Staining the Reign
The color purple
As a big Prince fan I just had to do something with the color purple. So I decided to stain the first guitar purple and call the the guitar "Purple Reign" after the song/lp/movie. And I love the color too! And the 80's were without a doubt a purple reign. So here you can read all about my first attempts of staining wood and finishing with clear laquer. I hope it turns out like the image I have in my mind. I have this vision and I'll do my very best to come close to this. I know it will be a long way to get there so let's see if it's going to be worth all the work i'll have to put in...
Since there are no pictures yet to be shown this page will be empty until I am ready to stain.
I will do some test pieces first, luckily I have some quilted maple veneer to practice on. I have to get it right!! ... talk to you soon y'all!
Ok, this weekend I did some test stains.. I had some pieces of the maple top left to practice on and to see the colors I made. The first color I made was a nice purple but a little too blue so I added a drop of red and guess what? It turned the blueish purple into a royal kind of purple... you can see the 2 colors below:
I took the left one... nice isn't it?
I did some tests to see what happens when you sand it in between stains and to see what gave the best result to fill the gaps between the inlay in the head stock and the wood. I grinded some tiger stripe maple into powder and mixed it with wood glue and one with epoxy. I made 2 small inlays in the same wood as my neck and filled one with the glue one and the other one with epoxy. After staining it it turned out the epoxy gave the best result. Which means it shows the least...
there is a little dust on it but it was a great test! I also did a test with some tape painters use to mask things. I wanted to see if i could make a sharp line bewteen 2 colors without blending or fading into each other. I have to test it with the second color but the tape really stops the stain...
I did a test run in black for the neck.. Better safe than sorry, right?
It's hard to see but one is with one part black and the other one has 2 parts black. Still haven't decided which one I'll use...
So after finding out that epoxy gives the best result I filled the inlay on the head stock. I made sure all the gaps were filled. When it was hardened I sanded it all down. And I had to stain it immediatly of course...
It looks like it's black but it's purple. Unfortunately there is a spot in the mother of pearl inlay which stained also... I'm not too thrilled about that though... maybe I can sand it out... let's hope so.. Below you can see a bigger picture of the head stock so you can see it's really purple...
I think it looks real cool! Imagine the Steinberger tuners and the truss rod cover I made a while ago. I am thinking doing something special with it... it's so simple now.
I'll wait with it until everything is ready... sometimes less is more...
looks pretty cool huh???
I wonder what my local guitar builder "Rikkers" thinks about my guitar.. They will see it when I'm done because they will have to do the fret work. As you know I want a compound radii and that is a new thing for me.. I hope I can look while they do it and learn something.... that would be nice...
There is something I want to share with you. It has nothing to do with staining but I am very proud of this thing I did. I bought 3 dome knobs with green abalone on the top. This would have looked great too but I wanted to do something that would look amazing....
I removed the clear round top of the knob by drilling a hole in it, sticked a small screw driver in it and took it out like opening a beer bottle...
after that I took some of the plectrums I also used on the back of the guitar. I cut a small circle the same size as the clear top I took out of the dome.
and this is what it looks like now... I didn't even have to glue it. It just clicked right in the knob....now it has the same color as the stain.... I love it!!
And?? did I stain the body?? I THINK SO!!! check it out:
Check out that maple, it's breath taking! I am a feeling a little proud now..
It surprised me how fast staining a guitar is. Now I have to stain the back and the neck, both black. The sides will be black too. Maybe I'll leave a stripe unstained like a natural binding. ( prs influence??? haha) Maybe it's not even possible anymore if I spilt some stain on the side. Didn't mask it because I thought the side would be totally black too.. we'll see... After that it's just a matter of spraying the clear laquer and I'm done.. Or spray some sanding filler first to make sure it's absolutely smooth.. I'll test it first on my test pieces.
Well, more to come in the next few days..
@je
6 september 2009;
What's new? well, I did the edge of the guitar. Because I made the carved top a little deeper than the thickness of the maple top you can see a rim of swamp ash around the guitar. No problem and it could even look very nice but the rim hasn't the same width everywhere. On one place there is too much maple top missing and if I wanted a rim the same size around the body I would have to change too much of the carve. Because I used ordinary wood glue to glue the top to the body you can see the glue between the top and the body and no matter how much I tried to sand it away, it didn't! This is the last time I'll use normal construction wood glue instead of glue designed for guitar building such as Titebond!! So because of this I had to fix that problem, Not only could you see the glue, you could also feel it. So I took some filler in a spray can, sprayed a little into a jar, took out my little brush and did the entire rim. After it was cured I sanded the rim down. Now you can't see or feel the glue anymore. mission accomplished! As you know I always had planned to make a sunburst kinda effect. Purple on the inside and a black on the outside. So luckily I had this option to use the filler. After that I checked the side of the guitar if it was still possible to make a natural binding... There were some little bits of stain on it but I was able to sand them away so now a have a totally clean binding. After that I masked the binding with masking tape. Also I put tape on top of the body leaving just the rim of filler and a little bit of the stained maple top and sprayed it black. After the tape was removed I sanded the edges down of the black paint. Now you can't feel the transition anymore between the black and purple stain of the body. Looks nice but of course I need to add some more darker stain to go from purple to black. And that is a lot harder than I thought... Of every step I made, I did a test piece first. Making sure the filler and or black paint wouldn't react to each other or something like that... When I tried to use a darker stain over the black paint, the paint became soft and started to disolve due to the alcohol. So I took some stain with water as a solvent. And this was no problem. Taking a very small piece of cloth I stained the outer rim of the body, also staining the black rim. It didn't have the desired effect I was looking for. So now I am a little stuck because I don't know what to do. I think the best option is to do this: When I sprayed the rim black, I sprayed the rim only but it created a kind of sunburst effect on the masking tape next to the rim. I hope you know what I mean. First I'll prepare the body with sanding sealer and if I have a good build of sealer, I'll try this spraying method for the sunburst. If it goes wrong or it doesn't look the way I want, I can sand it of because there is a layer of sanding sealer. If I spray it directly onto the body and it's not what I wanted it to be, I'll have a ruined top...Ok,I guess it's picture time now... I put some parts on the guitar to see what it will look like and I have to say, it looks very cool!
You can see I have to inlay the last 3 position markers, the first small inlay is not yet glued because I want to glue them all at once. After that is done I need to make the fretboard flush with the neck. Put in the truss rod and glue it all together. I think I will use some titebond glue for that to avoid having problems with unstainable glue. 
Well, it's me again, I have stained the back, and I tried to create the natural binding. Unfortunately the binding became smaller and smaller until eventually it was gone. Like trying to cut a perfect cirlce with a pair of sissors, it never works because you'll end up with a circle way too small. And it's not even a perfect one.. So I just did the side complete black. At this moment the guitar is covered in masking tape. i masked the front completely and a part of the back. Tomorrow I will spray paint the rest matt black. I'll make some pics when it's done. Off to bed now!
I have to work tomorrow and it'll be boring all day long.. but that's a totally different story.. maybe I'll tell it someday..
I realize it has been too long since I wrote some words of progresse... but the reason is that I am kinda busy with some other things now. Next week is my last week at my regular job. They decided to move the production to the Tjech republic and they laid off 62 ppl. When that is done I have been asked to help clean out the building. All the machines and everything has to be taken out... we have until march to do so. and after that, I will be building guitars and make sure my work shop looses it's virginity!!! talk to you soon!