Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi all, I'm an amateur luthier who restores/repairs electric guitars for friends as a hobby. Recently a friend of mine who is a professional musician asked me to rebuild a telecaster she had. I stripped it to bare wood and stained it with a custom red/brown mahogany stain I had mixed up at a local paint supply shop. The stain looks great. Then I applied polyurethane (Several coats) and began sanding it smooth for polishing. Well I appear to have gotten a little over agressive with the sanding and sanded through the poly! Now I'm left with a 2 inch by 1 inch oval that has the stain damaged by the sanding. So I sanded it down to the wood and restained that area, only now it doesn't match!

The wood will not stain as dark as it did before, no matter how much sanding and prepwork I do on the area! Unfortunately the spot is front and center on the guitar, so it's beyond noticable!

I thought of just painting the guitar a solid color instead of worrying about the stain, but I've already inlayed multiple custom mother of pearl inlays and paying would cover them, which isn't an option.

I'm in a bit of a panic cause my friend asked if I could have it done by early september and I was on track for that, and now... well obviously this is a big issue.

Help!!!

I hate to say it, but I would sand it all back and re-stain / refinish. Next time go more coats of finish, with only light sandings between coating sessions. I usually spray 3 or 4 coats then light sand, then 3 or 4 more, more light sanding, then 3 or 4 more coats and level sand before buffing.
Typically, the rougher the wood, the more stain it will take or the darker it will get. You'll want to make sure then wood is sanded to the same level and grit in all places.
Others might have different advice...hang in there and see what folks say and choose which way you feel will work best for you.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

*sigh* Sadly this is kind of what I thought the answer would be. I may end up cutting a second inlay to hide the spot. I came up with a small design that doesn't seem forced or tacky and will cover the spot... We'll see what happens...

If you have the time to restrip and refinish in the next few days, early
september should be plenty of time. I never work with polyurethane, but
with nitro you should be able to strip, sand, stain, lacquer and buff in well
under a week for a rush job. It's nice if you can wait a little longer before the
final wetsand and buff, but 2-3 days dry time will cover 90%+ of the curing
and shrink back.

This is a newer strat we're talking about, right?


David Collins38949.882349537

_________________
Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

It's actually a 90's G&L Tele, but yeah, it's a newer one. I ended up designing an inlay based on the logo off of my friend's latest album. The inlay will cover the spot and doesn't look out of place or overly forced. In fact the people I've asked to give their opinions on it thought it looked BETTER with the second inlay, so I think I'm going to do that and just learn my lesson for the future.

The polyurethane I'm using suggests 18 hours dry time between coats, but I found if I spray it and put some warm lights on it I can usually recoat it after 2 to 3 hours without any ill effects. Does this sound about right?

My other questions is when I sand it level sometimes when I turn it towards the light I'll see a small ring where one coat pokes up through the last. This should be ok, right? THat won't be visible after polishing, correct?

Thanks again!