Staining the Mando

Several weeks back, I posted that Randy was getting ready to start staining the mandolin, then the rest of the work would only be in the finish- meaning the sanding/laquering/sanding/laquering. Last week, he began the staining process and I took some pictures for you all to see how this goes!

Basically it is layering of two shades of dye and sometimes his own mixture of the two to get the shade he is looking for.
When he gets it pretty close to the way he likes it, he then takes an airbrush to fill in & fine tune the staining just the way he likes it. No pics for that - I think i was in the bed at that point! :)

While he is staining it, it is inevitable that he is going to get stain all over the white binding (the outer edge). So, after the staining is complete, he begins the dreaded scraping. He has to scrape all the dye off of the binding around both the front & back of the mandolin. (He hates this part & does a lot of screaming!)



It takes a lot of patience and concentration. Something I am not very good at myself, but we all know Randy is the more laid back of this pair, right!?

So now he has started the clear coat to seal it which means lots of layers of spraying and sanding in between coats. Once that is complete & dried/hardened for about a week or so, the mando will be finished! Wahoo! I will post complete pictures for you of course! So stay tuned!