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Here's the box for my second L00. The first came out well, but was a little over-built for the body size. This one is maybe a little under-built, so I guess by the process of elimination the next one will be perfect, right? I tried my first burst. It was out of necessity as even though I sealed my ledges with shellac before binding I still wound up with CA stains along the endgrain on the lower bout that wouldn't sand out. The burst came out waaayyy better than I expected. I was expecting to have to sand it off and start over a few times, so of course I didn't keep notes on how I did it. Hopefully I can replicate it. I used Transtint dyes from woodcraft and mcfadden's thinned roughly in half sprayed through a Preval. To keep things easy I used all brown tones (Amber, Light Brown and Dark Brown). I sprayed the first coat of amber then added another few drops of amber dye and sprayed a second layer of burst. Then I added some more thinned lacquer to the amber and added the light brown dye. Spray, add more dye and repeat with the dark brown dye for about 6 coats in total. I then used a razor blade stuck into the end of a wooden dowel to scrape the bindings (thanks for the tip John Watkins) about an hour after spraying the last coat of burst. Pictures have 2 coats of clear (and lots of orange peel), more tomorrow (but hopefully less orange peel)...

Thanks for looking

BobK

Looks very good Bob! may I offer a suggestion? When you lay down the amber coat, (do that first) do it evenly all over the top. There usually isn't an area of uncolored spruce in the center of a sunburst, it's usually amber that is the base and starting color.
Did you even notice the difference between Gibson, Martin, and Epiphone bursts? The Gibson burst has a pear-shaped light area and the upper bouts are all dark.
Epiphones have a small dark area evenly done all around.
Martins are most like yours shown here.

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Mark Swanson
Swanson Guitars
http://www.MarkSwansonMusic.com

Looking very nice. Even if "out of necessity", just remember, once it is done, nobody needs to know what you covered up!

That really looks great Bob.  Good work.  

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Beautiful, well done. 

Thanks guys.

Mark, thanks for the tips. I did noticed that Gibson darkened the entire upper bout, but I only had cheap making tape on hand and had a hard time scraping off bleed though on the rosette as it was. I'll be better prepared for the next one.

Hesh, I've always preferred smaller body guitars and find this shape very nice. The first one has a lot of midrange to it, I played this one in the white and it has a much fuller sound. It's also louder than I was expecting even using light strings.

Hey Waddy, did you get my email about the MAGI field trip? Let me know if you need another copy.

Bob

Mark has a good point about the amber/yellow color being applied to the whole top. I recommend you spray some more amber in the center section to even out the color.