Grain Filling

I sanded the body of the guitar and neck in the same way as the test piece (220, 320, 400 grit). I mixed the mahogany grain filler with a tiny amount of the black wood stain to darken it down a bit. The mahogany coloured grain filler on its own came up a little red and the black stain just helped to bring it back to the natural wood colour I'm after. I covered the body and neck with the grain filler by rubbing it into the grains using my fingers and left it for about 45 minutes.

Darkened mahogany grain filler

Once the grain filler was on there, it looked a lot darker than the test piece so I was a little worried that I'd overdone it with the black. Still, it was looking quite cool so if it goes wrong I think I'll just paint it black!

After 45 minutes I scrapped off the excess grain filler with a plastic filler spreader. I could just about make out the wood grain showing through so I think it'll be ok, phew!

Looks like there will be some sanding coming up

I left it 24 hours to make sure the grain filler had completely dried before reloading the sanding block with 220 grit and starting the sanding process once again. The grain filler initially came off quite easily but clogged the sand paper up in no time, so there was a lot of stopping and cleaning throughout the whole sanding process. Eventually though, the only filler left on the body and neck was nicely tucked into the grains where it should be and the guitar had survived the first step!

The grain filler had done its job and picked out the grain quite nicely. It looked a little patchy in places but that just seemed to be the nature of the wood so I thought I'd stain it and see how it goes. I could always redo the grain filling if it didn't look right after staining.

The neck had come out a bit different to the body. I'm not entirely sure what wood the neck is but I'm pretty sure it isn't mahogany. It still looked quite cool though.

So, with the sanding all done, its on to the staining...