CorduroyEW

Due to popular request I'm going to show you all a step by step on how to hand rub shellac bursts. A key thing to remember when using shellac on guitars is that you can not use premixed stuff off the shelf of a hardware store. You need to buy dried lack flakes and mix them with denatured alcohol or methylated spirits. There are lots of french polishing instructions online that will let you know what mix to use and I can't really help you on proportions of shellac to alcohol because I just mix it until it looks right.

To start off we need to prep the body by sanding it down or scraping it. I like to work from the idea that less is more. Many years ago guitar manufacturers didn't sand the guitar bodies with 1500 grit sandpaper and spend hrs getting every nick out of the body. They simply went over the body with a cabinet scraper to level it and smooth it and they called it good enough. Using this method will not give you a perfect finish, but it does give you a different character that I really like.

Here is the body of the guitar before I've done anything to it. You can see that it's a 4pc body and there are several small knots in it. The knots won't take colour very well so rather than go with a regular burst I decided to do something a bit different. I'm going to use purple, green, and blue for the main body of the guitar and then it'll fade to black around the edges. The blue, green, and purple will have a folded together look rather than a blended look. Doing this will make the spots that don't take colour well look less out of place.



To prep the body I run over it with a cabinet scraper.



Now I'm ready for colour. I start by soaking the whole body with alcohol and then I dump the powdered colours into the middle of the guitar. With these particular colours the blue turns green when it is really thinned down with alcohol and I have to mix red and blue for purple so I am dumping red and blue into the middle of the guitar and then I start rubbing it it.



I add colour in blotches until the whole guitar is way darker than I want it and then I go around the outside edge with black . Finally I start thinning the dye down by adding alcohol directly to the middle of the guitar top, rub the guitar down by hand, and then start wiping off the extra. I always work from the middle out because that is what gives the burst effect.



Now I've finished with the colours and I'm ready to get some clean racks and start with the shellac.



Now I'm still not done removing finish, but I want to start sealing in some of the colours so at this point I go through a lot of rags. I add a very thin layer of shellac to the whole guitar and then I start buffing the top where I want to remove colour until my rag gets too dirty and then I get a clean one, dip it in shellac, and go again.



Here I'm about half done buffing the top down and evening out the colours. When I finish with this I may or may not end up sanding it a bit before I start adding clear coats.

__________________
I've spent more time in hospital than out of the hospital over the last 3 or 4 months so I apologize for the recent poor communication and slow deliveries.

Baby Joel

[img] tags aren't working. Pretty sure the img's have to be in caps, like IMG.
But still, great tutorial!

deftonesordie

Agreed.

Cap the IMG and you're set

__________________
------

Shwiggity.

CorduroyEW

^didn't need caps, I needed to add http://

__________________
I've spent more time in hospital than out of the hospital over the last 3 or 4 months so I apologize for the recent poor communication and slow deliveries.

Baby Joel

Much better now, thanks.
I love the third picture (Looks like an ink blot). The last picture looks very nice as well!
Did you just do this thing, today? And exactly how many rags did you go through?

CorduroyEW

^I started at about 2:00pm today and I've used 3 old shirts and an old bath robe.

__________________
I've spent more time in hospital than out of the hospital over the last 3 or 4 months so I apologize for the recent poor communication and slow deliveries.

deftonesordie

love the deep colour on that. Great job.

__________________
------

Shwiggity.

TimBFMV

Sweet Stain!

__________________
Tim.

You have entered the Twilight Zone
Beyond this world strange things are known
Use this key, unlock the door
See what your fate might have in store
Come explore your dreams' creation
Enter this world of imagination

lumberjack

I really like the look of your staining technique, very spiffy!

__________________

SoundManMike

Dood
Ever hear of latex gloves?

CorduroyEW

Tried them but don't like 'em. With the amount I do this stuff I don't need gloves to be safe so I opt not to use them.

More pics should be up tomorrow. It's turned out very cool and the domonate colour actually changes colour so it can either look blue, green, purple, or black which was unexpected and very cool. Hopefully when I take pics in the morning I can captures a few of the colours and not just have it look black.

__________________
I've spent more time in hospital than out of the hospital over the last 3 or 4 months so I apologize for the recent poor communication and slow deliveries.

deftonesordie

__________________
------

Shwiggity.

forstringwonder

does this technique work well with bright colors as well?

i am interested in trying it with a deep cherry sunburst type of finish.

__________________

CorduroyEW

Yes, as long as the wood you are using can take bright colours. This is a hard ash body and it doesn't take colour all that well so it needs dark colours if you are going to use them at all. If this were alder or maple it would work great with lighter colours.

__________________
I've spent more time in hospital than out of the hospital over the last 3 or 4 months so I apologize for the recent poor communication and slow deliveries.

forstringwonder

thats good news. i should be getting my one piece alder tele body soon, but don't know if i trust myself enough to try this.

thanks.

__________________

chris024

where do you buy these dry lack flakes? i want to do this on my next project. i like this method, from your idea, i used a plane blade to do my final "sanding" on my body, just lightly rubbing over it before staining and it came out smooth as glass. i was having trouble before with only 400 grit paper getting it this smooth.

__________________
www.myspace.com/StimulusNimbus

go there, be entertained... or offended.

Roast Beef

swell. All tags work fine in lowercase too guys

CorduroyEW

400 grit paper simply isn't enough for finishing. Chances are that on your 1st seveal guitar you finish with shellac you will still need to sand the finish down to level it out and to do this you need 600 gritt for all your agressive sanding and you will need 1200 and 1500 for your less agressive sanding.

In the USA and Canada the dried shellac can be perchased from www.lmii.com and in the EU it can be gotten at www.axminster.com there might be better places to get it but these are the places I know about.

__________________
I've spent more time in hospital than out of the hospital over the last 3 or 4 months so I apologize for the recent poor communication and slow deliveries.

CorduroyEW

So I decided to sand the finish to level it out a bit so here are some pics after wet sanding it with 600 grit sand paper. Shellac doesn't like water so when you wet sand shellac use oil. These pics have the guitar still covered in oil and I went at lots of angles hoping that the colour change effect might be able to be seen. I don't think it picked it up that well but you can kinda tell.

__________________
I've spent more time in hospital than out of the hospital over the last 3 or 4 months so I apologize for the recent poor communication and slow deliveries.