Day Six, Seven, and maybe Eight and Nine

This is my skull mug again, courtesy of Nicole Pangas. This is the look I had in mind for my guitar, kind of an edgy abstract skull. I mentioned my worries in pulling this off in my previous post, mostly worries of getting it right the first time. Bleach is somewhat of a one shot deal. I did a test of bleach over dye on a handy scrap of basswood, and the results were encouraging.

So with this, I decided to go ahead. I ripped pieces of painters tape and masked out the skull on the guitar face. It was fun, and easy to make adjustments. Easy to erase.

Funked around with the eye sockets quite a bit, my first couple of attempts gave me a happy skull. Not cool.

When I was satisfied, out to the garage with the Schecter body and Jennifer's flower scented bleach. Used a cheapo round paint brush and lightly painted in the bleach, feathering out to the edges of the tape. I let it sit maybe twenty minutes until the bleach was mostly evaporated. I could see it working, pretty wild, should have done a time-lapse.
Then I peeled the tape. Awesome sauce.

The dye, and the wood itself is not the hue I was hoping for. The dye, while labeled "coal black", is too brown, and the bleached wood is wood colored.

After it was completely dry I went back at it with more dye and bleach, fixing bleed spots I didn't like and darkening and highlighting. And added crossbones. Then I took the photo into Photoshop and adjusted the color more to my liking. Writing this, I'm wondering if I can't go back at it with some type of paint and whiten the skull and bones. Hmmm...

This is truer to the actual color as it is now. I can live with this, still very happy with the result. This is after one coat of Waterlox. According to the manufacturer, if applied by rag, as I am doing, I will need about 6-20 coats. With a minimum dry time of 24 hours between coats. That's like, a lot of time. When that is done, it will get several coats of gloss. This stuff:

This was a free sample from the guy I bought the sealer from. Gonna have to go back for more. It's also recommended that the sealer cures in a warm, dry environment. I got it half right.

As of now, I have four coats of sealer on. I snapped the following photo while it was still wet, but the sealer is starting to build up, a slight sheen is showing when dry. Nice. I will do some buffing out when this coat is dry, need to smooth out some dust and crap.

In the meantime, the postwoman is bringing the new hardware piece by piece. All black, 'natch.

Did I mention I'm having a blast doing this? Learning much, pretty sure this is just the start of something beautiful. One can never have too many guitars, right?  Just wish I had time to play again.


More to come...in the meantime, here's a old photo of me and Dave: