The finish:

With all the woodwork near completion, and all the parts fitting nicely together, it came time to sand everything down smooth to 400 grit and apply the finish.  I called Mr. X to see what color he wanted to go with, hoping he would not want the same forest green, that JLH had done it with.  Mr. X told me that from what he had seen and heard so far from his friend and client of mine Nate (I kept him in the dark to make the final reveal more exiting), he wanted anything but forest green!  Less to remind him of the abomination of an instrument it started out as.

He had seen some cool blue guitars recently, and blue was growing on him, so he asked for a lighter shade of blue with a satin finish.  The light part was not going to be that easy, as dyes are much more forgiving to work with in darker shades, and maple was a bitch to begin with, because it soaks in dye in some areas, and tends to repel it in others, but I agreed to give it a whirl without promising too much.  A satin finish is easy to do using an oil finish, and can be done rather quickly, compared to lacquer or polyurethane.

I started the oil finish on the neck, taped off the top and finished the back in oil too.  The neck with its wide open grain required a huge amount of coatings.  The transition between the natural mahogany back and blue maple top posed the greatest challenge, and finishing the back first would reduce the risk of blue dye absorbing into the mahogany.  Masking tape is not reliable with non viscous fluids such as dye's.  Here is what the finished back looks like:

Once the back was good and dry a few days later, I taped off all of the mahogany, mixed up a batch of really light blue dye, and carefully layered it on, while observing where it was absorbing and where not.  Working in fine layers I was able to control the application and come out with a blotch free and even shade of blue:

After adding a few layers of oil to the top, the results were better than what I was hoping for:

The picture above is deceiving, because the mahogany is reflected in the arm cutaway, mirrored onto the blue maple.  The blue meets the mahogany all the way around.

The part I was most afraid of not turning out were the transitions, but as you can see below, they turned out really well.  The lighting is not optimal, nor is my camera, so there is quite a bit of glare.