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8 hours ago, curtisa said:

That's so shiny even the light doesn't stick to it.

For the longest time it seemed to love the light, it even glowed in its presence. Now it wants to reject the light and send it back where it came from.

Good to here from you again Andrew. You been out traveling?

SR

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11 hours ago, ScottR said:

Good to here from you again Andrew. You been out traveling?

Nothing quite so exciting, unfortunately. Several members of the family are downsizing and/or moving house. I've been roped in to helping with various odd jobs and preparation work leading up to it.

I still try to pop in around here at least once a day to see how things are going. Sadly, my time for working on my own projects is seriously diminished at the moment.

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Scott - you have outdone yourself! Your work absolutely paid off and the finish is second to none. I'm not sure if I want to pick it up and eat it like a sucker or grab a towel and dive into it.

 

How do you use your pumice and rottenstone? I've not used either and am curious as to your process.

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Cheers Jeff!

1 hour ago, komodo said:

How do you use your pumice and rottenstone? I've not used either and am curious as to your process.

When I first bought that stuff to use on the previous build, I got a felt sanding block and some paraffin oil (which turns out to be kerosene sold under a more expensive name) for a lubricant. I just sprinkled some pumice on the work and pored the paraffin oil on the block and sanded after sanding with very fine sand paper. And did the same with the rotten stone after that. I don't think that doing this got any finer than the finest micromesh grits.

For this build I went through the micromesh grits ... and I do that dry so I can see exactly what is going on. I now have a collection of old white shorty socks that have been used to buff with Maguiars compound, so they are pretty loaded with dried buffing compound. I stick a micromesh foam sanding block in one of those and polish literally anything around the house that needs it. Anyway I normally use one of those to wipe off sanding dust while going though the micro mesh grits. This time I sprinkled some pumice on my buffing sock and wiped off the sanding dust (nitro) and gave the whole thing a quick rub down each time as well. That really helped in knocking back sanding scratches and showing where more work was needed. Once I got to 3200 grit I added a rotten stone step. This I sprinkled on a piece of soft leather (cut from an inner liner of a very old well worn cowboy boot) and wrapped that around a foam sanding pad and followed the pumice wipe down with a rotten stone rub down. I did this all the way through the 12000 grit micromesh. That took care of the sanding scratches. Maguiars heavy cutting buffing compound took care of the swirl marks and really adding the high gloss shine.

SR

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I’ve got a couple squirt bottles of liquid polishing coumpound that I have no idea where they came from. Maybe LMII. The one Thing I’m going to do differently next time is to ise power somehow. My right arm became larger than my left after the last build.

Edit: I just looked and sure enough they are the FCP and FFP liquid polish from LMII. They work extremely well, but there is no indication of their spproximate grit. I’m not sure at what point I used them but it was probably around after 1200 or 2000? IDK

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4 hours ago, komodo said:

I’ve got a couple squirt bottles of liquid polishing coumpound that I have no idea where they came from. Maybe LMII. The one Thing I’m going to do differently next time is to ise power somehow. My right arm became larger than my left after the last build.

Edit: I just looked and sure enough they are the FCP and FFP liquid polish from LMII. They work extremely well, but there is no indication of their spproximate grit. I’m not sure at what point I used them but it was probably around after 1200 or 2000? IDK

I got an auto buffer for about a hundred bucks to apply that compound. It makes short work of the big flat areas. The sock is for edges, cutaways and other tight areas.

SR

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What are your opinions on the uses of pumice, rottenstone and the rest? I think it's quite possible that modern products supplant more or less all of these, however I'm curious as to whether the traditional old-school stuff has advantages (even if it's just the enjoyment of using them for the sake of it) that you've caught onto.

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32 minutes ago, Prostheta said:

What are your opinions on the uses of pumice, rottenstone and the rest? I think it's quite possible that modern products supplant more or less all of these, however I'm curious as to whether the traditional old-school stuff has advantages (even if it's just the enjoyment of using them for the sake of it) that you've caught onto.

Oh, I think micromesh and similar products and buffing compounds make make pumice and rottenstone obsolete. On the other hand I have a good supply of them now, so why not learn about what they are and can do? They are definitely a viable way of getting a quality finish and the pumice actually cuts fairly quickly without leaving much in the way of sanding scratches and there is no clogged sandpaper involved. Going through the grits is a better way of going from leveling to polish though. I do find a nice advantage to a quick rubdown between grits as I did here, because it shows where more work is needed so nicely.

And yes there is a good deal of enjoyment of just using the old school methods for the sake of it. You picked up on that quite accurately.

SR

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Well yes, this was my thinking about your thinking. 😁

The non-clogging aspect is always good, however you can't beat sandpaper for block sanding....can you? Your comment about using leather did get me thinking in this regard. I bet that epoxying rectangles of leather to blocks and charging them with different compounds would be fun to experiment with, especially given that "brown" polishing compounds tend to be Tripoli (rottenstone) and my go-to metal polish for honing chisels, plane irons, etc. is the finer "white" compound (aluminium oxide). Finishing up with rouge compound (iron oxide) takes it to the point where you're pretty much in optical polishing where Meguiars' products (or similar) do their trick. I wonder if doing more or less what you do with Micro Meshes could also be done with these compounds with manual buffing in fewer stages?

All this musing comes apart into irrelevance once one has a buffing wheel.

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22 hours ago, Prostheta said:

I wonder if doing more or less what you do with Micro Meshes could also be done with these compounds with manual buffing in fewer stages?

They could replace the second half of the micromesh grits certainly. I doubt they'd do much good on deeper scratches or leveling.

 

22 hours ago, Prostheta said:

All this musing comes apart into irrelevance once one has a buffing wheel.

Indeed. And the guitar would be finished many hours sooner as well.

SR

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I thought I might finish up this weekend.:)

Silly me.:blink:

I discovered Sperzel tuners do not have near the shaft length of Gotohs. My headstock thinckness was fine for holding the tuners securely but after the washer and nut was in place, damn little shaft remained. And after checking, when I removed the tuner, the barrel hit the ground and ran. I spent a couple of hours yesterday hunting for it and a couple more this morning before I found it.

I did get quite a bit of cleaning done during the search though.:D

So I thinned the headstock and took the Osage orange back to yellow. It is not as obvious ion the pics as it is in person, but you can get an idea of how much it darkened so far,

C01631.jpgC01633.jpgC01634.jpg

I did get all the hardware besides the tuners and nut strapped on and the wiring done, at least to the point of being ready to test.....if it only had strings.C01636.jpgC01637.jpg

SR

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