Tele Refinishing - Teach me about staining and laquering!

[Scruffie]

Soo, got one of those Squier Tele Customs with the P90s in baby shit yellow and as it's my main guitar, i'd quite like to make it a bit more suited to my tastes if i'm gonna invest in better parts for it eventually.

Now to start with, it needs some kind of finishing regardless as i've sawn/sanded the horn into a more super strat fashion as my wrist kept bashing on it so it's got a big chunk of bare wood, grain looks pretty good on it from what I can tell though (and can see through the paint on the back) so that's a good start I guess... not sure what wood type is in these though.

So, assuming i've finished sanding the whole thing I quite want to give it a vintage furniture stain, i've picked an ebony dye which from what I believe is right, I mix in to a grain filler and that should all just be one paint on and sand off and polish job... am I on the right track? The two are from the same company (links at the bottom) so should mix fine (I read some don't) does the filler being solvent based matter?

It'd be nice if I could give it some dark red (maybe red mahogany) in the grain too... but I don't know how such a thing is possible? (wood wizard on here did a nice example of such a thing with a cab in a sunburst though, although not quite how I envisioned it that would be nice too) kinda like if i'd taken a spray paint can and 'misted' it.

After that, there's the finishing, i've read some say sealant is necessary and some that say it's not really, if I can skip a step and another expensive product, i'm all for it!

Then the lacquer, the only reason I can see to use nitro is that it'll age a bit nicely but not sure how good that'd look on black anyway (although it's meant to be more brittle so I might get some good wear?) and that it comes in tints... but guessing I wont really need that and that a red tint wouldn't help with the above finish. Polyurethane seems like a good choice though? Is there varying grades, i'd ideally like to not spend too much on all this as... I don't have that much and with my skills it probably will be wasted cash anyway at the end of it all, even a spray can of cheap satin project poly is over £10... which I want to use.

So here's the 3 products i'm looking at, other than what I've said, I don't know squat so advice would be awesome!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Rustins-Grain ... 4839648c44

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Rustins-Wood- ... 2eb1106d2d

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Plasti-Kote-P ... 20d6e6d519

[Gone Fission]

Check out the finish sub-forum ("Finely Finished"?) at tdpri.com. Those Tele DIY-ers have tried out about everything and there's probably optimal info for just about any mehod.

Do you know what the body wood is? A lot of the process depends on the wood. I'm guessing basswood, which is porous and benefits from grain filling. There are tricks you can do of doing a stain and wet sanding it down so only the more intense absorption into the grain stands out and then restain in a lighter shade. You can also do grain-fill with a darker fill than the main color to get it to pop.

I've long ago gotten off of nitro snobbery. If you really like the color tint or staining job, the yellowing with age throws it off. If you like the greened Pellham blue or sonic blue, cool, but if not, meh. Wipe-on poly is cheap, and it is supposed to be a very easy way to get a good, thin finish on a guitar.

[Scruffie]

Check out the finish sub-forum ("Finely Finished"?) at tdpri.com. Those Tele DIY-ers have tried out about everything and there's probably optimal info for just about any mehod.

Do you know what the body wood is? A lot of the process depends on the wood. I'm guessing basswood, which is porous and benefits from grain filling. There are tricks you can do of doing a stain and wet sanding it down so only the more intense absorption into the grain stands out and then restain in a lighter shade. You can also do grain-fill with a darker fill than the main color to get it to pop.

I've long ago gotten off of nitro snobbery. If you really like the color tint or staining job, the yellowing with age throws it off. If you like the greened Pellham blue or sonic blue, cool, but if not, meh. Wipe-on poly is cheap, and it is supposed to be a very easy way to get a good, thin finish on a guitar.

I saw a page or two of tdpri actually and wasn't sure if it was going to be a load of ass holes who say don't bother at every turn

I just had a search, turns out it's agathis, seen pics a few guys have done on the same model and they've come out looking pretty nice.

Wipe on poly eh, sorta figured that wouldn't work as nice as spray, did just run across someone saying that you shouldn't use canned stuff though as it has no catalyst

[Decibill]

I've built a few guitars from scratch. I've sprayed them with everything from water based lacquer to rattle can jobs. If you don't have a spray set up I'd suggest going to reranch.com I've bought a bunch of products from them and if you take your time you can get some great results...!!