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[StyxNStone]

 

[StyxNStone]

 

[StyxNStone]

 

[StyxNStone]

 

[StyxNStone]

 

[StyxNStone]

 

Edited August 21 by StyxNStone

[Sucuk Ekmek]

I made this one about six months ago. It was just a raw body and neck. I glued them together, then introduced water to the body to raise the wood grain, and fine-sanded it in preparation. I filled the maple grain with thinned black acrylic using a piece of cloth, then sanded the whole thing again. This levels the wood, and you lose the black color on the high spots. That unevenness is the nature of flamed maple. I repeated this three times to make sure the black color settled into all the low spots. After the last sanding, I did the same process with red. This time I repeated it five times, since red was my target color.

After that, I used three cans of water-based gloss varnish, which gave me about twelve coats. After each coat, I sanded the surface flat. The finish only shines and reflects if the surface is perfectly level. Once that was done, I took the guitar to my local car detailer. I know the owner, so I talked to the detail guy. He told me, “You might not be able to hold the buffing machine and could burn the guitar.” I said, “Fine, you do what you know, and start from the back side.”

He buffed the back for a good two minutes. While he worked, I was calculating the strength of the varnish. Then I told him that was enough — we didn’t need that much detail since the back was open-pore. He said, “You could have told me that.” I replied, “If something bad happened, it was on the back of the guitar, and that wouldn’t be a big deal.” He buffed the front too. The varnish was thick, dry, and durable, so everything went fine except for one small issue: I didn’t know that wood could shrink when you use water to pop the grain. It turns out alcohol is the better choice if you want a pristine final product.

This was my most technical painting assignment.

Now, six months later, the guitar already has dings and scratches all over it. It turns out a perfect finish is overkill if you’re going to play the thing all night long. Besides, I never really reached a perfect finish anyway, that is real hard and most of the times more expensive than a price of that retail guitar.

 

 

 

 

[StyxNStone]

Wow, impressive craftsmanship. I didn’t know how technical finishing a guitar could be. Even with the dings, it’s got more soul than a factory perfect one. 

[Sucuk Ekmek]

17 hours ago, StyxNStone said:

Wow, impressive craftsmanship. I didn’t know how technical finishing a guitar could be. Even with the dings, it’s got more soul than a factory perfect one. 

Thanks, I aggree, now guitar has even more self identity.

[EternalForest]

 

[StyxNStone]

 

[StyxNStone]

 

[StyxNStone]

 

[StyxNStone]

Epic

 

Edited September 5 by StyxNStone

[StyxNStone]

The human voice is a truly extraordinary instrument