Prairie Custom Guitars

Since the first build(The Fircaster) went to the youngest kid and the Skullcaster  is going to the oldest kid,

there is a kid in the middle that has decided he wants a tele too

Thats OK,a good excuse to do another build

He has informed me he would like a Blue quilted maple Thinline with white  binding Doesn't want much!!!!

Well I have been keeping an eye out where I got the Birdseye wood

Fraser Valley Fine Woods

Excellent place to get high quality maple

Hey,what am I doing.I tell all you guys about this place,you will be bidding against me

  One come up I snagged pretty reasonable.

Decided to get it glued up while I had all my clamps out for the Barneycaster.

This could turn out to look pretty good

 Guess I better get some blue dye ordered up

About time to get to work on this

Got the dye,top is glued up

Just need to get the body glued up

Maybe do that today 

Got the body glued up tonight

I have had the cap glued up for a while

 Did the rough cut with the band saw

Now it's time to experiment on some scrap

Here is the wood natural

Blue is the color we are shooting for

First attempt 

 Got the body and cap routed out tonight

Been kinda busy on the OSB girls

 Time to get some work done on this one.

We did a little talking and to make this different than his brothers guitars

I think we have decided to go with double f-holes on this one.

Have to decide if we want to rear route it or try to wire it up through the f-holes

Well there is no turning back now

We have a pair of f-holes

We also did a different approach to the dye

This time I used water instead of alcohol

Thought it would give more time to soak into the grain before it dried.

Also this time I dyed it black first,let it dry,sanded it back and then hit it with the blue.

Much better results

I have had a request to document how I did the stain

I decided I will start a separate page to explain the process I used

Check the nav bar on the left for the "Finishing" page 

  Finally got back to this one

Been a bit busy with spring,yardwork,leaky roof

 The plan was to bind the f-holes but.......

It didn't go so well.My glue is getting old and this binding seemed to be real brittle so we scrapped that idea

There will be other builds to try it on.I didn't want to chance wrecking this nice piece of wood

Lets move on

Got to get the top glued on

Clamps,need more clamps 

 Pulled off the clamps,did a little sanding to get rid of squeeze out

Then it was time for the string through holes,neck pocket and ferrule holes 

I finally decided to make myself a ferrule drilling jig

Much nicer.Everything lined up perfect

Next it was time to do the binding route on the top

Man,this is one hard piece of maple

This thing would look pretty good with a natural finish too

Lets see where we are at  

Got out the binding and the glue

Only doing binding on the top on this one

Let it sit and dry then pulled off the tape

Looks good even natural but thats not what we want

Out with the black dye

It's definitely black 

Now we sand it back some

Then on goes the blue

A couple coats to get it the right shade

Here are a couple pics

One with flash and one without

This thing should really pop once the clear goes on

I will let it sit and see if we need another coat 

Decided to clean up the top of the binding and shoot a couple

coats of clear on the top to protect it

After a couple coats I will let it cure for a couple days

and then carry on with the rest

Here it is with the top of the binding cleaned up 

 And after a coat of clear

 Kinda stalled on this waiting for lacquer

I managed to get a few coats on before I ran out

While I am waiting I did a light wetsand to knock down some high spots

Lookin pretty good.The more coats,the deeper the finish

OK

Time to move on.Lets get something done with the back of this thing

 I masked off the binding and laid down a clear coat with some

blue "Stripper Dust" in it.After that dried,I slowly tinted my coats 

to get it to a nice dark blue,working it like a burst.

After that dried,it was add some black and do the outer ring

It's pretty rough but will smooth out with a few more coats

and light sanding along the way 

 Pulled the tape off the binding and started shooting clear

After a couple coats of clear

Well I seem to be my worst enemy

The more guitars I build the fussier I get

I have never been real happy with how this looks,don't get me wrong it looks good

But I think I can do better.OUT WITH THE SANDER!

Hmmm,deja vu

Because it took so much sanding I had to re-do the binding

Man I make a lot of work for myself,anyway....

Back to the dye