How To Jookify Your Guitar - A Blog of Sorts

kelvinburn

A friend and I are going to do an "Inspired by" Dean ML.  Black and turqoise Paisley top and back, gold and turqoise Goan silk sides.  Single dimebucker at the bridge.  Oh and it'll be in drop A with flatwound 13s.  We're pretty confident we will have a front runner for the ugliest guitar on the forum prize.  Parts on order, pics when available

JookyChap

kelvinburn said:

A friend and I are going to do an "Inspired by" Dean ML.  Black and turqoise Paisley top and back, gold and turqoise Goan silk sides.  Single dimebucker at the bridge.  Oh and it'll be in drop A with flatwound 13s.  We're pretty confident we will have a front runner for the ugliest guitar on the forum prize.  Parts on order, pics when available

Cool - though I might fight you for that prize...

Tis all done now anyway, fotos to follow

JookyChap

Durex Machina

Getting Sticky

And so, we have a lovely paisley body, what better thing to do, than cover it with gold leaf?

As I said before this is criminally easy.. To stick gold leaf on anything, you clearly need a glue. In gilding terms this is called Size for some weird reason, and smells a bit niffy. You also need very very little of it, so buying that enormous bottle was quite silly.

Grabbing a trusty paint brush, it is as simple as painting it onto the body everywhere you want the leaf to stick.. Signwriters and the rest will of course use stencils or very unshaky hands to come up with intricate and delicate patterns and calligraphy. Naturally, I won't and instead am covering the top completely and worrying about the finer details later, if I do at all.

But the Size - once that is on in all it's milky whiteness, the next step is to wait while it goes sticky and transparent. This takes about twenty minutes.

Once the Size has seemingly disappeared, the next step is very simple. You just put the gold leaf on it.

Gold Leaf is sold either loose or stuck on transfer paper, and it is the latter I tend to go for as while it costs a few pence more, it is a lot easier to play with. It comes in nice little booklets too, so you feel as though you are getting value for money, probably.

To stick the gold on, you just remove a page from the booklet and press it onto the sticky Size, being really careful - firstly not to let the gold fall off as it will, and secondly that you have it gold side down as a tissue paper covering never looks quite as impressive.

I tend to roll the page over the body and just let it settle in place, before gently rubbing over the back of the paper with a dry paintbrush. Clever people balance the leaf on the end of a brush, but I keep things simple as otherwise I use a lot more of the gold stuff. Once you think the gold has all touched the size, you peel the paper away.

From there it is just a case of repeating until the whole front of the body is covered, making sure you overlap to fill any gaps. Anything you do miss can be filled in with scraps of leaf you will find all over your house for the next few years.

So there we are, the body is gilded - easy enough - but now we have to tidy it up a bit.

One problem with overlapping is that you end up with a lot of the leaf not stuck to anything in particular. This we need to remove, and it is as simple as gently brushing the body until it is all gone. OK, it is a ballache of a job and if you press too hard you will remove gold that you wanted left, but you can always patch any holes, and I'm not making a sign for a solicitor's door here, so whatever.

JookyChap

This Corrosion

Well, our guitar is bright and shiny now, but we can't see a lot of the paisley up top, so we need to do something about that. To get rid of the gold, I usually use some niffy acids, but to make life simple, I thought for this that I would try and use ones most of us will have at home. They don't work as well or as quickly, but it is easier than trying to find noxious fluids down your high street (I know, believe me).

At this point you may well wonder why I didn't just stick gold in the places I wanted it, or why I don't just scrape it off instead of trying to melt it off with acid, and that is a very good point, and one I should probably have thought of earlier.

However, I didn't and so instead I spent a few hours trying various household acids to see which would work and came to the conclusion that White Vinegar was about the best bet.

So as you can see, I dribbled then brushed small amounts of vinegar all over the top, and left it alone for a few hours so that it would melt/corrode/dissolve some of the leaf. I had in mind a gold burst around the edge, which is pretty much what I got, although I have to say I helped the vinegar along a bit as it really was very slow compared to sulphuric acid.

Still it worked, and I was happy with the end result.

JookyChap

Tidying Up

Obviously leaving the acid in place would have eventually seen all of the leaf disappear, so to stabilise it I covered the body with an alkali - baking soda -  and then wiped it down with a wet cloth. This did the trick and the world was smiley.

From there, I was planning to lacquer the body, but looking at the weather, went instead for a few coats of Hard Wax Oil. This works really well with metallic finishes and got rid of the smell of salt 'n' vinegar which was a real bonus.

And there we are.. I hope @John_P likes the end result, and that I haven't bored you too much in the process...

JookyChap

The Finished Article

So John can have a quiet cry before it turns up at the door and he has to look stoic, this is where we started,...



And these are where we ended-up, having spent about a tenner in the process...

ROOG

That looks great Jooky, I read your description of what you do at the seams, but do you have any close ups to show this please? 

JookyChap

I should have, I'll have a dig around...

Jalapeno

A win on so many levels.

That fabric is superb, another Paisley only please .....

ddlooping

Nice one, Jooky.
I'd have chosen a transparent scratchplate though, it's a shame to hide all that Jookyness.

JookyChap

ddlooping said:

Nice one, Jooky.
I'd have chosen a transparent scratchplate though, it's a shame to hide all that Jookyness.

Ah, that's up to John_P the 'plate was one that was lay around the place...

ddlooping

Oh, I see

John_P

Even more wow and wow!!!   That is awesome!    I've got white, black and swirly white scratchplates in the drawer so I'll put a neck on it and experiment to see which one works the best.

Mark you are a genius - thank you so much for doing this!  

(and to think I had that body advertised for sale at one point!!!)

I've got an old hohner steinberger here overdue it's annual refinish - it's going to get the gold leaf treatment now I've got a guide to applying it

guitari

Awesome looking body - thanks for sharing.

snakemanStoo

Mrs. Stoo is now looking at my guitars with a calculating expression...

JookyChap

snakemanStoo said:

Mrs. Stoo is now looking at my guitars with a calculating expression...

Just imagine how many more you can have if they match the curtains...

TTony

That is both barking, and stunning at the same time.

Looks brilliant.  Top work Mr Jooky.

JookyChap

Cheers m'dears, glad you approve...

paisleysoul

I tell you what, waiting for the first coat to dry is nerve wracking!!!!

JookyChap

@paisleysoul said:

I tell you what, waiting for the first coat to dry is nerve wracking!!!!

Cool - you are giving it a go? Yeah, I know what you mean, just keep waiting for it to bubble.

Lets see some fotos then