horrible for blotching). IMO this would be a task to pre-stain on the bench before installing but that ship apparently sailed.

Casey

Thank you Sombreuil, you're a life saver. Yeah , I didn't speak up soon enough and my GC wants to get this job done (there's a lot more going on). I'll run some experiments on the scraps and let you know how it goes.

update..I finally got the Behlen dye, and shellac up, looks amazing!

cool beans.