Mahogany Finishing Help

[masterpuppets]

Hello everyone! I just ordered a Warmoth guitar body/neck and,becuase I do not have a good place to use any spraying equipment of any sort,wish to finish these 2 by hand primarily.I am thinking sort of the "Gibson Wine Red" look,since they are both Mahogany.By looking around,I found some great info on this forum,but am still not sure how to do this.Here is one way:

1.Prep body(sanding)

2.Apply grain filler

3.Apply desired color of water-soluble dye

4.Many coats of Tung Oil as clear

5.Buff this to nice shine

If I wanted to use Tru-Oil as my finish,instead of this,can I tint it's color with the dye? Or would I follow the steps above and use this in place of Tung Oil? My next question is,why does the grain filler need to be a darker shade for mahogany? Does it bring out the grain pattern more,once the dye is applied? And the final question:if I decide to go with a blue color,would I have to bleach the wood first? And at which point,after initial wood preperation,would this be done?

I have basically no experience doing this to a guitar,which is probably obvious haha! Just want to get some ideas from all you experienced folks here!

[Paul Secondino]

Hello everyone! I just ordered a Warmoth guitar body/neck and,becuase I do not have a good place to use any spraying equipment of any sort,wish to finish these 2 by hand primarily.I am thinking sort of the "Gibson Wine Red" look,since they are both Mahogany.By looking around,I found some great info on this forum,but am still not sure how to do this.Here is one way:

1.Prep body(sanding)

2.Apply grain filler

3.Apply desired color of water-soluble dye

4.Many coats of Tung Oil as clear

5.Buff this to nice shine

If I wanted to use Tru-Oil as my finish,instead of this,can I tint it's color with the dye? Or would I follow the steps above and use this in place of Tung Oil? My next question is,why does the grain filler need to be a darker shade for mahogany? Does it bring out the grain pattern more,once the dye is applied? And the final question:if I decide to go with a blue color,would I have to bleach the wood first? And at which point,after initial wood preperation,would this be done?

I have basically no experience doing this to a guitar,which is probably obvious haha! Just want to get some ideas from all you experienced folks here!

I can't answer all your questions but I can answer a few. The first in regard to grain filler. Mahogony grain filler can be darker simply because it is manufactured to match the color of the mahogony. Other grain fillers might be lighter in color so that they match the natural color of woods like ash. Nothing more than that really. If you were filling wood in a floor or furniture or whatever, you would want to use a filler that matches the color of the wood or the wood's finish. Same thing with grain fillers. There isn't any more detail brought out of the grain.

I dont' know if tung oil likes to be tinted so I would say don't. I have not seen any reference ot tung oil being tinted so far.You should most likely concentrate the red color into the staining process and predict what your oiling will do to that initial color

For some ideas, check out MTD usa basses. Mike Tobias does many stained and oiled finishes. He told me that I can maintain my bass with butchers wax. So I believe that you would end up using a wax based product over yoru red stain rather than a tung oil. Also, drum companies like DW drums , etc offer wax sealed drum finishes. A stain is applied and various waxes like butchers wax are used on top for basic protection.

I hope that helps.

[Maiden69]

The only thing I don't like about the wipe on oils is that if you use water based stains, they tend to bleed when wiping them.