Sometimes...I should stop digging

When the first coat is this bad...

Well, OK, so I've had a couple of OMFGWHYFM? moments since the last missive.

First of all, I sanded around the edges so that the veneer merges with the body of the guitar. That worked nicely. I was pleased.

After that I dug out my can of shiny-wood-varnish with in-built rosewood coloured stain. Gave it a good shake, and then a lengthy stir, dug out a shiny new varnish brush with sooper soft bristles the vegetarian in my doesn't want to contemplate. (They just shave pigs to get them, don't they?)

And then I gave it a first coat.

Now I think I said I'd gone for the coloured varnish as water based stains can cause all manner of fun with veneers - mainly bubbling, and as you've seen I can do that sort of thing unaided. So this seemed a good idea. Varnish with a hint of roseywood colour for a deeper, lasting shininess.

So I put on the first coat of the gloopy browny-red gunk in the tin, and it covered beautifully. Too beautifully in fact as it is so thick I can no longer see any of the beautiful grain I was in love with just a hand filled with beautiful moments earlier.

So, I ask myself, why didn't I just clearcoat it?

And the answer is...I DON'T KNOW.

Sheesh.

Anyway, three hours later and it is dry and ready for another coat, so what do I do?

...the Third isn't going to be any better.

Yep, I keep chasing and put on another, and then another layer of silt still. Hoping, rather sadly, that by some miracle this reddish mud I've plastered across the guitar will somehow become translucent.

But it didn't, and I have to say it looks shite.

I hate it.

I could hit something, or somebody if they were really small, feeble and truth be told, restrained too.

I'm not much of a fighter, has to be said.

So there we are.

Failure, nipped from tween the broken teeth of possible just-about-good-enough, err, jaws.

Back to that there drawing board, methinks.