Inlaying A Painted Body - Need Help

[AIR]

Here's a real hard one...I need some help on a problem I just can't solve for some weeks...

I'm customising my red Fender HW1 Telecaster to look like the famous "Rosewood Telecaster" George Harrison played (Please Google that if you want to see what I mean). New reissues are priced for 4200$USD.

I stripped the red paint off the body. Now I plan to paint it to rosewood color and then to use coats of polyurethane lacquer. So far it's easy. The problem is, that the real rosewood Tele body is made of two plates of rosewood with a thin maple layer between them (like a sandwitch...) and to mimic that, I want to make a natural color wood inlay all around the body, about 4mm wide.

Can't do the inlay before painting the body - it will paint the inlay too...

Can't do the inlay after painting the body - polishing the inlay will damage the rosewood paint...

I could give up on the inlay thing, but I'm still optimistic.

The answer must be somewhere...!!! but where???

Please Help.

[Flon Klar Guitars]

I'm reading that you plan to recreate the look of the rosewood with paint, right? If that's the case, why not just paint on the "sandwich" stripe as well, then lacquer over the whole thing. If you're a talented enough painter to accurately recreate the rosewood grain, I'm sure you could pull off a lighter pinstripe down the middle.

[AIR]

Thanks,

Not that talented, actually I'm an awfull painter...I left the paint job to one of the carpenters in town.

Didn't quite understand what you meant, do you mean I should paint a stripe with yellowish color around the body?

[Flon Klar Guitars]

Yeah, exactly. If you're going to simulate 1 wood, you might as well simulate both, right?

[ihocky2]

My first question is, Why paint it? Why not just buy a rosewood veneer or a wood that look similar to rosewood and then stain it. Is you painter REALLY that good that he can paint something to look like actual rosewood. Before I paid someone to do that, I would want to see a large piece that they have already done, just to see what I am in for.

[Nicko_Lps]

My first question is, Why paint it? Why not just buy a rosewood veneer or a wood that look similar to rosewood and then stain it. Is you painter REALLY that good that he can paint something to look like actual rosewood. Before I paid someone to do that, I would want to see a large piece that they have already done, just to see what I am in for.

Yeah, that guy is right go buy a veneer.Also dunno about you but i hate the idea that a thick layer of color-varnish will be all'around on my guitar,besides that nothing can mimic that rosewood beauty except...true rosewood itself.

Go real!!!

[AIR]

You're all right, I know for sure that nothing I do won't get me even close to the real thing, so I'm not aiming for 100% here. I'll go for Fon Klar's suggestion which is the easiest way to do it, and try to get the reissue in a few years.

[cSuttle]

Ok, to answer your original question, inlay the guitar before you paint it. They buy a product call Friskit that you can find an any good artist supply shop. This is a clear masking flim that what you find on a new clock face when you buy it from the store. Mask of the part not to be painted, paint the guitar and remove the mask.

I use this stuff all the time. Works great.