South Yorkshire musician Ben Paramore contacted me with a plan to transform his electric guitar into a dragon (as you do!), and sent me the instrument separated, sanded and stripped of its electrical elements. This unusual request excited me, being someone who has made guitars do unusual things in the past (almost coming close to producing a tune once or twice).
I designed the dragon head first and got cracking with that ; the body and guitar neck were to be covered entirely with dragon scales (although carved quite shallow on the neck so as not to interfere with playing).
The scales proved rather tricky ~ not the carving as such, but the positioning of them; the contours of the guitar body and the wavy edges threw the symmetry out and required a bit of head scratching. I found the best approach was to centralize the scales on the front and back of the guitar and join up the sides as best as I could. I’d toyed with the idea of starting on say, the front right, and working round the guitar as I went, but I’m sure the scales would have ended up going off in some peculiar directions.
All the finishing was to be done by the customer ~ either some sort of stain, lacquer or spray ; I can’t wait to see the results.
