metal leaf stratele

[WezV]

its a guitar i built for myself last year that i finally got around to finishing - and decided to have a bit of a play.

This isnt to show good practice or even something a lot of you will like - just showing my experiments

so i started painting it black, then covered quite roughly in faux silver leaf... i didnt go for full coverage as i wanted some black showing in places - although i did misjudge scratchplate shape first time round
that gave me this


i quite liked it but continued playing as i had some gold and copper leaf too

so - the last 24 hours progress (most of which was sleeping and being at work)

added gold and copper - dont like it though, some of the patterns are fun but the colour contrast is all wrong


roughly distressed it, which removed a lot of gold and copper... still not happy with colour:



wiped down with black stain, rubbed down with wire wool and one coat of lacquer later:






seeing it like that i am not sure if i want to relic the hardware or not.... but i think i am just about done now

[Philly Q]

Very interesting process!  But I think my jury's out on this one until I see the finished guitar.

[MrBump]

Ditto - was there a thought process, or was it a little more random than that?

Does look kinda cool... I think that I like the idea of gold or silver leaf...

[Andrew W]

I think that's really cool.  I've always like the distressed metal look: for some, completely indefensible reason, it's never bothered me the way some relic jobs do.  Is that a CuNiFe wide range humbucker you have in there?  The question remaining though is what are you going to do with the neck?  

[th3sku11]

Still not sure about the gold/copper bits. The rest has an appeal for me though :)

[Ian Price]

Interesting Wez. I think I'll reserve judgement until I see the finished article though. Will be very interested to see what it looks like.

[WezV]

was there a thought process, or was it a little more random than that?

random - just seeing what happens for sh1ts and giggles

now i need to make a couple of decisions which will affect the final look

1.  loads of clear till it can be buffed to a high shine or leave textured  and lightly coated

2.  Relic hardware to match or stay with the contrast


the neck bucker is an original wide range  - its the one HTH didnt like, but i am rather fond of it - partnered with a BKP flat 50 and a 4-way tele switch

[TheIronBeast]

I didn't like the look of the silver with the gold and silver but after seeing it wiped down with black stain and with the wire wool I really like the look of the guitar. I love the look of beat up Strats/Teles. That now looks like it has been on tour round the world, played every night for the past 30 years. I like the way that it has turned out.

I will be interested to see what you decide to do with it, will be keeping a close eye on the development.

[Twinfan]

Looks very Trussart!

[WezV]

Looks very Trussart!

poor mans version ;)

[PhilKing]

looks a bit like the bottom of my frying pan (outside!).  Didn't mind just the silver, hated it with the gold & copper, don't mind the wiped down look.  I would lacquer it more myself though.

[Lew]

Tyler meets Trussart  :D

[Dreichlift]

I love the finish you ended up with, with a slightly different choice of colours and some aged hardware I would think it'd work really well on something with cammo humbuckers.

[d1dsj]

Looks very Trussart!

 8)

[Andrew W]

the neck bucker is an original wide range  - its the one HTH didnt like, but i am rather fond of it - partnered with a BKP flat 50 and a 4-way tele switch

That little lot there looks like it's worth the price of admission alone.