Prairie Custom Guitars

On this page I will describe the technique I used for staining/dying the different bodies I have done.This may not be the correct way to do it but I have had pretty good results so far

I have had a lot of compliments on this guitar.Everybody seems to love how the grain stands out through the red.Here are the steps I used to do it

Wood Preperation

When I did this there was really nothing special in the wood preperation

I just made sure all my final sanding was done and we were nice and smooth and level

I final sanded it with 320 grit and wiped it clean with naphtha

Here is a tip for you.If you have trouble getting naphtha,just go to your

local hardware store and buy campstove fuel.Thats what I have been using

Works great and is cheap

That Nasty Ash grain 

 Ash has some stubbern grain

If you want a smooth finish you will have to fill it

Grain filling sucks.It's messy and a lot of work,but it is worth it for the end result

I had a terrible time finding grain filler here.I finally found a place

that carries a couple different kinds.This is also where I get

my dyes and my sealer etc.

Great place

Wood Essence 

 I decided to go with the Target Coatings Water Base Filler

Seems to work great and cleans up with water,a good thing

To make the grain stand out,the first coat of grain filler I did I tinted black

I used the same dyes as I do for the color for this.I can't remember just how

much dye I used,it wasn't much.You just want it to highlite the grain

I applied it like regular grain filler,let it dry and sanded it back with 220 grit.

I sanded back quite a ways to make sure all that was left behind was the filler in the grain,not any low or uneven spots on the guitar.

This is a picture of what it look like after the black filler has been sanded.

This is not actually the red one,but a different one.I didn't take any pictures

of the red one at the time,but this gives you an idea of how it looks

You can see on the horn on this one,there was some black filler left behind.Because this one was painted I wasn't concerned with it.On the red one I sanded back more

to remove any spots like that on the first coat 

This is when I applied the color

On the ash I mixed the dye with alcohol.Ash takes stain pretty fast so the stain

drying too fast wasn't an issue.I just added dye to the alcohol until

I  liked the color.I tried it on a few test pieces until I was happy.

Here is a picture just after the dye

 As you can see,the grain really stands out with the black filler

Here is a picture of a test piece with no black filler

There is quite a difference 

After this I just sprayed it with a couple coats of sealer,sanded it carefully,making

sure not to go through to the color,and then applied the lacquer.Another coat of filler probably could have been used after the color but the sealer I used was a high solids sealer.I guess in a few years we will see if the grain sucks up any finish 

The Finished guitar

This Build kind of went on the back burner

I have other builds that need to get finished first but here are the 

steps I used to get the blue quilt

 Here is what I started with

To bring out the quilting,I first stained this black

For this I used my black ColorFx dyes and water

I find that on tight grained wood like maple,using a water base works best

It does not dry as fast and lets the stain soak in better

After it was dry,I sanded pretty much all the black off

Then I hit it with the blue dye,repeating until I had the color I wanted

Then it is just a matter of sealing and topcoating

If I ever get it finished I will post a pic 

I have found that I can get pretty much any color I want just by using tinted lacquer.

It is in my opinion that the color looks deeper when you do it this way.

It especially works good when doing sunbursts

All the guitars below were done with just tinted lacquer