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On this style of instrument, it’s traditional to sunburst or stain
the light wood body to a dark brown color. To accomplish
this, first spray a base coat of lacquer for the color to lie on.
The body has been damp-sanded but still has an irregular
surface due to the wood grain and its hard and soft nature,
and grain pores. The maple sides, and the birch top and back
of the body are “closed grain” woods. They require no filler,
but they still need leveling to get that glossy guitar look.
Spray three coats of aerosol lacquer on the entire masked
body, allowing 45 minutes between coats, and let it dry
overnight.
When dry, sand with 320-grit Fre-Cut® sandpaper to achieve
a level, uniformly dull look over the entire body. With only
three coats you may not be able to do this. Watch your sand-
ing, and if you are sanding through to bare wood, stop and
spray another three coats just like above. Try to level sand
again when dry. At this point you should be able to sand
most of the shiny spots dull. If there are just a few deep ones
that won’t cooperate, use a brush to drop-fill them with
some lacquer rather than spraying the whole body again.
Now is when the quality of your wood preparation will really
start to show.
Level those spots you drop-filled, and get ready to mix colors.
You can use the same ColorTone liquid stains to mix into
clear lacquer for coloring the body. For the light center of the
sunburst, use Vintage Amber. Make up two ounces of vintage
amber shading lacquer by adding 50 to 100 drops of con-
centrated stain to two ounces of thinned clear gloss lacquer
(a little thinner might be needed here to get a sprayable mix-
ture). Test the strength of the mixture on scrap to determine
if you have reached the color intensity you want. You have
the option of spraying a couple of coats of the shader to
build the color coat in several passes, rather than mixing a
stain that might be too dark.
Put the shader into a Preval sprayer. Spray the amber color in
the center of the top and back, and on the sides where the
upper and lower shoulders reach their maximum width.
Based on your color, and on how much you spray, a second
or third coat might be necessary. It’s not necessary, or even
recommended, to spray the entire body with the yellow. Just
spray the center of the burst, and fade out as you reach the
point where the color changes. Next, mix the Tobacco Brown
as you did the Vintage Amber. You’ll probably need 3 or 4
ounces of this color, since there is more area to cover with
the dark brown. Put this mix into your Preval sprayer, and
spray the outer edges of the sunburst. You can leave a nar-
row band for Red Mahogany, or skip it and blend the
Tobacco Brown right into the Amber. We recommend the
red mahogany for its pleasing look. If you choose to do it, mix
two ounces of this color as above, and blend or shade it
between the dark brown and the amber. Practice on scrap,
and your first attempt will be more successful.
After overnight drying, carefully scrape off the color to reveal
the plastic binding beneath (the sunburst has covered the
binding as well as the wood). Use an X-acto blade, single-
edge razor blade, or utility knife blade as a scraper. Hold the
scraper between your thumb and fingers with a short sec-
tion of the blade exposed. With your thumb, finger, or
knuckle controlling the depth, you can keep from scraping
deeper than the binding and into the colored wood. Too
much scraping will create a deep ledge that the following
finish will not be able to fill.
Now go on to the lacquer spraying schedule below.
Sunbursting the body
