This week I have completed bracing the mahogany back of the instrument. Now I need to do some cleaning up and then stain the outside of the back.
M has ordered a black guitar and this has prompted much experimentation with stains and finishes. I have pretty much decided on the Colour Tone range by StewMac.
The black is a lovely rich and deep colour that doesn't look grey when applied to a light wood such as spruce. There are two problems however: 1. It doesn't sink very deeply into the wood and 2. It's water based. I have to install the pale wood and malachite rosette after staining as otherwise the black stain will colour the pale wood lines. The rosette needs to be installed proud of the surface and then scraped back to flush. Any scraping of the surrounding black stained wood removes the stained surface. I've practiced a few methods and found that routing the rosette timber back to flush is more precise. I have now received the malachite and will test to see that grinding this back to flush will also work. The other problem is that the final polishing of the malachite is done with very fine wet and dry paper, wet! That's obviously not a great idea if the stain is water based. So, the stain must be sealed before the rosette is installed. For that and for the final finishing I will use a WudTone product. I used their range on my first guitar and it gives a nice finish and is simple to apply.
Here is the beautifully cut malachite from Small Wonder Music. This week I will be doing a trial inlay with this before I start work on the fox design.
That's all for now folks!
