Which finish on basswood?

[rocknrollo]

I am about to start my MKII build as soon as it clears customs but I am not too sure about how I will color it. It's gonna be purple since my daughter urged me to build a purple guitar, preferably with glitter BUT would a water based stain do for the basswood body? I know that basswood isn't the most exciting in grain structure, but how about staining it? Has anyone tried the Unicorn Spit Stains...just asking cause they come in glitter too, haha.

[Simon Barden]

Basswood is just like any other basic wood regarding stain. Bass wood can be very plain (most basswood kits) though it can be fairly figured. So a water based stain would work well with it, though you may find that the glue lines between the body wood sections are shown up by the stain (the kit in the PBG photo seems to have a 4-piece body).

I haven't seen Unicorn Spit mentioned on these forums, so it probably hasn't been tried by anyone here to date. It looks interesting, but looks like it needs an oil-based protective clear coat, so you may need to use a spray as most wipe-on finishes are water based, though Tru Oil may work (you'd really need to test on some scrap wood first).

A solid paint colour would probably work best, rather than stain, but there's nothing to stop you using a metallic purple spray paint on the body.

I have a friend who has sprayed a colour coat coat onto a guitar body (e.g purple), then a clear coat, applied a glitter powder (e..g. purple glitter) immediately so the glitter sticks to it, and when dry, then put a lot more clear coat on top. That's worked very well and you can use glitter with much larger sized flakes then you can spray from a spray gun.

[Sidewinder]

IMHO all light straight grain woods are only fit for painting or capping with a figured wood; quilt, burl, flame, whatever. Now if you have a cap which is dark in color a back with a light color can be a nice contrast.

[jugglindan]

Duplicolor has a large range of purples. That's what I would use on basswood.

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[phrozin]

If your going for a stain on basswood it's a tight grain what I do I only sand the body to a 120grit paper what that does is help the stain/dye soak in and gives you good colour if you sand to fine it will look washed out, then when you do your topcoat tru-oil, wipe on poly, lacquer gives it more coats so you can fill the grain then sand it with whatever you want