Telecaster builds - Neck lacquer

Next up was building up the lacquer coats on the necks. I masked the fretboards off and hung them in the workshop:



Thankfully I'm getting through the spraying relatively quickly - the workshop is now a massive mess and with all the sheeting closely resembles a set from Dexter...

First a couple of mist coats of clear went on to seal both the wood and the masking tape. Then I added a bit of amber tint to the lacquer, and started building up the colour coats to this:



Then this:



There's about four light coats of amber on at this point, and the necks have reached about the tint I wanted. The grain on them has also popped - both these necks were AAA grade wood, and it's at this point that that becomes apparent. Backs:





And heads:





And both necks in direct sunlight:



The birds eye maple on the left will end up on the black / hollow body, the flamed maple on the silver / solid. Here's my makeshift hanging rack: 



As with the body, these will get a couple of weeks to cure before they'll be hit with the clear coats.

Telecaster build - binding scraping

I made a tool to scrape the binding. My previous attempt on the primer had been ok, but a little uneven around the edge of the body:



This little tool can be run around the edge of the guitar while the tip of the Stanley blade scrapes the paint off the binding thus:



A lot of texture in that paint - I imagine I was spraying it inefficiently somehow... 

After the binding is scraped, the front is complete:



Along with the rear:

Telecaster build - colour coats

All the guitars will get a clear coat over the top of their colours, so only a couple of colour coats are needed - just enough to make sure they're the right shade really.

I remasked off the binding, primer grey / yellow binding - nice colour combination...:



And hit it with a light coat of jet black colour:



After a few coats, with 25 minute curing times in between each coat, the guitar looked like this:



And I whipped off the masking while the paint was still pliable, looks pretty nice:



Quite a bit of orange peel, but I'll do a bit of gentle wet sanding of the colour coat, and flatten it properly in the clear coat:



And around the heel:



I'm very happy with how this turned out. This guitar will get its binding scraped in the next couple of days then have a few weeks to cure fully. In the meantime I'm going to colour the other two bodies, then do a massive clear coat session to finish all three at once :]