Finishing with color

[Logan]

Getting ready to start finishing my first guitar. There were a few mistakes along the way that I am not thrilled with, but live and learn. I would like to finish the guitar in black to partially to mask the mistakes I made (a couple gaps in the binding that are not great and a router splinter to the back), and partially because I like black.

So, what are some recommendations for imparting a color without totally hiding the grain? I'd rather my East Indian Rosewood + filler looked like ebony than black plastic. In addition, I used a curly maple binding which I am quite fond of and would like for the guitar to be black with the maple being either blood red or plain. Just not sure about how to dye wood that is already attached to another piece of wood. Do I need to seal first, then dye? Use the dye in the first lacquer coat and just tape off?

Also, while the advice is being thrown my way: My general plan of attack was, 1 coat vinyl sealer, grain fill with System 3, 1 more coat of vinyl sealer, lacquer. Yes?

Guitar books really need to cover finishing better.

[kencierp]

If you are heading down the road of using an epoxy for a filler I know that Zpoxy is far more user friendly then system three -- However, I do not recommend Epoxy -- I would suggest that you take a look at "Hood" nitro lacquer based fast drying pore filler especially if you are planning a color coat.

Now here's the bad news -- consider that any defect you can see now will look ten time worse if you apply finish over it --finish does not hide, it amplifies our mistakes. Perhaps some of the dingers can be repaired and made invisible -- would it be possible to post some pixs? Rest assured there's no reason to feel embarrassed -- I for one spend a good deal of time masking my own ineptitude.

[Logan]

Not a great photo since it was with my cel phone camera. This is on the back when I was cutting my binding channel and I kind of leaned into the work too much, causing the guitar to come out of it's cradle and lean into the router, splintering wood right at the tail. Worst spot to do something like this, since it is only about an eighth of an inch into the guitar back, but results in an inch-and-a-half wide flaw at the end of all that grain.

At the moment I just have some wood filler in there...but was thinking of scraping at least bits out and seeing about gluing in some slivers or something.

The other flaws are mostly just your typical "first timer trying to do wood binding and leaving some gaps here and there, mostly inside the purfling". None really TOO noticeable, but of course, they bug me.

I'll look into the Hood product. Seeing as how this is my first finish, I'm not in love with a process...just want to start with the "right" process so I don't find myself changing said process every time I finish one. Likewise, I have a love affair with color and plan on using it on my next guitar (cherry red!), so want to figure out what is going to leave me the best result in the dyeing vs. coloring lacquer vs. ???

[Logan]

Follow up related question: I used a black spray lacquer to color the back and sides, and cleanly taped off the wood binding so everything was going swimmingly. However, upon clear coating, now I have black bleed onto the bindings. Did I skip a step? Is it recommended to do vinyl sealer over colored coats or should I just be using a million light coats and avoiding wet coats?

Color is not my friend...it hides errors, and then creates more headache.

[B. Howard]

Bleeding of the color coat underneath happened from the solvents in the clear re-wetting and flowing the color coat. There are a number of ways to combat this. The best IMHO would be the use of a few light and fairly dry coats of lacquer to bury the color coat so the wet costs cannot re-wet it. I would surely not apply a cost of vinyl sealer over a lacquer, it would most likely destroy the finish. Sealer is for sealing bare wood.