Swirly Whirly ST-1

[B'Lark]

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



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:



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.

[wokkaboy]

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

[Simon Barden]

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.

[B'Lark]

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

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

[B'Lark]

Alrighty! Kit arrived today!



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)



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



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.

[B'Lark]

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:







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.

[DarkMark]

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