Finishing a Mahogany Guitar Neck

A lot of steel string players don't know what Mahogany actually looks like because of the stained Mahogany necks found on the guitars of Martin,and other American manufacturers.. Natural Mahogany is much a lighter golden brown color that looks almost orange under a clear finish.. This is familiar to classical guitarists because staining is not done anywhere on classical guitars, except for maybe the very cheap models..

Because of this it felt a little shameful when I began coloring the necks on my D28 and D18 style guitars, but they did indeed start to look a lot more like my vintage Martins, once I got the hang of it..

I started with commercially available stains, but soon found I had lot more control if I mixed my own colors.. I now use a tinted neutral filler followed by tinted lacquer, and actually enjoy the process of developing the color.s. I like to make it a little different each time, based on the colors of the other woods in the guitar., because even with in the same species of wood, i.e. Rosewood and Mahogany, there is a good deal of variation in color.