Sunburst.. By hand of spray?

[Jason29307]

For a newbie, do you guys think doing a sunburst would be easier by hand, or with arasol spray?
I have no experience what so ever...

[gavinturner]

Hi Jason,

It depends what your current skill and tool set is. If you have spray equipment then you can do a very effective burst using tinted lacquer. You can tint your own lacquer using dye. Alternately you can buy pre-tinted lacquer in cans to do the edge colour and use dye in the centre.

Alternately you can hand-rub the burst - a so called "Poor Man's" burst. You can do this using Wudtone or using dye - Colortone from Stewmac is one example or Feast and Watson stain from various hardware stores. Hand rubbing a burst is quite a good way to go in my opinion, but you need to do a couple of test trials to get the hang of it. You basically use one rag each for your colours and a third rag for blending.

Hope this helps.

cheers,
Gavin.

[ultpanzi]

Ive always been a fan of rubbing it because I feel you get better control that with cans. See what works for you though and what youre comfortable with.

[wokkaboy]

Hi Jason,
for a beginner I'd recommend rubbing dyes/stains to get a sunburst. Too much can go wrong using a spray can or spray gun without any experience.
With a bit of practice you should be able to blend the colours to get the effect you are after.
A good way to start is to sand off a scrap piece of wood and do a couple of practice bursts.
As Gav said use a different rag for each colour and a separate blend rag