My brother and his wife-to-be love the '50s American diner style, hence all the chrome hardware, and have requested the guitar to be in red, they also want to be able to see the wood grain through it...
It took me a while but I eventually managed to find the right colour - Cadmium Red. It's an acrylic paint so can be watered down so hopefully I'll be able to create a burst effect like I did with the ink on my previous build, thus showing the wood grain off without losing too much of the colour depth.
Because I will be watering the paint down one of the first jobs I need to do is seal to the end grains with neat acrylic. Once dry it will be water proof and will stop the grain from lifting and splitting when it gets wet.
After filling the router gouges I painted a light undercoat to hide the filler. I deliberately kept it light in order to keep the wood grain visible. The filler was made by combining saw dust from the build with PVA wood glue. Not strictly necessary but no harm in making good use of the waste saw dust.
And we now have a rich bright red that still shows the grain pattern through it.
After a month of layering, blending and layering, blending again and again the front hasn't come out quite as well I was hoping. Whilst the acrylic watered down easily enough and definitely allowed the wood to show through towards the centre, it didn't blend so well towards the edges. It doesn't look bad, it's just the transitions are not as smooth as I was hoping for. Anyway I'm still loving the contrast of the chrome fittings when they are in place!
Once I was as happy as I could get with the paint I sprayed ten coats of a clear matt lacquer on to protect the finish. I opted for matt spray over gloss as I wanted it to contrast against the shiny chrome.
