Pickguard for an ol' Gibson Dove

A friend came to me asking for some possible recommendations for a purchase of a nice old flat top acoustic. I don't usually favor the Gibson from 70's, i have about six of them in the workshop is various states of fucked. The bridge plates are huge, the 3 piece maple necks usually falling apart, the binding is always half missing and overall they're usually disappointing. Sometimes you get proven wrong! Evan found a lovely sounding one at Echotone in Melbourne, however the old celluloid guard was half missing and crumbling.

My aim is to make something that has the same depth of colour as the celluloid while not being so prone to shifts in shape. Lots of great people like Spitfire guards make bang on repros of the old style guards. These were a little out of the price range and i've kinda always wanted to play around with some homemade guards so i talked Ev into avoiding the nasty printed tort guards and to let me have a go.

This project has taken a lot more R&D than i first expected. Laser cutting Epoxy resin is not encouraged, apparently Cyanide is a byproduct of burning plastic and no one wants that in their workshop. After a few test pours into a silicon mould i made (I was trying to avoid rinsing my bank account by purchasing epoxy and pouring sheets) Some great colours and patterns, it was mosly just Timber stains mixed with the epoxy and then once the first pour had settled i streaked through a darker colour, trying to move it around as much as possible without mixing it.

I'd still love to work on getting some lighter streaks through the epoxy, i attempted to mix a white nitro with a light yellow and then swirl that. It just kind of ended up settling on the bottom and making the whole guard slightly milky. Not cool.

I spoke to friend Duey about the best way to do the dove and flowers engraving, we decided that cuting the whole thing from a sheet and cutting it with the CNC was probably best. All that Silicon for nothing!

We wanted to save the dove from the original guard so i traced the design and matched the proportions as best i could i got Duey to cut some test runs. Getting a consistant depth to the epoxy pours was the hardest part here. We got a sheet that looked good and was pretty level through out. Made the cuts and we got 9 guards out of the sheet.

I chose to go with an enamel paint to colour the designs, just because those little tinned pots at hobby shops have a huge range of colours. Lots of a tests, lots that were not right. I came up with a handful of guards that were contenders and confered with Ev. We chose one and inlayed the dove.

I was happy with how it turned out. For me, it wasn't a financially reasonable business decision to do it this way. I spent way more money that i made from the guard but it was a cool R&D project that i learnt a lot from.