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komodo

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I don't think I could get them out. Before I glued the neck in, I wanted to do a dry run to make any minor neck tweaks for the action so I put thrm in. Maybe I made rhe holes too tight, but actually I haven't tried pulling them.

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Yeah, things like this happen. Once ;-)

They're pretty easy to pull. If there's enough meat between the base of the hole and the back of the body, and the inserts are open bottomed you can drop in a 1/4" slug of some metal such as a bolt or whatever, followed by screwing in the studs. This draws out the insert since the stud's progress is stopped by whatever you drop in.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've been completely remiss on updates, and unfortunately haven't really documented this with pictures. It's been comforting to read others builds and see accident /saves as that's what I'm going through. Nothing catastrophic, but plenty of heavy sit down and think think think times.

After the final dye, the sides were still virgin swamp ash and I hadn't figured out exactly what to do with them yet. My thought was dye of some kind, possibly tinted lacquer over that or ? Also, I was pretty set on not doing a burst after the top and back dye. 

Well, after thinking for a bit I thought "I wonder if I can mix a dye to match the rosewood neck?" Then the sides would blend into the neck. In my heart, I didn't think it possible, but after one or two tries I hit it DEAD ON. I was shocked how close it was actually. This was applied on to one of my test pieces that had some black sand back on it, and the black ash grain looked exactly like the rosewood. Excited, my first step was to dye the ash black, and sand back . . .which I knew would be tricky because it was already bound. Well, ash takes the black SO well, not just in the pores, sand back was very difficult. Also, the sand back creates a nasty grey mess of dust that works into the large pores. So, I tried scraping with very sharp scrapers, which created some nice areas, some nearly bare areas, and some crap areas. Lesson #1: THE GRAIN OF YOUR TEST PIECE, IS NOT THE GRAIN OF YOUR ACTUAL PIECE. Esp, with large grain wood.

OK, don't panic. think think think

First off, let's scrap the dyed rosewood matching idea. I'm going back to my original plan of dye the sides amber like the rest of the guitar. Then. I can use tinted lacquer later if I want to burst or darken the sides more. Course of action, I need to get the black off to bare wood. Again from observing test pieces, this means I'm going to need to take a layer of wood off, not just sand. The binding already thin in places, I'm going to need top remove the binding. Sigh. Good news is they came off really easy. Next course of action, sand the sides to remove the black, which is basically taking off the wood from binding channel to binding channel. The outside of the guitar was easy on a belt sander. The inside horns, since the neck is glued in, was by hand and chisel. Not easy, but sharp chisels and patience worked fine. Scraped clean. 

Next course of action: recut binding channels. Hmmm. Back is flat and easy. Top is carved and dyed. Luckily I had an overhead pin router I had previously made and never used, and tests with scrap looked promising. After strapping on my extra cajones, I recut the top binding channel. Good news: it mostly worked. Bad news: The depth varied probably due to combo flex of the router and pin(?), even though it feels rock solid. Also, the neck, at an angle, made contact with my table and slightly pushed the guitar UP, making the channel height around the upper horn much deeper. CRAP. 

OK, don't panic. think think think

The varying depth wasn't that bad and was easily evened with a chisel. Fixing the top horn was an exercise in patience and wood grain matching / patching. What I did was actually carve out the area much larger than the deep channel. The area was carved specifically to match the ash grain line. This was done on the top AND the bottom of the upper horn. This was done after I found a piece of cutoff that came from the same area, and had matching grain. I'm afraid my glue lines aren't perfect, but they are good and on the grain lines. Recutting the back channel was no issue. 

My plan was also to then dye the sides amber, then glue in new binding (rosewood this time!) using wood glue. The Duco left small patches with no dye at all, and I wasn't a fan. Well, then I noticed there were deeper channels in the upper bout as well, not bad but deeper than the .25" of the wood binding. Arg. OK, recut some rosewood binding? Again - think think think. All along, I have had a thought in the back of my head that the tiger eye dye, esp with burst, looks great with cream binding. Even with the black binding, I liked the idea of the cream outline from the front facing guitar. So, another quick order to Stewmac and I have the cream binding in the higher dimensions so it can fill in the extra .5mm of the deeper channel. Also, I have some binding glue made with acetone and binding scraps to make it perfect. Fingers crossed. If something happens to the dye, sand back and re-dye the amber is really not a big deal.

BENEFITS OF THE MESS: I'll have new fresh binding that should be full thickness and no thin areas. Binding should be near gapless with new glue. The color scheme may actually end up nicer with the contrasting cream. Learned a lot.

I'm thinking it may look a little more like this when done.

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If you read that rambling psychosis above, good for you, Just trying to keep up to date, and I'll do more pics and less chatter from now on. Tonight I did final shaping to the top binding channel, and top carve some to even it and prep for binding, Good news is it's better than before. I sanded the top again, did the amber /black for figure and will do final amber after binding. Because one wood patch breached the edge of the top horn, I will edge bind the horn points too. A little fussy work, but should look good. 

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Here are my two patches, top and underside of top horn. Easily my least favorite part of the whole build. You can just see the line at the back of the top patch. Underside has a color difference, but the grain matches. It should hide ok.

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Thought I'd share this. In my reference pics, these are examples of edge bursts vs larger bursts or sunbursts. Of note is the difference between the Dean tinted spray vs the Icemans sand back dye burst. The Iceman may also have an edge tint sprayed, but clearly the burst goes into the figure.

 

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You just blew my mind there. Can you clarify that? You spray and sand back your dyes?

Right now, the body is ready for an overall amber (again) just like my earlier video. If I did edge burst, it would be more like the Dean with tinted lacquer. Or, it would stay as-is and be like that no burst LP.

Edited by komodo
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Here is the straight amber and straight faux rosewood dye on ash scrap. My instinct says amber. I can always put more on top of that. There is also a little rosewood over amber but its dark and still wet. That rosewood dye is actually closer in color to the rosewood than it appears - ESP with the black sand back on my particular test piece. But, that's what got me into trouble in the first place! I'm not opposed to it by itself, it's very similar to the sides of that LP I posted up above. 

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Edited by komodo
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22 hours ago, komodo said:

You just blew my mind there. Can you clarify that? You spray and sand back your dyes?

Right now, the body is ready for an overall amber (again) just like my earlier video. If I did edge burst, it would be more like the Dean with tinted lacquer. Or, it would stay as-is and be like that no burst LP.

When I'm doing a burst yes. Rather than using black as my sandback color, I prefer to use a darker version of the intended base color. It does not muddy the color as much. so if I were doing a standard 3 color burst of say black/dark brown to reddish brown to an amber center, I 'd airbrush the edges with a brown shade black, and fade that to a dark reddish brown that was darkened with black to a medium dark brown in the center. Then I sand that back which leaves me with a subtle burst in the deep parts of the figure. Then I airbrush the dark brown to reddish brown to amber center. Finally during the clear coat I'll edge burst with a black tint in the lacquer after a layer of amber or red tint if I think it needs it.

I end up with a smoothly transitioned burst. There's a pic of that exact burst in the first post of my current build and a link to that guitar's build as well.

Now, that's not saying I'd change your sandback on this build at all, it's perfect for the effect you are going after. I was just offering options for bursting.

SR

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Aha. I hadn't considered spraying dye. Yours is an incredibly smooth transition.  I've seen some rubbed dye bursts that look good but spraying seems the best route.

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Big weekend. Got everything bound, scraped, sanded. Front and back sanded back (again), new layer of the rosewood dye front and back, sanded back, then amber overall including the sides. Then my final wipe of magic yellow/amber. The new batch of that was even better than the first!  Since I was bored, I also started building some DIY effects boxes. Skreddy P19 and Catalinbread Galileo clones.

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It hasn't missed my attention just how cool that rosewood dye looks, and how close it is to my original black semi opaque plan. Better than that really. But the real coup here is the magic yellow and what that does to the amber base to push it into hypersonic tiger eye overdrive. Those last two pics are dryed dye. It's very very flat. When it's wet, it makes you cry.  B-)

Edited by komodo
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