: Yep, I bookmarked that post. Thanks for weighing again.

: When you use that lacquer without the abalone, is the grain still
: visible through the wood (can you tell it's wood underneath)? By
: "on top of the epoxy," I gather you mean over the seal
: coat, not over the fiberglass, right?

The abalone that I get comes pre-sprayed from www.aquabluemaui.com I inlay it with the color already on. Naturally you can't sand it, so it's very tricky to inlay but I prefer to inlay rather than overlay. Sometimes I do sand a little too much on the fill coat and end up sanding through the color. I have found that the colors I use most actually match perfectly to a set of indellible markers I have. I touch it up with indellible marker. That's wehre I was saying I got the bleeding issue. Once I got more careful and dabbed the epoxy on over the touched up areas first, then went back with the epoxy coat I avoided the bleeding.

However, for guitars if you spray it with colored lacquer you can still see the grain very well unless you keep spraying multiple layers or if you use a very dark color like deep purple or black. In that case you'll see the grain but not real well. You may want to chek on epoxy adhesion to nitrocellulose lacquer, but if there's no adhesion issue I would spray it on top of the glass after the first layer cures, but before the fill coat. That way it's protected under a coat of epoxy. One thing about lacquer, it's not real durable. Just my thoughts. Others might disagree.

That link I sent you for Warmoth is where I used to get guitar parts. Now I have the tools to make my own bodies and have been more into acoustics, so I haven't been to their site in a while, but at one time they had a forum for guitar builders. No different from a guitar guy coming here to ask a question about a finish or a certain wood, I'm sure those guys would give you input on masking off before dying wood. It's very common in electric guitar building to use dyes, and I know often people get creative masking off flames and what-not.