Official Luthiers Forum!

I have a friend that I get together with a couple nights a month and we beat on guitars with a few other friends...and try to make music..its fun..after this last OM I built he is really interested in a hand made solid black guitar , seems he saw a guild that was solid black and he is set on having one...he has been looking at some Wenge , so far I have bent and built with EIR, Bubinga, and Amazon rosewood, which was challenging, to make things more difficult he is set on a a cutaway, I have made a dred mold I made off of Antes plans, with a cutaway side and have also made a cutaway press for my fox style bender, however I have yet to bend a cutaway. I have only stained one guitar and that was a warmouth strat I built a couple of years ago, and that was a light brown stain..my question is about staining a solid color, black, and advice as to what kind of wood works well being stained and contorted to a cutaway...I and set on using water based stains and laquer, I love the Em 6000 laquer..any advice would be greatly appreciated.

thanks

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MK5acoustics.com

As to the wood choice, I'll not even touch that.

Now the black EM-6000, that I have direct experience. I bought Stew Mac waterbased pigments and mixed with EM-6000 to get an opaque black for an electric I did. Black looked great. Problem came with the clear over it. Waterbaseds have a bad rep for having a blue tint. I've finished 5 guitars with EM-6000, and the only one I don't love is the black one. The clear has a blueish tint over the black. From a distance and in low light you can't tell, but get up close or outside and it really doesn't look good. I'd recommend another route or some serious testing before commiting to it. I think I read somewhere a drop or 2 of amber can help with the blueish tint?????

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Rob

Where's Hesh? All the guitar's that I've seen him share with us were a glorious glossy black, top as well.

Maybe send him a PM.

Hesh' guitars were done in cat polyurethane and polyester, by Tony Ferguson and Joe White ... no issues with tinting and dying that stuff .. the clear is clear ....

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

I can't help on the finishing, but my first cutaways were in Mahogany and went very well. Side thickness in the cutaway area was about .075 and the rest of the side about .085.

Chuck

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"To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong"
- Joseph Chilton Pearce

I can't help on the finishing, but my first cutaways were in Mahogany and went very well. Side thickness in the cutaway area was about .075 and the rest of the side about .085.

Chuck

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"To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong"
- Joseph Chilton Pearce