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I'm currently building guitar with a redwood top and mahogany back and sides. I plan on using maple binding. What are steps that I can take to prevent the maple binding from being discolored by the redwood or mahogany while I am sanding and finishing? I'll be using a French Polish.

You shouldn't have a problem with the mahogany, but I'm not sure of the redwood. Once the binding is installed and scraped down, put a thin coat of shellac on it if you're going to sand the rest of the guitar. However, if you scrap the guitar, instead of sanding, you won't have a problem.

I got some mahogany dust in the engelmann spruce top that I'm working on now and naphtha cleaned it right up.

Thanks!

most will clean well . I use naphtha or everclear. Don't use water. The worse I had was sycamore and rosewood. I wiped it with acetone and it turned the sycamore purple and I couldn't get it out so I just stained it.

I've had a heck of a time with the black sanding dust from black-tinted epoxy getting into the spruce top on my 2nd guitar project. Eventually I put on a sealer coat of shellac, and that helped a lot. In addition, I used African blackwood for binding, and the dust from that posed a similar problem of making everything it got onto look dirty.

The maple shouldn't be too bad. It's a very close-grained wood, although sanding dust can get ground into almost anything. As stated, a sealer coat of shellac will help, and mahogany sawdust at least isn't "dirty" the way ebony and blackwood and some other sawdusts are.