First DIY Finish - I Need Ideas!

H

hannaugh

Master Member
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Hey guys, I need some ideas.  My husband and I started building a Telecaster body with some mahogany we had lying around.  It's a 3 piece body (hey, it's our first guitar body) and the mahogany isn't overly nice looking, so I'm thinking something translucent or opaque would be good.  I think Mary Kaye white would look cool, but I don't know how hard it is to do that one effectively.  I really like how this Classic Vibe Squier looks:

DSCF0063.JPG


But I'm open to other ideas for color schemes as well.  I mainly want something that isn't going to be super hard to pull off for a beginning finisher and will look good.  Maybe a dark stain or dye? 
 
If the wood isn't particularly attractive, and you're going to piece it together, then translucent finishes are sorta out of the question. Depends on where your tolerance for half-assedness is. Why would you want to show off something sub-standard anyway?

That said, the wood is probably still good for a body. Gibson's been building guitars out of crap for years. They just put opaque finishes on them so the fools don't know any better and they can still claim "it's Maple over Mahogany! It's the best! Re-mortgage your house and buy this piece of shit!"

Not that that's a bad choice, I just hate that Gibson is a rapist.

You have to spend some serious time with the grain filler exercise to get a decent finish on Mahogany, but past that you should be good. You're not going to be able to get a plausible Mary Kaye finish out of the deal, but you can still get a great opaque finish.

If you're hankering for a Mary Kaye fiddle, you need a Swamp Ashe or Korina body, fill and seal it, then start with some heavily thinned color coat, stop early, then go nuts with clear coat.
 
Send it to Greg, i.e., Great Ape, and have him fix that unattractive mahogany with a nice burn-job.  Reasonable prices, from what I've heard.
 
That's an excellent idea.

Not to take anything away from what he's done, but the degree of detail he applies tends to obscure the wood quite a bit. On the plus side, that means if you've got a multi-part body or a grain that's less than attractive, nobody will see that. What they'll see is an incredible piece of art - as it will be. We've all seen the pictures. The guy is talent personified. Why he plays on quilts and curls is beyond me. It's like doing oil painting on silk. Why? The silk is lost. More to the point, who cares? The art is the thing. Canvas is fine.

Encourage the man. Give him money. Reap the benefits. Improve the quality of the installed base of fiddles. Everybody and their brother owns some sort of guitar these days. Stand out.

Oh, yeah. Lemme do the neck. You won't be sorry <grin>
 
Hey guys thanks for the suggestions.  I don't think the artwork is a good idea with this one just because the problem I have with the wood is that it's a 3 piece body and one of the pieces is a lot lighter than the others.  I think I'd rather just cover it up entirely.  My husband likes red, so we might go with one of the reds since we are building it together. 
 
Actually now we're thinking dark forest green with a black pickguard and chrome hardware, sort of like the Thurston Moore Jazzmaster colors, but a solid instead of translucent finish:

3926_Fender_Thurston_Moore_Jazzmaster_US10229309_1.jpg
 
If you like that Jazzmaster you need to do some research on the Epiphone Wilshire Silver Fox Finish. I can't find the pictures of an original one that a friend sent me but there are plenty on the internet. One of the more rare and  beautiful finishes on mahogany. I think you need to go for that!!!!!!
 
Yeah, this is nice.  Good call Tonar.  We have to plane the wood down to the right thickness, and I think we'll try staining it first to see what it looks like.  It might be okay, or it might look horrible.  If it looks horrible, we'll just cut that part off with the planer and paint it solid. 

original.jpg


British Racing Green would look good too. 

e-type-jaguar-respray-10-800x600.jpg
 
Hannaugh, that Epi colour does look good.

Are we likely to see any photos as the tele progresses ?
 
Yeah, we're getting some dye tomorrow.  So far we have just got the rough shape cut out, but I'll post some pics later this week after we've done some more work on it.

 
We test-dyed one side of it, and the middle board is lighter than the other two boards, but my husband likes it.  I think it's kind of interesting looking.  I will post pics tomorrow when I have natural light. 
 
Cool, the difference could look good. And you could stain a little more on the lighter piece to see what it does.
 
Is that Transtint?  I had trouble making a real go of it with the Transtint on my mahogany Telecaster.  I had better luck mixing same with lacquer and spraying, but when push got to shove, neither was suitable with the Transtint as the sole coloring agent.  I resorted to Mixol pigment to get the right level of opacity while still showing the grain.  While the grass green (Mixol tint no. 13) I used might be a little brighter than you're after, you could try their "Fir Green" (tint no. 12) for something more closely approximating the British racing green you're contemplating.


http://www.woodcraft.com/product/2005522/16597/mixol-tint-fir-green-12-20-ml.aspx
 
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