Boneyard Finish.?

[The Sandman]

Hey guys, i'm new to the board, i've been reading for awhile, and i must say, there are some very smart people on here....and everyone seems very friendly.!

I have a question. - I just started making my own les paul, and although i am still very far away from doing the finishing touches, i just wanted to know if anyone knwos how to get the finish that gibson puts on their "Boneyard" les paul, I believe they make it for Joe Perry.....

I just love that finish, i know you have to have a nice piece of flamed maple for the top, but then what?

do u paint it and but it with a grain filler? i dont know?

any help is great.!

Thanks

if anyone can post a photo, that would be great, cause i dont know how

[Drak]

You mean this?

Just your normal 'stain black and sand back', then dye the appropriate color afterwards routine.

The requirements are that you have a good (at least AAA or better) piece of flamed Maple to start off with, then follow the tutorial I believe we have here on the front page under tutorials.

Nice looking guitar.

Look at the Carriburst threads and the pics we have there (mostly courtesy of Litchfield ) those show the exact same effect, just using different color combinations over the stained black then sanded back Maple woods, usually seen on Carribursts with Quilted Maple instead of Curly Maple, but it's the same thing really.

The base you start off with is a stained black piece of Maple, then you sand everything off until you are just left with the black dye left in the figured part of the wood.

Then you apply whatever color you want over top of that base, wqhether it be your 'Tiger Green' shown here, or our Carriburst green/blue combinations, it all starts out the exact same way.

[Guest Litchfield Custom Gutars]

That is cool. Thanx for the info Drak.

[Drak]

Here Sandman, let me spell it out for you a little more clearly w/ pics so it makes more sense to you.

OK, this is a Quilted Maple body (not curly, but similar) that I have already stained with Solar Lux Black dye completely covering the top. You can clearly see the figure of the wood under the black stain. Now we are going to block-sand away everything except what will remain in those parts of the wood.

Here I have done exactly that. Block-sanded the top until just the dye in the figure remains. You could sand even more than I did, the remaining effect is up to you and what you're looking for. The more black you leave, the more pronounced the effect. The more you sand, the more 'refined' the look. You get to choose how much effect you want.

Once you have sanded away as much black dye as you want, then you add the color you want to wind up with...blue, yellow, red, whatever. In this case, a reddish dye, which I later sanded back off and went with a more yellowish-amber as seen in the following pics. But this gets the point of the process across.

So now you can see how the black figure winds up as part of the color scheme, and the figure of your wood is what is being enhanced, you are not 'making' the designs, you are bringing them out from the wood where they originated. You are enhancing what was already there, so the nicer the wood you start out with, the nicer the end product. You can use any color you want to do this, black is used most of the time, but you can mix and match any color you like to come up with all kinds of effects.

Like dye it red, sand back, then stain yellow.

Dye it Silver-Grey (close to black), sand, then dye it blue

Dye it red, sand, then dye it blue, it's all up to you.

A note tho...the base color you dye it with will affect the second dye if you continue to wipe it over and over...like, if you leave a lot of black in the grain (like in my pic, I left quite a bit on there), then wipe on yellow after sanding the black back, the yellow and black will start to combine and darken the yellow if you keep wiping and wiping, so I try to wipe on the second color quickly and get it over with in short order, so you need to watch things...

Actually I believe that's the way yours is done, it looks like black, then yellow with maybe a tad of orange. Yellow and black will go slightly greenish if you keep wiping them together, the liquid yellow stain will start to pick up the black dye that was in the grain and incorporate it, thus slightly darkening the yellow...dig?

Blue is a major component in black dye. Take some black dye and dribble it down the sink with the faucet on and running over it, you'll see the black start to break down and see it's mostly blue actually. I would 'think' that's how they're getting that color, since blue+yellow=green, and since blue is the major component in the black dye, when you start wiping on yellow over black, it will start to head to green, and I think that's the basic color of that guitar (Joe Perry)but that's just an educated guess on my part. You don't have to make it exactly like that one, once you understand what's going on, you can shade it whatever color you want. Say you would prefer more of an orange-y color, add in a little red to your yellow before you wipe it on...and on and on it goes!...It's fun.

The second way to do it is to stain it black, sand that back, then shoot clearcoats over that until it's flat and smooth, then shoot your colors over that as 'toner', or 'shader' coats, mixed in with your lacquer. That way the black cannot mix in with your color coats, it'll give it a slightly different effect.

Lots of ways to do it, but I think yours in particular was probably both colors wiped on, 'cuz the color looks like yellow when it blends in with black, which would mean they were both wiped on.

You can do it that way, and then -still- come behind that and add even more colors in as shader coats.

For this one below, I wiped on the black, sanded back, wiped on the amber-yellow, clear-coated, then came behind that with the reddish outside 'burst color which was mixed in my lacquer as a 'shader' coat, then more clearcoats until it was done.

Once you understand the concept behind how it is done, you see all kinds of ways to get all kinds of effects!

Just a closer shot so you can see how everything gels together.

[Morben Guitars]

AWESOME FINISH DRAK!

[bowser]

interesting, those les pauls look like the same guitar, they have the same flame pattern

[Drak]

Good eye, mate!

I think you're right!

[The Sandman]

Awsome, thanks alot Drak, that helps out great,.!

so i just stain it black,and sand it down to how i want the black to look, then stain it the color that i want?

i think thats right.

thanks

[Hotrock]

It's not quite that simple (says the man who hasn't done it yet ).

I think there is a stage where you have to dampen the wood slightly to lift the grain. I seem to remember it saying something about it in a past thread.

Check out the tutorial, if Drak did it, then take that as the word of the finishing god. He got all his finishing knowledge when he was sitting on a mountain and god cast down a holy tablet with 10 finishing commandments

[Drak]

Well, you can call the finishing tablets:

'Spray Finishing Basics', and 'Spray Finishing With Colors' by Dan Erlewine, available from Stew-Mac Videos. I must have watched those videos 30-40 times over, and I highly recommend them to anyone who wants to learn about staining and finishing.

Erlewine is up on the mountaintop, not me, I am but a follower

And there are many roads that all lead to the same place, my way is just one way, I'm sure the tutorial is different in a few details, but will also get you to the same place.

But HotRock does have a point there. I actually do mix in a little water with the Solar Lux, not much, it just seems to penetrate a little better with a bit of water added, but I don't do it to snip off the grain ends, I just think it helps the penetration into the grain.

so i just stain it black,and sand it down to how i want the black to look, then stain it the color that i want?

Yup, that's basically it, but check out the tutorial on the site here somewhere too, see what that says also.

And practice a few times on some scrap first.

[Guest Litchfield Custom Gutars]

Yeah those LPs are thye same one. I'll post some puics of a stain putple sand back finish I did as an experiment. Also, This should probably get moved to finishing.

[Pedalboy]

Drak that is sick!! Awesome finish.

[commidaddy]

i love that finish...can you make a mandolin out of maple? i'm assuming so, but do you think this paintjob would look good on it?

[frank falbo]

Hey Drak (or anybody) I've always stayed away from black because I felt that it reduced the three dimensional quality when you moved in and out of the light. Like if you use one color, you'll have light and dark sections. But then when you reverse the light source, they flip. The light spots are dark and the dark spots are light. I do the sand-back, but usually with a more heavily concentrated or deeper hue of the color I'm using. Like a dark forest green, sand back, then emerald green. Or navy blue followed by an ocean blue. Does that make sense? My question (finally) is what is the tradeoff? I love a finish like yours, anyone who doesn't is a fool, but have you sort of "locked in" the quilt pattern? I imagine there is still some "sparkle" to the non-black parts, but I'm wondering if what you're left with is more like a photo-flame finish, where the look is the same from all angles. I have a solid flamed body, and since its a solid piece, the flame is a little more mild than some of the hyperflamed specimens you'd use for tops. So I'm wanting to do something to bring it out but I'm wondering if this type of finish would be counterproductive, and if it would look more "alive" with a dark brown, sand back, then amber. It'll be a 2-tone burst.

[skibum5545]

should this thread be pinned?

[rhoads56]

Hey Drak (or anybody) I've always stayed away from black because I felt that it reduced the three dimensional quality when you moved in and out of the light. Like if you use one color, you'll have light and dark sections. But then when you reverse the light source, they flip. The light spots are dark and the dark spots are light. I do the sand-back, but usually with a more heavily concentrated or deeper hue of the color I'm using. Like a dark forest green, sand back, then emerald green. Or navy blue followed by an ocean blue. Does that make sense? My question (finally) is what is the tradeoff? I love a finish like yours, anyone who doesn't is a fool, but have you sort of "locked in" the quilt pattern? I imagine there is still some "sparkle" to the non-black parts, but I'm wondering if what you're left with is more like a photo-flame finish, where the look is the same from all angles. I have a solid flamed body, and since its a solid piece, the flame is a little more mild than some of the hyperflamed specimens you'd use for tops. So I'm wanting to do something to bring it out but I'm wondering if this type of finish would be counterproductive, and if it would look more "alive" with a dark brown, sand back, then amber. It'll be a 2-tone burst.

Yes, the staining and sanding back brings out the grain, but does not let the grain shimmer in the light as well as it could.

The best way to get a shimmering effect is to not stain the grain at all, but add the stain to the lacquer. But, your maple had better be damn good quality stuff, to get the same amount of "figure".

[Drak]

I second everything ^ he ^ just said .

Perry is right. Yes, when you stain then sand back, you do lose the crazy-ass 'chatoyance' (god I love using that word, hehehe) and 'shimmer-glimmer' of straight-up natural finished figured wood.

But, it's not 'flat' like a Photo-Flame either, that is real high-test Quilted Maple brother, and it shows it when you look at it, it does have depth and glimmer, but nowhere near what natural clear-finished Maple would have in the irridescence dept., that is very true.

And what Perry said about using shader coats over clear finish is also very true to bring out the most in the figure.

I just have this weird thing about looking at naturally clear-finished Maple.

It always looks like a blank canvas to me, awaiting my stain jars to attack it.

The stain-black sand back thing is just one look, neither better or worse than any other look, it's just one way to do things, but I really like it myself. Some people hate it for the reasons you mentioned, that it stops up the irridescence of the wood itself.

To each their own.

[commidaddy]

Drak,

Where do I get the stains you mentioned?