I swear you guys are like the infinite well of knowledge. fender3x thank you so much for all of that info on AC. I am going to hold off on oiling the rosewood as it looks pretty hydrated and healthy right now. But the block oil looks like what I would need.

The flamenco guitar is absolutely beautiful. I love the mirrored graining. My LP has one good streak of green on the backside, but was relatively even in grain. They're some light marks which come through in the sky on the front. But I think it adds character and texture.

Your wife is totally right about the two different light woods not matching. Even just differences in the tone of stain can make it look... Off. It is just distracting to the eye unless there's enough of a difference that it is obviously on purpose. So light and dark usually works, but subtler differences usually don't.

I started experimenting with the AC last night on a piece of scrap pine. I didn't prep it very well, and was surprised by how smooth the AC made it despite the lack of prep. I also found that the AC seems protective enough that I can use it over woodburned areas and still sand with losing the burn. I have some of my paint concoction drying on the scrap ATM. Just double checking it doesn't do anything weird before I use it on the headstock.

My paint mixture is Golden acrylic glazing medium mixed with craft acrylic paint in a 1:1 or 1:2 ratio (equal or more paint than glaze). If I was using a more full bodied artist's acrylic paint, I would use more glazing medium probably 3:1 or 4:1. But bc I am using craft paint (usually metallic craft paint) it's pretty translucent already, so 1:1 is pretty good. I started using this bc I could make it translucent enough to not cover my wood burning lines while still being vibrant. I use Prismacolor colored pencil underneath the paint-glaze to really make the colors pop or add contrasting colors under the paint. Whenever I use just watercolors or watered down acrylics, it tends to bleed. Straight acrylic covers the wood burn lines. Just using colored pencils looks like crayon drawing. So this solves all of those problems for me! I've experimented with using water based dyes with the glazing medium, and that works also.

Simon: That's a neat trick with the clear AC! I have some dark water based wood dye that I can play with and see what happens.