Painting/staining binding/purfling

[daveinsurgent]

I am building my first guitar from a cheap eBay kit. I know not to expect much. I posted some pictures of what I received here: https://imgur.com/a/onzpQCS

I'm not a big fan of the cream/off-white colour of the binding especially as it ages, nor the purfling. I know that's probably sacrilege to say.  I bought a bunch of scrap mahogany to practice finishing on but I'm psyching myself out with how the binding is going to react or look once I actually start.

Sorry, I know this is an open ended question. I guess I am looking for advice or ideas.  One is to just paint the body solid.  I had been imagining the top being white and the mahogany on the sides and back being finished with tru-oil or something else that shows the wood. So another idea would be painting the edges black around the binding and sunburst it on the front/back.  I do like the clean edge the binding offers, just not the colour of it.

I would feel better if I could paint or dye the binding a more pure white or black. When I search for tips around painting the binding I mostly see people worried about _not_ painting it i.e. being advised to mask + scrape. Has anyone covered it up before, or tried to change its colour?

Thank you.

 

[Cagey]

I put 5 layer binding with both solid and clear finishes on a Mahogany body when I did the pseudo-L5S in my sig. The build thread is here, if you're interested.

Modern binding and finishes don't yellow like they did years ago, so I wouldn't worry about that so much, but some "clear" finishes are quite as "water clear" as you might want if you want to maintain a bleach-white substrate, particularly after multiple coats. I used cream binding, so the yellowing effect of the clear wasn't as noticeable.