First, I needed to sand back the black dye I applied last night. This levels out the raised grains as well as removes the dye from them, yet leaves the non-raised grains with dye. The end result is an enhancement of the flame maple pattern so that it will be noticeable through the color coats. To do this I used an orbital sander with 320 grit paper. Using such a high-powered device was a little nerve-wracking (I did some sanding by hand as well), but in the end the guitar top looked like this:
Next up, COLOR!! My idea for a unique finish was to blend traditional Les Paul attributes with non-traditional. Typically Gibson does sunbursts in either Cherry Red or Tobacco Brown with Vintage Amber as the center burst color. I, with the help of my amazing wife, chose a different edge color: Red Mahogany. My hope was that it would be somewhere between Cherry Red and Tobacco Brown.
First up, I coated the whole top in Amber. The reason for this is that once the darker, edge color is applied there will be some bleed through of the Amber in the flame patterns of the wood. This is what is looked like after the Amber coat:
After drying, I applied the outer color (with a different rag). Then, using the rag I used for the Amber, I applied more Amber to the center and began blending (feathering) into the outer color a bit. After that, I used the rag I used for the Red Mahogany to continue to feather the area in between colors to blend them together. Since these are all water-based dyes, essentially I am playing with water colors. This means that to achieve a gradual blend of the two distinct colors I have to blend the colors together by pushing them around, so to speak. Anyways, this is how it looked after blending colors:
After drying some more, an additional outer coating of Red Mahogany (this time with a little more dye in solution) was applied to really accentuate the burst, and more Amber in the center then feathered. Here's the final results:
Now, for the headstock I had a different idea. I wanted a logo, but wasn't sure if paint or nail polish or other acrylic would be compatible with the Tru-Oil clear coat...SO, I fashioned a logo out of tape (my initals....go figure). After applying it to the headstock, I began dyeing the headstock in Red Mahogany. This is how the headstock looks so far (the tape hasn't been removed yet!):
That was a day! Tune in tomorrow for the beginnings of clear coating this beast! I'm super excited to see how this all turns out (as if I wasn't already)! But, one step at a time...
Cheers,
Dean
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