Refinishing my Ibanez blazer bass

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16th November 2009

The Jack is now going to come through the side and rather than buy a pre-made steel fitting I thought I would try and make one from some rock maple to match the face of the guitar. This will be something to do later while I wait for the clearcoat laquer to dry.

27th November 2009

After another busy period on other projects I got back to the guitar. First was to make a small cover for the rear cavity. For this I used 3mm MDF and glued some more of the veneer to the face of it. Let this set for 3 hours and then drilled 3 holes through for the screws that will secure it.

While this was drying I started to experiment with the dye on a small scrap of veneer.

I am using Liberon water based wood dyes for this project. A black to highlight the stripes and then blue over the top.

The dyes were mixed as per the instructions on the bottle 1 part dye to 9 parts water and then the black was applied with a 'rubber' made from stockinette cloth. This was really dark and took several hours to dry.

The next step was to lightly sand the piece to remove the dye from the high points creating the 'tiger' stripe. I used P240 for this.

Once sanded I used a tack cloth to remove any debris and dust and on went the blue dye with a different 'rubber'.

I left this to dry for a little while and decided that the dyes were too dark and left no room for error. Overlaps were easily visible so I added more water so that the mix was approx 1 part dye to 19 parts water. If it wasn't dark enough after each dye was applied then was easy enough to add more coats until the desired strength was achieved.

Happy with the mix I started to dye the cavity cover as it was pretty easy to just make another if it went wrong.

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