Introduction: How to Make a Zakk Wylde Bulls-eye Style Guitar
In this Instructable I am going to be walking you through the steps I took to make the Bulls-eye guitar.
Step 1: Note to Builder
The reason I chose this paint job and guitar body is because I am a fan of Zakk and I dont have the money to buy his signature guitar. Plus the guitar is pretty awesome :)....Anyways If you choose to follow my steps in creating this please dont make it and try to sell it as an actual Gibson or Epiphone model guitar I dont care if you carve your headstock like those but please dont rip people off by misleading them thats not cool and unlawful. I hope you enjoy this Instructable and good Luck!
Step 2: Materials
Now what you need to do the Job
1. A Les Paul guitar or a Les Paul guitar kit
Here is the site I used (www.torresengineering.com)
but here are some others I dont rec amend using any ebay sites just because of the poor quality I have seen from kits off there :(.. So here are the others :)
www.byoguitar.com
www.guitarpartsusa.com/cat--Guitar-Necks-Bodies-Kits--MAIN10
2. A scroll saw or a small hack saw if you have to
3. 300 grit sand paper probably only a sheet
4. 2-3 sheets of vinyl
5. a Vinyl cutter or a straight edge blade
6.Dupli-color paints 3 cans of universal black and 3 cans of Wimbledon white
(For the paint we will be using automotive aerosol acrylic paint)
7.Dupli- color clear coat 2 cans
8. this one is optional but you might need a blueprint of the headstock shape you will be using
9.Masking tape
10.Cardboard
11.News paper
Step 3: Masking the Guitar's Binding
If you are lucky enough to have Binding on your guitar you will need to tape it off so the paint wont get on it.
1. I used lines of vinyl and estimated the width of the amount I needed then I carefully placed it on the binding In about 9-10 inch strips
2. take your time this took me from 30-45 mins
3. Make sure on the grooves of the guitar you place the middle of the vinyl strip on first, I placed the middle of the strip onto the middle of the grooves and then stuck the left and right ends of the strip down and it made my life a little easier
Step 4: Painting the Base Color
I chose to make white my base color but you can really do this either black or white.
1. You are going to need to make a hanging apparatus *2
All i did was take a wire hanger unwind it in to the shape in the picture below you dont have to make this shape all you need to do is make sure you have a end of it you can hook and the other end you can hang and lock it in to place.
2. Now put the hook ends of your hanging apparatus through the neck joint holes where the neck bolts on or if you have a glue in you can put it through the tone/volume holes.
3.Shake the can of aerosol paint you chose to be the base color for you guitar (white/black)
4. Follow the directions of the paint can on how to spray for example distance and drying times
5. I sprayed the body in vertical lines up and down trying to make it as even as possible but you can also cross hatch which is when you do vertical and horizontal lines across the body both are good ways to ensure an even coat
6. Between each spray wait ten mins repeat this step until you can no longer see the wood color and grain, you want a solid white all the way around excluding the insides of the neck joint and other holes
7. Allow the paint to harden and bond with the wood in a well ventilated area so you can ensure the quality of the paint job, I waited a week but really its up too you.
REMEMBER- WHEN PAINTING/CLEAR COATING TO ALWAYS HAVE PROPER VENTILATION AND ALWAYS TAKE SAFETY PRECAUTIONS
Step 5: Cutting Out the Bulls-Eye
You can either put a pre-made bulls-eye from ebay for $12 bucks
here is the link
(http://cgi.ebay.com/wylde-looking-decals-Bullseye-kit-fits-Les-Paul-strat_W0QQitemZ390054579834QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item5ad1108e7a&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1546|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A1318|301%3A1|293%3A1|294%3A50)
Instead of putting these on as your final design I would just use them as a stencil so place them on as good as possible and mask off the rest of the body Which would be the sides/binding/and back so that you dont get any paint on them and paint away.
Or
You can take a compass and draw them out on a vinyl sheet like i did all you have to do is center the compass and make the circles 1 inch thick there are four black circles the 1,3,5,7 circles are black so make sure you the outer last circle is black it is also the only circle that is a little wider than an inch just look at the pic of mine and you can see how the last one is bigger.
Now take the vinyl sheet place it on a cutting board or something similar like a thick cardboard and then take a straight edge/straight edge pen and take your time cutting out the circles this is time consuming but the longer it takes the better it will look so strive for perfection as I did.
Step 6: Painting the Bulls-eye!
1.Get your black or white paint ready depending on your base color
2. Follow painting directions and repeat painting instructions that are on step 4
3. After letting the paint bond/dry for the desired period slowly peel the vinyl from the guitars body and prepare to be amazed! :)
With a steady hand and patience you should have a very pleasing and decent results
Step 7: Painting the Neck
This is a Little harder than painting the body just because the shape of the neck makes it very easy to have runs.
What I did with the neck is paint it all solid white just because I personally like it better but if you want it to be and exact replica you can take a look at his and Make yourself a stencil which is not very hard to do. So I will tell you how to mask off and paint the neck.
1. Take the neck lay it down and take some news paper and put it over the fret board with a pencil run the side of the lead on top of the news paper down the edges of the fretboard all the way down to the bottom. Now cut out the news paper so you have a bar of paper to mask off the frets now using some carpenters tape attach the paper to the fret board. It helps to make the bar of paper a little thinner than the actual width of the fretboard.
2. If you cut out a headstock or just left the peghead you will need to take some news paper and lay it over the front of the headstock now do the same as you did with the news paper and copy the shape of the headstock on to the paper. Cut the paper out a little smaller in width than the actual headstock because then you will have space to attach your tape to both the paper and wood. it should look something similar to the pic below.
3. Spray from the same distance your directions told you to but only do vertical strips because you will be less prone to have runs. Do really light coats until the color matches the color of your body.You will need to spray the whole back side white including the headstock if you do it like me.
4. As usual let it sit and bond/dry for a solid week
Step 8: Clear Coating
Now come the some what easy part
1.Grab your Dupli-color Clear coat
2. Follow application directions as usual
3. Now you need to make the call for when it has enough on there
I did 8 coats and mine is as smooth as any professional grade guitar
4. you will need to do this to both your guitars body and neck
'Good Luck!'
Step 9: Extra Stuff
Gibson Custom Limited Run Zakk Wylde Bullseye Aged Les Paul Electric Guitar Features:
- Body and Hardware:
- Carved maple top
- Solid mahogany back
- Multi-ply black/white binding on top & back
- Black & antique custom aged and distressed white bullseye finish
- Aged and tarnished gold Hardware
- Nashville TOM bridge, stopbar tailpiece
- 3-piece maple neck, no finish
- 22 fret ebony fingerboard
- Pearl block inlays
- Multi-ply white/black binding
- Rounded neck profile
- 24-3/4" scale length, 1-11/16" nut width
- Kidney bean tuners
- EMG-81 and EMG-85 humbucking pickups
- 2 volume, 2 tone, 3-way selector switch
- Brite Wire .010 strings
I dont like the aged look so I went with the new look.
If you want gold hardware then i would buy them off of this website(www.guitarheads.net/) they are awesome plus they have active pick-ups that are affordable and just as kick ass as EMG no joke I own a pair of them my self.
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