Ken has far more experience than I do so take my comments with the limited experience I have.

For maple accents I tend to seal the maple with several coats of shellac (just wiped on) before sanding. This way when I sand the side wood I'm also sanding the shellac off the rosewood which shouldn't deposit the rosewood dust to the maple. That's what I did on the imbuia guitar you followed on FB.

Having never done this - mind you - this idea just came to me.

Could you seal them separately? Mask off the binding with blue tape, pad a few passes of shellac onto the rosewood. Then tape off the rosewood, make a few passes over the maple?

I think I remember Tom paying special attention to the binding in the "Sealing" videos from the French Polish course for the same reason, but not entirely sure without looking.

I scrape and sand carefully so as not to drag any color from the oily dark woods onto my light bindings or purfs, clean with a tack rag. I wipe on my spit coat with a clean paper towel around the bindings first. Keep the stroke long and flowing and "in line" only at the edges, if that makes sense.....One wipe and I change paper towels. I run 3-4 coats around the edges like this about 15 minutes apart and let it dry before doing the main surfaces in the same fashion. If you are doing a traditional pumice pore fill you will need to come back and very carefully sand the bindings back to the spit caot to remove the slight coloring that gets pulled over them.

I scrape and sand carefully so as not to drag any color from the oily dark woods onto my light bindings or purfs, clean with a tack rag. I wipe on my spit coat with a clean paper towel around the bindings first. Keep the stroke long and flowing and "in line" only at the edges, if that makes sense.....One wipe and I change paper towels. I run 3-4 coats around the edges like this about 15 minutes apart and let it dry before doing the main surfaces in the same fashion. If you are doing a traditional pumice pore fill you will need to come back and very carefully sand the bindings back to the spit caot to remove the slight coloring that gets pulled over them.

Hey Kathy, here's a completely counterintuitive take on the process. I did it once before I knew better and was horrified, but the customer loved it.

Sand the rosewood and don't worry about the dust getting into the maple. It tends to stick in the vertical grain (the curl). Clean up the horizontal grain and put your finish on. It really makes the figure pop.

Steve

Contrasting woods are a challenge. If you do sand, don't sand any finer than 220. The dust from finer grits really lodges in the pores. As Brian indicated, the first applications have to be a quick pass in one direction, then let dry thoroughly. For bindings, you can index the pad on the corner, and make a pass all the way around. Some designs are more difficult.