Painting A Sunburst Guitar Finish

Sunburst finishes are most commonly applied to the face of a guitar.

Painting a sunburst guitar finish. A sun in the middle of the guitar surface around which a darker color is then added. Make sure that when youre applying your coats of clear coat that you do apply the coat as thin as you possibly can applying the second layer after the first layer has dried and so on. Theres an endless list of choices available when it comes to guitar finishing. The first step is to mask off the top and the faux binding then to spray the back.

Paint one section of the guitar at a time. A nitrocellulose clear coat is highly recommended. If you are using more than one color tape off sections of guitar with blue painters tape. You may even need up to add up to a dozen coats to get a factory finish.

To make matters even more complex within these available options there are also any number of material conside. If you want a guitar done in several colors or a sunburst finish select several colors. Grain filled if necessary sanded to 320 grit and sprayed with 2 3 coats of clear sanding sealer. Sunburst finishes are created by blending yellow black and brown colors.

Create an authentic vintage sunburst finish on any stringed instrument with behlens sunburst guitar finish kit. The guitar here is a saga ht 10 kit. Black on the outside edge. In most cases we refer to a sunburst finish as a finish that features graduating color from the edge of the guitar to the center and that is how we will reference a sunburst finish for the duration of this article but technically there are a number of burst variations you can try.

A sunburst finish uses several different shades of finishing material to create the sunburst effect. I wanted to blacken the sides without getting overspray on the front or back so i used a brown paper mask. Sunburst to a standard solid color finish. The images and text below show you how easy it is to get a great sunburst effect using my nitrocellulose lacquer aerosols.

Options include oiling staining finishing in a graduated combination of colors eg.