ENHANCE your WOOD GRAIN! (new EASY technique!!!)

Alright guys, today we're going to do something super fun. Let's finish up this cheap Telecaster kit we got from Guitar Fetish. I'm really excited because today we're going to try something I've never done before. a guitar and if you guys have been following this build you know that this guitar doesn't actually belong to me, it's actually going to be a custom build for a client and we all know that the best time to try a new finish is when it's someone. someone else's guitar, what we're going to do is basically fill that

grain

with a contrasting color to make the

grain

really stand out, but I'm going to do it in an unusual way that I guarantee you guys have never seen.

I've never done this before so we'll see what happens and the finish we're doing today will only work on open grain

wood

s like ash, mahogany and in this case paulownia which is what GFS uses now for their lightweight kits . The inspiration for this video actually comes from a very old YouTube video I discovered when I was looking for creative inspiration from an old guy who does

wood

turning projects. Now I have no interest in wood turning projects, but I'm always looking. new and creative ways to stain and stain woods and I was really drawn to that video so I'll link to it in the end screens as well as in the description if you want to watch that video after this one but this particular video is going to be using exactly Same application, but for the body of a guitar, the first thing you'll have to do to make this finish really work is finish sanding

your

guitar and this has to be the best sanding job you've ever done.

Fact, you should start with a hundred grain and increase it up to 120 180 220 320 and up to 400 if you can. The reason is that when we start filling this grain, any minor nicks, dents and scratches are our filling. I'm going to take and think of it as wood grain and it's going to exaggerate that. You all know how much I love Sandy. No, I don't like that, so this will be quite a feat. I'm going to try to hack this the best I can using. an orbital sander and just hand sanding in the very tight, hard to reach areas that the orbital can't reach and I'm going to level with you.

I only sanded up to 320 grit sandpaper and the reason for this is because I just hate sanding. I just did it, it's time to move on. Sanding is not fun. This project should be fun and I want to move on to the staining and staining process because it will be so much more fun than damn sand in the stupid. guitar now my goal for this what I'm going to try to do is stain the body a nice jet black color and then fill in the grain with a nice contrasting silver color, so for my base coat I'm going to use this Minwax true. black wood stain.

I use this often for guitar bodies because it's a great way to make

your

guitar look black while still being able to see the wood grain within it. It's also a really quick trick for you guys if you like and hate wearing those latex gloves while you're applying dyes and dyes and stuff then you can put on a thick layer of hand lotion and that will keep your skin from absorbing as much dye and then you can just rinse yourself hands with a mild dish soap, now that we have the guitar all stained, we'll just let it dry for about six hours and turn it over to do the back and then we'll be ready to start the green filling process.

Well so we are all stained front and back, we let it sit overnight to dry completely and just to show you how well my hand lotion works, look how clean my hands are, that stain just came off and as you can see, because this is an open grain wood, our grain is still very open and very porous to get the contrasting grain effect. What we're going to do is press a wax finish on top, we're going to press it down into the grain of the wood, scrape it off and then wipe off the excess, heck Donna, we're going to cover it so there are several different wax finishes which you can use for this job if you are doing a lighter color and want a darker streak, like a very dark brown or a black streak.

I can use kiwi frosting. Here is an example of a test snippet I made. This is classic gray Minwax with that pressed kiwi frosting and you can see how it adds a really nice black wood grain on top of the gray, obviously the black. It's not going to work on top of a black body that's not going to give us any contrast so I'm going to do a metallic finish. Here's an example I did on a scrap of that true black color with some gold and to do this I used the rub and polish, yeah baby, metal wax finish for the body of this guitar.

I'm not going to make gold. I'm going to try silver, something I've never done before and as I mentioned, the best time to try new ideas of things you know. I've never done it before is when it's on the guitar that doesn't belong to you, but these are the things that are here. You can get them at your local craft store. I think I bought mine at Michaels and this is the silver rub and polish blade. color now I'm going to put links to all of these things in the description because there's no doubt that you guys are going to want to try this finish because I think it's going to look really good you like my fake confidence there I have no idea what this is like I'm going to pivot now, let's move on and let's try this.

I'm going to shake this really well and then what we're going to do is use our fingers to really press it into the grain of the wood and this, I mean, is a waxy finish. It just gets everywhere, so be prepared to get dirty, have like a whole roll of paper towels on standby. I'm going to press that suction cup there like this, as you can see, I'm pressing really hard with my fingers because I really want to press it. get it all the way into the grain of the wood, yeah baby, I'm going to go ahead and scrape it with my plastic spatula, don't use a metal one because I'm just going to scrape it off your body, go ahead and take that excess down here.

Okay, so we're completely covered. It took me eight minutes. The nice thing about this finishing

technique

is that it doesn't really have a very long drying time, maybe it only takes about 15 minutes, so we'll come back in 15 minutes and then I'll show you how to remove all this excess so that we're left with just the grain. Well, we let it dry there for about 15 minutes, actually it's more like 25 minutes. I bought a new Black Star amplifier that I bought. I just can't seem to get away from it so I accidentally left it for 20 minutes, but it's totally fine, it would have been ready after 15 minutes and nice and dry, so now's the really fun part: let's wipe off all this excess using this . teak oil right here and what that will do is gently lift the wax on top without removing the black stain underneath and if we did a good job pressing it into the grain of the wood, then it will come out of the silver press. right down to the grain of the wood, so you won't need a whole roll of paper towels for this part, so have them ready.

I've done a previous tour, I don't know, maybe 20 or so and basically we're I'll use paper towels with teak oil to clean it up and once your paper towel gets too saturated with this stuff it'll stop doing its job, so you will have to keep looking for new clean and fresh areas to use and, however you can. Look, I'm going to send a search to it and I'll see it a little better, but every pass I make is removing more and more of that silver, so now you can see on the left that black with a nice silver highlight and I.

I'm exhausted so I'm going to go ahead and keep working on the rest of this body, but I'll just do it in a time lapse so you can see what's going on here one more time later, okay guys I found a method to do it. this a little faster oh thank goodness I think so if you pour a little bit of teak oil into a container like this and then you take your nice folded paper towel and you dip your corner in it and you saturate it like this and then you can write. to wipe it off and it's really going to lift up all that excess wax, so now I'm going to take out a clean paper towel and just wipe off all that excess.

Now, would you look at that? You will look that beautiful just before after. Very nice finish and I think this is going to look really amazing with this pickguard I just made oh man that's going to look so good Oh humblebrag just kidding that's not humble at all oh I'm so excited this works so well , OK? I guess we're going to turn it around and do the front now, guys. I don't think I could be happier with the result. I mean, look at that beautiful wood grain and it will definitely match this metal pickguard I made last week. you didn't catch that video you want to go back and watch that video for sure but just watch that it's just amazing it looks incredibly cool if you want to follow this build and see how it turns out go ahead and Click on the next video in the list reproduction where I'll install all the electronics and no doubt you guys have noticed that I made this cavity a little bit bigger and I've got some extra routes back here for some good stuff.

Also, definitely check out the next video and I'll see you there.