Shiny!

After leaving the French polish for a few days to go off, the guitar is really starting to look nice and shiny.

Whilst the dark edges of the burst effect is only very slight, the striking tiger stripe grain really stands out the way we wanted it to so all in all we're rather pleased

So far we've put ten coats of French polish on, another ten and then we should have a good thick solid shiny coat.  Then we can start adding the hardware and get it set up and playing...

Getting Shiney...

After a bit of judicious sanding to get rid of the dye that bled through the masking on to the sides we started adding a shellac French polish coat.

The shellac has really brought out the gorgeous colour of the mahogany!

Then gentle sanding with a fine grade wire wool

My turn, very naughty and not using gloves.

 After spending two days getting shellac off my finger nails I would definitely recommend that gloves are worn!

Looking good

Well it's finally dried and with the masking tape off and the guitar is really looking superb

The light's a bit naff in here so we're off outside to take some better pics...

And here it is looking truly gorgeous!

Next job is to sand down the mahogany where the stain bled through the masking tape, then we're ready to start the shiny shellac finish

Finally time to add some colour!

In the end after playing about with some other colours we opted for Emerald Green

Starting with a watered down stain

After the first coat... 

Building up the colour increasing the concentration of stain with each coat. 

After two coats those stripes are starting to really come out!

Five coats and the depth of colour is really looking good

And finally with neat stain we're done!

Getting ready for some colour

Now that the black contrast stain has fully dried we carefully sanded it back to reveal the grain pattern

Sanding done, lets get rid of the dust!

Now for the messy fun stuff...

Lets get staining!

In order to make sure we got the stain finish we wanted we did some practice on some scrap wood...

To start we add the black contract stain

Once sanded down we added the 'purple'.  This was initially watered down for the first coat

And over time we gradually increased the stain level concentrating on the edges to create a burst effect

Another good thing about practice pieces - This was supposed to be purple, not fuchsia pink.  Sooo glad this didn't get put on the guitar first!

Time to start staining the guitar...

Lets get masking...

Okay now the guitar is sufficiently masked up we got busy with the watered down black dye.  This will soak into the 'flame' grain and when sanded back will really bring out the grain through the translucent top stain colour.

Despite a light sanding prior to the black stain we still have some grain locked by the glue from the binding.  Unfortunately because the veneer is so thin we can't risk sanding it down too much otherwise we may sand through it leaving none for the top stain to sit on.