Official Luthiers Forum!

I really want to be able to apply a Black flametop finish on my
strat. Similer to that of the Epiphone LP Bass shown here.

How do I do that? Does it need to be made of a certain type of wood?

Top needs to be curly maple first wetted to rais the grain stained with black taranslucent dye then wipped off. the black will impregmate the curl of the grain. then lacure is tinted with a red translucent dyy and sprayed over the the maple. the the final coats a re clear/

Dang...

I was hoping to apply it to a restoration, but its built with Ash...

you can do the same thing but the pattern will not be tiger stripped it will be what ever the grain pattern of the ash is

Ok, well on that case then another question.


The guitar itself is a sunburst, I haven't started sanding yet but
my dad told me I wont have to sand all the way to the wood, just
past the top layer of clear coat.

Do I or do I not?

if your are trying to leave the sunburst on it that is harder than it seems. Typically the color is in the finish darker closer to the top of the finish and lighter closer to the seal coat so if the intent is to get rid of the sunburst you need to sand to the wood. the seal coat is very thin and it is just simpler to sand to the wood.

Ok, thanks Michael.

Just as an FYI....

This is an ash body I applied black stain to then sanded back. You can see that the wood between the grain is darker than normal un-dyed ash. When I tried to sand back enough so that this was clear & bright, I started losing significant amounts of grain definition. In the end, I re-stained and sanded back to what you see here.

So just a heads-up - if you're going to be doing it on ash, then you WILL have some serious darkening of the surrounding wood.

_________________
Bad decisions make for good stories.
-------John


My blog - http://poplarmechanics.blogspot.com/

Sweet, John. I've got to try that sometime.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

I have decided to go with a silver burst finish. Its something I really liked
but hadn't thought of at the time.