Doing A Dye Based Burst

[rahimiiii]

One word of caution when using dye based burst, that means burst that does not involve blacks such as cherryburst, tobacco burst, honey burst, or any burst where you can see the wood grain at the edge. The problem with transparant color is that ANY and ALL mistake shows and it is impossible to totally blend it in. That means if a paint drips onto the burst portion, its going to be there forever! Look at this one...

before fix

After fix

Now it is very hard to photograph these things but in person you can still see the fix, however you can make it less of an eyesore rather than making it disappear. What I did was sand out the offending area down to whites, then try and blend everything in. The area will look darker than the rest but it will not look like a big blob of paint. Or another thing that might help is sand off the entire area down to sanding sealer, then mask off any other area as precisely as you can, then attempt to match the colors around, and remove the masking then continue blending. So therefore do your best to not let murphy bite, and that means watch your airbrush angle!!! If you are too steep with normal hobby airbrush you will drip paint onto your body! Well here is a cherryburst I had messed up with... this would serve as a lesson...

First I start with this:

Notice the black marker lines, I use this method to help highlight the general low spots while sanding the sealer. Sometimes I wish to wet sand the sealer because it cuts down on dusts, but I think its better to dry sand because in this stage some of the wood is still exposed, therefore causing problems. Use baby oil or something to eliminate this problem. The marker helps reduce sand-through because when the marker is gone I know to stop sanding.

Then I do the sides first... angle your airbrush or spraygun 90 degrees to the edge of your body. The horns will be hard but try your best. This will help avoid overspray. I wish I had a picture but I dont... sorry.

This is my final result with burst finished... however here is where the problem started... I did not like the wide burst in the back so I wanted to correct it... BIG mistake.

here is the correction:

You can notice lines of different shade, very arupt too. Look at the edge and you will know what I am talking about.

[rahimiiii]

This is the newer burst... I hadn't had a picture of the progress, so here is the finished product (still drying... takes a month)

What I learned is that always point your airbrush toward the outside of the body rather pointing it outside in. This will remove oversprays, another thing I learned is, if it isn't broken, DONT try and fix it! Here is the stripped body after the cherryburst went bad....

I brushed on like 6 coats of high build sanding sealer. I wouldn't do this with anything else like deft or parks sealer because they don't have nearly as much solid as this one. If your sealer looks somewhat thick and opaque from the can, and when I said opaque I mean a 1/4 inch thick layer poured into a pan should totally obscure the bottom of the container, then you can brush this onto ash, and even then do heavy coats because ash is a VERY porous wood, and normally one would use a grainfiller before brushing on any sealer. Once 6 coats have been brushed on, the paint was almost as thick as those Fender poly finished body, although not as bulletproof. Now I let it dry for a week or so, when you can no longer scratch a mark into the paint with your fingernail, you're ready to sand.

Edited October 24, 2006 by rahimiiii

[sexybeast]

God am I an amateur!! It looked fine to me until I got a look at the finished work...

[robbrailey]

Did you paint all those wires yourself ?