Question about a natural strip in a stained guitar

[Aidan Homer]

I am planning on making a TLA-1Q guitar kit, but I'm having a dilemma in figuring if the finish that I'm planning to do will work or not.



This is a basic concept of what i'm wanting to do here.

My question is, is it possible to get that kind of crisp line while using a stain or water based dye finish? I've done some digging and hear that FrogTape is supposed to work well for this application, but I was hoping that someone more experienced with this could give me a solid answer. I know that I could in theory just finish the whole guitar and then sand down the strip, but from what I've read the veneer is only about .6mm thick, so a lot of sanding is out of the question. A little bit of bleeding is acceptable in my book, but anything more than that (I.e, anything noticable from more than 3 feet away) is not okay.

I also plan on doing a TruOil finish over the whole thing in case that changes anything.


Thanks!

[Chuck]

That's a great look! I've no experience with stains, but I wonder if you somehow lightly "scored" the lines you'd create a barrier the stain wouldn't flow past? And hopefully the "score" line would be adequately filled by the Tru-oil. I not sure whether the score should be done with a scalpel for a "cut" or maybe just something to compress the fibres of the wood enough to not allow the stain to flow... my guess would be the scalpel approach could work, but make sure you wait for wiser folk than me to chip in!

[Simon Barden]

Hi Aiden and welcome. It's going to be very hard to keep the stain from leeching under the tape - both water and oil based stains will naturally soak into the wood if rubbed on, so the edges are likely to look fuzzy.

If you read the small print on Frog Tape (designed for decorating), it states that the glue reacts with the dried emulsion underneath it to form a barrier to any fresh paint being applied. So it's not going to be perfect on bare wood. Probably a bit better than standard masking tape, but still a bit leaky. If you've already got any stain, try it out on some scrap wood and see what you think of the results.

Otherwise you could consider the following:

If you have access to an airbrush (you can get really cheap airbrush + compressor kits on eBay), you could probably spray the stain on in several light layers, so that the wood doesn't get too wet and the stain runs under the masking tape.

Or you could try masking either side of the stripe and spraying several layers of some clear lacquer onto the stripe. This should protect the wood under the stripe, plus soak in a bit to the wood as well. I'd be tempted to then mask off the clear stripe before staining, just in case the lacquer took up some of the stain (though with water based stain it should simply wipe off with a damp cloth before it dries). Again, try on some scrap wood before using it on the guitar. Tru-Oil seems to go over any finish, so I don't think there would be any issue with the clear lacquer (again - scrap wood test first).

[Aidan Homer]

Hi Aiden and welcome. It's going to be very hard to keep the stain from leeching under the tape - both water and oil based stains will naturally soak into the wood if rubbed on, so the edges are likely to look fuzzy.

If you read the small print on Frog Tape (designed for decorating), it states that the glue reacts with the dried emulsion underneath it to form a barrier to any fresh paint being applied. So it's not going to be perfect on bare wood. Probably a bit better than standard masking tape, but still a bit leaky. If you've already got any stain, try it out on some scrap wood and see what you think of the results.

Otherwise you could consider the following:

If you have access to an airbrush (you can get really cheap airbrush + compressor kits on eBay), you could probably spray the stain on in several light layers, so that the wood doesn't get too wet and the stain runs under the masking tape.

Or you could try masking either side of the stripe and spraying several layers of some clear lacquer onto the stripe. This should protect the wood under the stripe, plus soak in a bit to the wood as well. I'd be tempted to then mask off the clear stripe before staining, just in case the lacquer took up some of the stain (though with water based stain it should simply wipe off with a damp cloth before it dries). Again, try on some scrap wood before using it on the guitar. Tru-Oil seems to go over any finish, so I don't think there would be any issue with the clear lacquer (again - scrap wood test first).

Ill have to give the airbrush approach a shot, I've got a nice set here at home that I'm fairly experienced with. Thanks for the input!

[dave.king1]

I'm planning to do something like this with my Tuff Dog build having a Coolongatta Gold feature, suggestion from DB was to do the light stain broader than required and then mask up for the darker Black Stump.

If it doesn't work out the way I want then the back will be solid black stump