Swirly Whirly ST-1

Heya guys!

I've just jumped in and ordered a kit, and I figure I'll start the build diary pre-emptively, and lay out the plans!

So the basic plan is a Black and White Swirled Strat, including wonderful stock image and bonus watermarking:

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Of course just a mockup, and was working with what I could find as a paintjob for the body there. I'm also taking a couple of cues from this example in the alternating B/W pickups, and applying that to the knobs too:

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And a couple more examples for eye-candy:

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And as shown in the mockup, a Floyd is in the plans. Just a top-mounted one, and I'll more than likely add a D-Tuna on too. And fortunately, I don't have to swirl the pickguard as I can just buy one with the same material as the one in the mockup!!

Pickups also undecided, I'm tossing up between a set of Rails with splitting, and a set of Noiseless Singles with Clapton-style electrics in it. Could also go for some other sort of single-sized bucker set, a H/S/S arrangement (but I'm not so keen on that because I'm worried about balancing that sort of set properly), or full on EVH style with just bridge pickup. A single White Duncan Invader could look badass...

Anyways, the build's gonna be a bit of a slow starter, gonna have to wait and order the paints next week, then I'm gonna need some time to get some practice with the swirling too. But with a bit of luck it'll come out looking spiffing :)

That's going to look great! Looking forward to watching it progress

Looking good B'Lark! The pickguard choice will be interesting - in the example with the b/w pickups it's a busy swirl so I quite like the clean pearl pickguard. If the swirl is less complex maybe a patterned one works better - like in your mockup. I guess the fun part about a swirl is you won't know how it works out til you do it!! Just my 2c - really interested to follow the build!

I saw a lot of YT clips about that swirling and I saw the craziest things! Looking forward to see yours :)

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Originally Posted by Chuck

Looking good B'Lark! The pickguard choice will be interesting - in the example with the b/w pickups it's a busy swirl so I quite like the clean pearl pickguard. If the swirl is less complex maybe a patterned one works better - like in your mockup. I guess the fun part about a swirl is you won't know how it works out til you do it!! Just my 2c - really interested to follow the build!

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Yea that's all still a bit up for debate. I don't have any of the trimmings locked in, so bringing it up for discussion now's perfect!

I definitely see your point with the first example I linked. The pickguard breaks the busy-ness up and contrasts with the paintjob nicely.

I think I am hoping for a paintjob more like the second example. More of a "White WITH black swirls", rather than "White AND black swirl". I think that would give the pickguard some room to be a touch busier, and make it kind of look like it's a smaller version of the overall body swirl.

Great idea B'Lark.

This should be a sinch compared to your scratch MB.

I love strats, good on you for ordering that kit.

ooooooooooooh!

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Originally Posted by Andy40

Great idea B'Lark.

This should be a sinch compared to your scratch MB.

I love strats, good on you for ordering that kit.

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I'm hoping that's the case haha! At the very least it'll be a very different sort of challenge

Yea I've really come back around on Strats more recently. Probably because my first electric was a Strat, and I really miss that guitar, even if it was crap haha

The black and white swirl looks great - complex pattern but simple shades instead of the usual rainbow of colours - cool plan

I'd imagine that you'd be doing quite a few practice swirls on some scrap wood first, though there's always going to be that random element when doing it for real that's going to add a a certain nervousness to the process. Best of luck!

Yea I'm definitely planning to practice the swirls a ton. That's the main reason I'm expecting and planning this build to take a while. I don't want to rush in to the swirling, and I want to make sure I can consistently get a pretty decent result before jumping in to a full body swirl.

I've also had a little extra thought for an idea with the headstock. I'm thinking I might make it tiered, example below

Attachment 19111

Buut, I was thinking swirling the top tier, and just leaving the bottom tier plain white. And also using the CBS and modern Strat headstock sizes as the tiers. Mockup example below:

Attachment 19112

It doesn't look like it'd add much there, but with a slightly black-leaning swirl, and 3mm or so of depth I think it could add a nice little outline effect to the headstock.

cool plans B'Lark. There are tons of swirling video's on Youtube be worth checking out some advice and tips there.

Can't remember who it was on the forum (might have been Bargeloobs) think the swirling tub split and made a huge mess of a patio area haaha

So tip #1 get a sturdy tub to mix your paints in !

EDIT here's the first swirling video I saw on YT, there is a black and white one there. Note how slowly he submerges the guitar into the paint and how he positions it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iUL-Vf899U

Or else plan to have a swirly patio.

You could also see how far you get floating the paint at your local swimming pool before you get thrown out. ;)

As much as I think I'd kind of like the swirly patio Simon (and as much as it'd breathe some life in to the completely dead patio we do have) I can't chance it, since I'm renting haha. That wasn't something I had thought of at all though, so thanks for the tip Wokka!

I think my parents might actually have a big sturdy drum back at their place, so that might be a safer bet too. Won't be my lawn I'm wrecking if something goes wrong that way :D

And yea, when the kit arrives I'll start planning things a little more, and I'll be watching tons of videos to get a better idea before I start even have the paints to start practicing

Alrighty! Kit arrived today!

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I was intending to say something like "ha look at this no hardware" but for some reason it was packed with a hardware kit for an ES-3 kit (Gonna be sending that back when I can though)

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Anyways, I opted for no hardware (because pretty much all I'd use stock is the tuners, so I'll just grab a set when I get my Floyd) and no loaded pickguard because I wanted a totally different material, and still haven't decided on pickups either

Attachment 19155

I did opt for a 22 fret neck upgrade though. It feels a bit thin for my liking (I am only properly happy with a super fat neck admittedly) but I'm gonna try stacking a few veneers along the back of the neck to fatten it up (and will swirl the whole neck to cover it up)

Gonna be doing a ton of research over this weekend and plan to have the paints ordered by Monday.

ok everyone just dont look at how long i've left this idle for

So today was test day. I had a couple of false starts because I had originally planned to use Magic Marble paints, since they seemed pretty foolproof, but they ended up lost in my house then the paint separated, and using them to swirl just didn't work.

So we went for the one that most people go for, Humbrol Enamel and Borax.

And here is the results of my three test runs. On each test, the Left side is the one that was angled face-down in the water:

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And an Imgur link for full size pics: https://imgur.com/a/BRIzGqM

So one thing that happened a couple of times, the wispy black parts you see, particularly across the face-down side of test 1, and the handle end, face-up side of test 3, that was not clearing out the excess paint off the top of the surface properly before pulling it out of the water. I was just really lax with the first one because I was getting my bearings, and on the third it was because I just hadn't given myself quite enough water to work with properly.

Nonetheless, particularly happy with the third one, I feel like I finally got the hang of how much black I actually want/have to use by that point, as well as a better feel for dropping it all in the water. How high, how much, how to distribute it.

Unfortunately though, I used all the white I had for these tests. I'm not super surprised since they're only tiny tins, but unfortunate nonetheless. So gotta wait a little to order some more in.

This is getting exciting. Looking forward to see how this is going to turn out.