Maiden69

If it is shipped with a 2K clear coat, I suggest taking it to a body shop or motorcycle painter. They can shoot 2 light coats of clear whenever they are finishing a car, and shouldn't charge you much, since they almost always throw away some catalyzed paint at the end.

With Behlen nitro, I finished the guitar and a few days letter I did my final sand and buff. I did the same with the DEFT, just that it didn't held up like the other one does.

Very unique,

Nice, one comment on the sanding sealer and DEFT paint. That is what I used on my first few guitars, and they where as good (finish wise) as the guitars that I have done with Behlen nitro. With that said, all the guitars that I finished with DEFT got damaged on storage. Somehow, either the heat or the actual finish is not as strong as the Behlen nitro. They got marred from the fabric on the cases, especially in the front area where the small squares of foam are that pushes the body so it won't shift around during transportation. Right now I'm waiting to finish the move, to take them all out and strip them for re-finish. This time, in 2k paint. No more nitro for me.

Better to use those Preval units than the Krylon paint, that Triple crap is worthless! I used it once and had to remove the paint and start from the beginning.

Same thing Wes said, either with lacquer or with CA. once you remove the tape, use a one side razor blade as a scraper and carefully reduce the hard edge left by the tape to the same level as the paint if you use CA, if it is lacquer, then just paint and level it later.

They both turned out great. I get what you say about the window between alcohol and water. If I'm blending, I would only use water on all colors. The reason I use the alcohol dye is so they won't blend at all. You could achieve the same you did by cheating a little bit. Stain dark with the alcohol, then as you sand back, go over the entire face and remove just enough so that the figure starts to show, then carefully sand only on the figure, you got to be very careful, because if you get to overzealous you can create dips that will show on your finish product. I did that on that bass, I noticed that the cherry was being sanded out too easily, so once I had the grain the size I wanted, I switched to a small piece of rubber and just sanded on the top of the figure, doing all possible to avoid the grain. That is the reason, if you look closely between the other guitars and the bass, that the grain look like sharp skinny veins on top of the figure. The other guitars look more soft and blended than the bass.

It looks good, I'm sure you're disappointed because it is not the shade that you wanted. One more trick that I learned from David Mika was to "wash" the color. He literally adds more color and takes away the excess with a clean wet rag until he achieves the color he wanted. I took that one step further using different types of dyes. I started with a alcohol soluble dye for my deep color, sanded back until just the right amount of figure was showing up, then I washed the main color(s) on top of that, those being water soluble tints. First time I tried I used water for both and the dye in the grain bled into the lighter color on top, but when I used the alcohol first, the dark dye didn't bled at all, allowing me to play with the lighter color until the tone that I wanted was achieved. I did that on my first bass. Cheery alcohol dye, then amber water dye rubbed on top. As you can see the cherry turned to orange, but it didn't stained or bled into the clean areas.

It turned out very good... if you were not going for a deeper color, that first one looks right on for a blue stain. My first stain job was a "black-sand back-blue" that was something like your end result but much darker because of the deeper quilt figure. And my last blue guitar was the opposite, I stained a darker blue, washed it a little bit, sanded just the tip of the wood and then shot a blue toner coat. Both together... as you can see, I love blue guitars!!! From both yours, I really like the thick flame on the blue one, it's a shame that the grain washed out on the waist. Kinda the same problem I had with the single cut on the waist at the bass side. The grain disappeared once I was done with the carving.

Not bright at all! What tints did you used for the colors? That blue is something I may try to attain in a future build. He could airbrush them....

I'm late to this party, but what a shame, that was a very pleasing looking piece of redwood. The rings even flowed with the guitar contour!

yes it did turned out great! that blue looks super bright, did you bleached the wood or was it that bright naturally?

I was going to have a heart attack! I have been buying 2K paint for a while and I can get a quart of decent clear for around $50 including the activator and reducer, and very good clear for maybe double that. Guitar is coming out great as always!

This was brought up in 2004-2005 but never got realized. Not sure why, it's being a long time...

In reality all you needed was to make 1 jig for all of them, and I would had gone 1 step further and just buy a flat metal pick up ring from StewMac and use it as a routing-sanding template. I would leave it over size, rout the inside, then use a Robo Sander and clean the outside.

Nice to see more progress!

Cool!

Looking good, but I think that you "misplaced" the volute by a little bit. Did you made the headstock longer? I do notice that the volute is at the middle of the first fret instead of under the nut like in your rendering.

Turned out very nice!

Ha ha ha, I got flashbacks looking at those sutures! I got both my knees done, didn't slowed me down a bit after the 2nd day I was out at Itaewon, Korea playing pool with a cane! Nice guitars, hurry up and recover so you can finish them!

I know what you mean, between the car, the guitars, the gym and the family I barely got time to get any more hobbies. I used to draw, and was good, but that was a long time ago. I thought about tattooing, since a good friend has been doing that for 20 yrs now, but it is too much for me to do, so at least airbrushing is the next best choice. And I can incorporate that into the guitars and the cars, and may be the family.

Not really, more like the camo, just that the base color will be also added in the swirls, the rear would be taped or I will just sit the body face down and then paint the rear and fade it down on the sides. Now I want to buy a decent airbrush also, I only have a set that was made by Testor back in the days that I used to paint my model cars with. I want to give it a try to see how good can I do.

It does look good like that. I want to do a Swirl, not same as this, but in theory I just want to have the swirl up front fading to a solid color from the edges back, kinda like what you did here.

nice, not over done! For a moment I thought I was looking at the Return of the Jedi walking around the forest...