After months of pondering and posting and reading about it, I finally decided to experiment and darken the fretboard on an inexpensive Squire that I own. I found the light colored rosewood fretwood to be somewhat lacking in appearance (see pics).
So after perusing this forum and reading several posts (but not finding any practical advice) I set off to experiment!
First, I got some Fiebing's Oil Dye in dark brown and black from a Leather Store (same stuff they sell at Stewmac for fretboards).
Next, I taped off the all areas around the fretboard using painters tape.
Then, I used a combo of a foam brush and artists paintbrush (rather small) to apply the stain. I did not tape off the frets or the inlays.
After this, I wiped the fretboard a zillion times with a rag to remove most of the excess stain.
Note, I first applied the dark brown stain to the fretboard but found it wasn't as dark as I liked so I switched to the black. This prvided a nice rich dark brown stain that was perfect! However, this was also my undoing, as the fretboard was already saturated and caused the stain to bleed through the tape in one area (see pic).
The final product (see pics) looks great and is nice and dark, dark brown, almost espresso color. It's perfect. The only 2 drawbacks I saw to this process were one, the inlays did lose some of their luster in the process. Someone on this site said they wouldn't, but they did (although it is hardly noticible and may clear up) and two, the area where the stain bleed through the tape.
All in all it was a good experiment. If I was to do it again, however, I would not use a brush but a rag and "scrub" the color into the wood, instead of painting it on and wiping it off. I think this way you would not oversaturate the wood and tint the inlays and minimize the risk for dye bleading through the tape.
I will try to include pics in the next post. I've never posted pics before and am trying to figure it out still....

Before the Dye:
1.[img][img]http://i894.photobucket.com/albums/ac147/bcam23/th_IMG_2202.jpg[/img]
2.[/img]

After the Dye
1 (with flash) ![/img]

2 (without flash)[img][img]http://i894.photobucket.com/albums/ac147/bcam23/th_IMG_2205.jpg[/img]

The bleeding[img][img]http://i894.photobucket.com/albums/ac147/bcam23/th_IMG_2206.jpg[/img][/img]

You should be able to fix that bleed through.

Just sand it down and slap some tung oil on it ...

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.