Dragonburst Tele

My client snagged a paulownia body off of eBay for literally nothing, and it was a pretty unassuming body. He was thinking about using the body for firewood, and since this was mid-April and everything was locked down from the pandemic, I talked him into letting me make this into something cool. At the time, we both had no idea what that would entail. So we decided to make it a surprise. I had nearly-complete creative control.

I picked up a rather inexpensive flamed maple cap online, still unsure as to the details of what kind of finish I was going to do, but this piece looked nice and was a steal for around $20.

Because I was planning on doing a hand-applied sunburst with analine dye dissolved in alcohol, I figured it would be best to omit the pickguard – and the neck pickup altogether – for maximum visibility of this beautiful flamed top.

1/4" of wood needed to be subtracted from the top of the body to make room for the cap. Once the maple stock was resawn in half, bookmatched and glued onto the top of the body, routed, scraped & sanded flush, then we’re ready for finish. I then water-popped (aka raised) the grain, then sanded everything out to 220 grit.

Now for the fun part. I chose to do a Dragon-Burst because they look cool, and I was up for a challenge. Dragonbursts are relatively simple color-wise, as it’s just a mixture of 2 primary colors: yellow and blue, then the greens are created from the blending of the two. First up: yellow.

Here is where I wish I would have documented this process better. Anyway here’s the final project.

The neck was some Indonesian-made generic brand, and despite the ugly headstock design, the frets were in decent shape and the neck itself was in pretty good (aka straight) condition. The client wanted it to be more of a traditional tele-style headstock shape, so I rounded up some maple scraps and got to work.

The original shape, right after the (now forgotten) logo was sanded off.

Coincidentally, the existing glue joint was exactly where I was planning on cutting the headstock. I simply cut along this glue line and sanded it flat.

Here’s the new piece, hopefully it’s big enough.

The new piece is cut and planed to a smaller size.

Close enough. Now to glue it up. It’s not obvious from the picture, but I used two small pins to hold it in place while being clamped.

A day later, the glue is dry. Time to cut, scrape and sand flush to the existing headstock surface.

Shape is roughed out, now it just needs to be cleaned up.

All set! It was then stained black, sealed with vinyl sealer, and finished with gunstock oil.

After everything was installed and setup, this is the end result. The thick brass bridge and super hot humbucking pickup did a great deal in the way of beefing up the tone of this light paulownia body. It plays as good as it sounds, and the customer was super stoked to take it home.