The Luthier Community

Hi
Sorry it's been a while. Started a new job at work...really gets in the way of the important things like guitar building

In between times, I've been busy making an SG tribute for our old-blokes-band's bassist.

It's mahogany back, burl maple top, mahogany/walnut/mahogany neck and ebony fingerboard. I'm also doing it as a thru neck. When I get a moment, I'll post some of the build photos, but just in case anyone is interested, has anyone else used standard fountain pen ink as a stain?

I've used it a few times and it beats all other stained finishes hands down!

Modern cameras struggle with red, so I've had to tweak the white balance. but this is getting close to how it looks:



In real life it is much more blood-red...it looks fabulous. Just ink applied with a cloth and standard hardware store varnish, thinned with white spirit and hand-wiped with a microfibre cloth.

I've also done a faux binding which adds a bit of definition to the join:



I'll try to post some shots of how the back is progressing

Ink? Red ink? Whodathunkit! Looks gorgeous, deep - 3D.

That is a knock-out!

Did you do the faux binding by carefully wiping, or did you mask and peel tape, or...?

Dennis

Dennis Leahy wrote:Ink? Red ink? Whodathunkit! Looks gorgeous, deep - 3D.

That is a knock-out!

Did you do the faux binding by carefully wiping, or did you mask and peel tape, or...?

Dennis

Thanks, Dennis

I masked it with some self-stick auto 'go-faster-stripe' strip.

Great thing about using ink is that there are so many fancy colours! (And it works better than most stains and it's cheap!)

Thanks for looking
Andy

That's a beauty. Please, more pics.
Michael

Thanks, Michael

So...I continue with my slightly unorthodox approach! I am building this as a thru neck but using the same technique I did for a recent Thumb Bass tribute - angling the neck and cutting a parallel slot in the body. Yes, I know

Here's the neck:



and here's the slot in the body:



and here's how it ends up:



The reason I do it like this is simply that, with the limited equipment I have, I find it easier to cut an accurate parallel slot than I do to get three bits of separate wood straight enough to glue together a la 'neck and wings'!
I seem to have got away with it - I'll post a shot of the varnished back when it's light enough in the morning to take a picture - fits well and looks good.

The other weird thing I've done, as my customer isn't a purist and doesn't want to suffer the SG 'head-heavy' syndrome, is leave the body thick, dry assemble all the hardware then thin down the back until it balances . The resulting body is around 1.7" as opposed to the original at <1.5" but should balance beautifully.

For the neck, I took profiles from his favourite playing guitar (a Gibson Firebird) and replicated it on this.

He should be a happy bunny as long as I don't muck it up in the final stages

Thanks for looking

Andy

Just a few more quick shots as the back varnish starts building up:







Thanks for looking

Andy

Wow Andy that is such a nice looking guitar

I've never seen anyone use ink before so thanks for sharing that with us!

All the best
Dave

Yep, ditto all around; that's stellar!

E