Staining Help

[thewongster]

I'm having a little trouble over here. You see I have a telecaster, with a maple top and a maple back, sandwiched in between is a piece of about 1 1/8" alder. If you can picture this, I want to paint the alder which is between the maple black. and I want to paint the maple top and back, an amber color, to show the figure more, but later ill sand it down to keep the maple color. The problem is, how about shall I do this? which should I paint first? the alder side with ebony minwax polyurethane stain? or should I paint the maple top and botton with amber minwax poly stain? The real problem is that im afraid that even with the help of tape, either stain will seep through and color the wood under the tape. For example, If I decide to paint the alder first and tape the whole body except the alder sides and paint it with ebony stain, will it go through or under the tape, and mess up the maple?

[Drak]

You need to be spraying your finish to get the fine line distinction you want.

And you would need to grain fill the Alder first (I would use CA glue for this) and sand back until it was -dead- smooth before applying the black.

If you're just wiping finish on, I would say forget it, it'll never come out right and you'll get P.O.'d at yourself when you have to remove everything and start all over again.

Personally, I would just stain the alder the same color as you're doing the Maple, that's your best chance of a success the first time and not have to go back and sand everything off and try it again.

[Sand Paper]

If you want to simply stain the alder black (ebonize) then I would grain fill everything, then simply mask the alder. Start finishing on the rest and get it sealed. Then I would remove mask and start staining alder part and seal that in. The sealer shouldn't allow stain into the maple parts and if you get it on your sealer you can simply wipe it away. If you want to paint the stripe solid black, like a black lacquer or something, i would do the exact oppisite. Grain fill everything, then mask everything except the alder, paint it, maybe seal it, then do the rest of the guitar.