These pictures show a fully carved and routed guitar with a few coats of wood sealer applied.  Eight months after commissioning this project, I finally know the color of the guitar, and it’s pretty much exactly what I was hoping for!  From the beginning, I was hoping for an overall dark color with a nice reddish contrast against the grain – and as you can see, that’s what I got.  The top has kind of taken on a three dimensional quality, as the grain starts popping out.  Also, the figuring of the Curly Maple core and neck is nice and deep, another aesthetic decision made early on that I’d hoped would materialize.  Take a look at the unsealed guitar from couple of posts back, and see for yourself what a little sealer will do!  Susan at Alembic says this top is one of their finest representations of this type of Coco Bolo to date – I agree.

Alembic will apply more layers of sealer (drying and hand sanding between each coat) before the inlays are placed.  After that, another bunch layers of sealer will go on, as many as necessary.

I’ll try to post some additional pictures of the sealed wood soon.