The finish (part one)

Finishing a guitar is pretty tricky. I suppose if you just want to paint it, then that would be a lot easier, but I wanted to stain mine, then lacquer over the top. This is how I did that.

Firstly, I had to construct some sort of holder for the guitar. I did this with an old broken wood plane I had lying around, which fitted the neck joint nicely. I then made a wooden handle for it and drilled a big hole down it so that I could mount it on a spindle. Badly as this photo turned out, you can see the stand holding the guitar up. It is sitting on a spindle poking out of the top of a big block of wood, held down by a vise. The theory was that I could freely rotate the guitar body this way, and even lift it off the spindle and hold it by the handle.


The first thing I did was to add some water soluble stain. This is just wiped on with a cloth and immediately adds a lot of character to the wood. Here it is after a layer or two of the stain. You can add as many layers as you want. Each one will progressively make the guitar look darker.