Staining or dying a guitar body? Help!

[fullmetalguitar]

Hi guys. I want to strip down a guitar body to the wood, then stain it a darker color. The wood is alder. I'd like to make it look as much like a koa color as possible. I've never done this, so I really have no clue about how to do it. Are there specific types of wood stain to use? How many coats, how long to dry, sanding, some type of sealer that goes on at the end, etc, etc? I know it won't look like koa, but just getting that general color would be awesome. Any help at all would be appreciated. Thanks.

Richard

[fullmetalguitar]

Where's Mike Learn when you need him?

[SEEGERMANY]

To me, there is no prettier color wood than KOA. This is my Warmoth Strat. I'd like to build a KOA Les Paul, but I don't think you can buy one piece KOA anymore.

[missionguitars1]

To be honest with you, alder is pretty uneventful as natural wood, so you might want to reconsider, or just save your pennies up for a koa-topped body maybe...

If you are hell-bent on doing it though, you'd probably need to do something akin to this: http://www.stewmac.com/freeinfo/Fini...lueguitar.html

You probably can ignore the part about the false-binding, but everything else holds...you'll probably want to use a darker orange-tinted stain, although my worry there is over time it will darken to a point of looking like poo brown, and I'm not so sure that's what you're after...

Just my .02, hope it helps!

[tcwil8]

You probably can ignore the part about the false-binding, but everything else holds...you'll probably want to use a darker orange-tinted stain, although my worry there is over time it will darken to a point of looking like poo brown, and I'm not so sure that's what you're after...

+1 Poo brown is the shit. I personally haven't seen an alder body that looked decent stained. If someone has had good luck with it, please post photos and how you did it.

[DonP]

+1 Poo brown is the shit.

PooPoo you mean

[tcwil8]

PooPoo you mean

careful, SG will come running if we keep talking about poop.

[fullmetalguitar]

Thanks for the tips guys. I guess I don't really want a poop colored guitar. See, what I really want is one of those mid 90s Charvel SDs that was Koa with the Wilkinson trem. I rarely see them on the bay. I almost bought Seegermany's lacewood model, but had to back out. So maybe I'll just wait for another one to pop up rather than staining one myself. Thanks for the advice.

[Learn Guitars]

Sorry bro, been busy making musical sawdust. Unfortunately, there is no faking Koa. You could sand it down and find some one with a vaccuum press, I do not have one yet, and have them laminate a Koa veneer to the top then reclear it. No cheap adventure no matter how you slice it.

[fullmetalguitar]

Hey Mike, thanks for the response. Well, I guess I'll just wait to find the real thing. I'm glad you guys talked me out of it.

[horns666]

To me, there is no prettier color wood than KOA. This is my Warmoth Strat. I'd like to build a KOA Les Paul, but I don't think you can buy one piece KOA anymore.

WOW..That's beautiful!!!

I'd rub the wood with a Sham-wow. I use one as my Jizz-gel rag, and now my beanbag has a nice amber glow.

Also, use it while the Sham-Wow is still moist..I discovered spooge is like a good tung oil.