Grateful Dead Music Forum

This is one of 2 Tigers I am painting right now.

Beautiful Leo!
Always great to see your work in process.

Peace
M

Whoa, cool....please tell us more about the top and texture.

seamones wrote:Whoa, cool....please tell us more about the top and texture.

That looks amazing!!

Gonna be a beauty!

Looks awesome!

Hopefuly, when the paint is on there should be no texture. I love this piece of cocbolo. When I 1st cut it . The color was pretty bland.

Ok, who is ready to get me a tiger? They look great leo!

How long till you buff and assemble?

I hadn't really noticed the contours on the back before. Nice work as usual!

J

Yea, there aren't many good rear pics. The pics during refinishing taken in Doug's workshop in 1990 were invaluable.

I've worked a lot of wood, but have never worked with cocoabola before. Damn!

In preparation for my first go at a Tiger replica, I'm just playing around with some lower grade boards trying to approximate the broad, sweeping contours of the face. Basswood, or poplar, it is not. Closer to granite or marble, except stickier. It ain't easy!

So I'm astounded at the amount of carving you've done on this guitar -- particularly all the work across the grain. It's really quite impressive, and it makes my hands hurt just thinking about it!

not to mention cocobolo reverses grain with out much surface indication. It takes much patience an very sharp gouges . My Tormek sharpening machine is always humming when I am carving tops. If possible orient the grain so you can carve down and away from the high spots toward the front of the instrument horns.

Can you post a link to the photos you referenced for the carving? I always thought the top was smooth, not with scallops and ridges and so forth but I've never seen the guitar up-close in person (unless Jerry was holding it). Herb Greene's photos are what I typically reference but they are straight on.

I know what you mean Vic. These are the only two refin photos I've seen- are there others? There are some reflections in the gloss in the refin photos, but Tiger "up close and personal" is pretty smooth. There is the basic carving relief that's obvious in all the photos, but the surface is smooth. I've seen Tiger up close twice (R&RHOF & Indy) and did not see the "scallops and ridges". I figured Leo was doing a "my version based upon the Tiger concept"?





And then there's the nice Tiger montage (taken at Gary Brawer's?) that used to be on a well known, invaluable, and sorely missed website:

forum/viewtopic.php?f=346&t=16792&p=144 ... it#p144794