I’m finishing the neck with nitrocellulose lacquer.  This is an old school clear coat that gets hard and can be polished real smooth and shiny.  It also feels good for a neck.

This finish is built up using multiple layers so they can be sanded level and then polished.  To save time and material, it’s good to make the wood as smooth as possibly blue before the lacquer.  For this, I’m using an epoxy product.

The headstock face is going to be black with a car ol sticker.  I’ll prolly use polyurethane to finish the sticker (it builds up faster, cures faster, and dries harder).

First step after sanding is to fill the pores in the grain. I’m using Epoxy for this which is a thing 2 part epoxy that is easy to work. You basically mix it up, smear it on with a spatula and scrape as much off as you can.  Then some sanding and reapply a second coat.

After some sanding, I painted the headstock black and fit the tuning machines.  They are Hipshot Grip Lock tuners with cool open gears.

I decided I wanted to have the neck a darker color so I stained it with some minwax stain from the hardware store.  It looks awesome!

Next I will spray a couple coats of gloss polyurethane on the headstock to give the decal a good smooth place to stick.  Then I will start to spray the nitrocellulose lacquer on the neck and fretboard.

I’ll put some more coats on the neck and then let it harden a couple weeks.

Now time for the headstock!  The sticker is applied to the clear coat from a while back.  Then spray a bunch of clear on top to “bury” the sticker.  I’m aiming for enough clear to completely cover the sticker and make the whole thing level and smooth.

Now about 10 billion more coats of clear and let it harden for a week or so.

The neck looks awesome