Help Needed - Lines On Contours After Sanding?

[unsane]

hey guys. i recently acquired an 80's MIJ neck through yamaha guitar which someone had refinished using spray cans over the original finish.

i've already sanded the body down to the bare wood and its looking much better, there are a couple of problems though.

as you can see from the pic,there are some rather obvious lines where the contours are. although the contours are pretty smooth and rounded, it looks as if the top has been flattened off (i hope you get what im trying to say). the lines aren't raised, they're smooth. i already tried sanding it further but to no avail.

is there anything i can do to get rid of these lines? i'm intending on doing a transparent stain over the body and it probably wont look very good with the lines.

also,the control area on the lower bout appears to be stained in some way,water damage perhaps? is there any way i can get rid of this?

lastly,the L shaped line at the lower bout of the guitar is where a piece of the wood broke off and the previous owner epoxied back on (behind it is the jack area,which is cut out of the body). is there any way i could cover this up?

thanks for any help in advance..this is my first ever refinishing project and i dont really know much yet...always trying to learn though.

[thegarehanman]

That's not stain. You sanded through the veneer on the top of the guitar. You could sand the rest of the veneer off(which you're probably close to doing already), or you could put a new piece of veneer on it. If you remove the current veneer entirely, you'll still have that epoxied area showing. If you put a new veneer on(make sure the top is level before you try anything like that), you could cover up the epoxy line, and have the forearm contour match the top. The inside of your horn and the sides of the body would still look different. Read the forums a bit before asking questions. You'll find there's a wealth of information to be discovered. Also, check out the tutorials on the main site; you'll find them quite helpful.

peace,

russ

[unsane]

That's not stain. You sanded through the veneer on the top of the guitar. You could sand the rest of the veneer off(which you're probably close to doing already), or you could put a new piece of veneer on it. If you remove the current veneer entirely, you'll still have that epoxied area showing. If you put a new veneer on(make sure the top is level before you try anything like that), you could cover up the epoxy line, and have the forearm contour match the top. The inside of your horn and the sides of the body would still look different. Read the forums a bit before asking questions. You'll find there's a wealth of information to be discovered. Also, check out the tutorials on the main site; you'll find them quite helpful.

peace,

russ

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thanks for the quick reply man. you left me pretty confused,i'm absolutely certain that guy doesnt have a veneer top. that doesn't look like a veneer at all (for one its pretty plain) and the original finish was some metallic sparkly opague gold.

i've been reading the forum quite abit as well as the one on reranch.com but i didnt see anything about the problem i have.. only thing i found was the use of oxalic acid crystals to remove water stains,but i'm not sure what i have on the control area is a water stain in the first place

[thegarehanman]

that doesn't look like a veneer at all

You're looking at two totally different grain patterns on those woods. I guarantee with 99% certainty that there is a veneer on that top(which you have now sanded through). I assume the company put the veneer on all of that model, whether it was to be painted or not, for ease of production. Veneer doesn't have to be an exotic, figured wood.

Edited October 19, 2005 by thegarehanman

[Marzocchi705]

+1

I asume your wanting to do a trans or natural colour on it? Its not gona work, well it will itl just look awfull because of the sanded through veneer. Paint it a solid colour, it will look great.

[thegarehanman]

...or(like I said): put a new veneer on it. (although that's be hard to pull of w/o covering up the neck section.

[erikbojerik]

It's veneer. Sand the rest of the veneer off. Some of the glue/epoxy/whatever that was used to attach the veneer will have seeped down into the body wood, but if you sand enough you should be able to get through that.

[unsane]

that doesn't look like a veneer at all

You're looking at two totally different grain patterns on those woods. I guarantee with 99% certainty that there is a veneer on that top(which you have now sanded through). I assume the company put the veneer on all of that model, whether it was to be painted or not, for ease of production. Veneer doesn't have to be an exotic, figured wood.

←

i'm beginning to see what you mean..so the top flat areas of the body are the areas that are veneered,and the contoured areas are the body wood itself, and thats the reason for the weird outline?

if that's the case sanding the rest of the veneer off should get rid of the lines right?

i was actually thinking of putting a new veneer on,but the contours i have on the guitar would make that a rather daunting option and i would rather not go down that road, i'm intending to use this as a backup guitar..after all,the body only cost me the equivalent of US$60 heh.

the idea i have for semi-hiding the epoxy lines would be to scrape out some of the epoxy and fill it with wood filler,it probably wont get rid of the line entirely but it would be less obvious i guess.

[mdw3332]

Yep, it's veneer - been there done that

[javacody]

I wouldn't be so quick to say thats a veneer, look closer, the grain lines match up pretty well. They are fainter, but they match up. I'd reserve absolute judgement until I saw a higher res photo.

If its a veneer, then they did a damn good job of making the whole thing level with the neck through portion and with wing wood that looks that good, why veneer? Also, when that back piece broke off, why didn't the veneer chip away?

I had a piece of poplar that sanded much the same way, it left very distinct lines from the separate layers of wood. It also had mineral staining like that guitar. He wasn't talking about stain as in finishing product.

Man, I hope you guys just didn't give this guy some real bad advice.

It definitely is not real well suited for a clear finish though, perhaps an opaque finish, but maybe not clear.

[RAI6]

They did a damn good job of making the whole thing level with the neck through portion and with wing wood that looks that good, why veneer? Also, when that back piece broke off, why didn't the veneer chip away?

If you put the veneer on the "wing wood" before you saw down the body blank, you don't have to level anything out...

Why veneer the body?

Well, if the body wood is harder to finish than the veneer wood, you just saved yourself alot of hassle. I think it would be very cheap and easy to just slap some veneer on all your body blank material, if this means that the finishing process will be ALOT faster and easier.

If I'm not completely mistaken, the JEM7VWH is done in this fashion. Veneered for finishing reasons, even though it's a solid finsh.

[javacody]

I understand, Fender did the same, veneering the fronts and backs of the American Standards for finishing purposes, and they still do it on their MIM standards. I'm not convinced that is the case here.

Look at the grain patterns, it looks like they match up. It's a little tricky to tell because it looks like the contours are pretty steep, possibly causing an illusion of the grain line not matching up.

Edit: I saved the pic to my desktop and zoomed in a bit, and didn't help much, but it still looked like the grain lines were continous from the contours to the top. I wonder if the top still has some finish soaked in or sanding sealer in it causing the lines?

[Mattia]

I understand, Fender did the same, veneering the fronts and backs of the American Standards for finishing purposes, and they still do it on their MIM standards. I'm not convinced that is the case here.

Look at the grain patterns, it looks like they match up. It's a little tricky to tell because it looks like the contours are pretty steep, possibly causing an illusion of the grain line not matching up.

Edit: I saved the pic to my desktop and zoomed in a bit, and didn't help much, but it still looked like the grain lines were continous from the contours to the top. I wonder if the top still has some finish soaked in or sanding sealer in it causing the lines?

←

Look harder. While some of the grain lines (a scant few) are continous, most are not. It's quite clear around the lower bout, bass side (veneer has far fewer 'grain lines' than the wood beneath it), doubly so on the lower horn, where the veneer has diddly, and the body quite a few.

It's veneer. Definitely.

[balooka]

hmmm

I think Javacody has a point. If you look at the lower horn there actualy is grainpattern that lines up with the darker wood. Could be your monitor not showing it, I'm using a calibrated Barco, and there is grain, very faint. If you open the image in photoshop and measure the colorvalues, you can 'see' the pattern by its corresponding cmyk/rgb numbers.

So for what I see, there is corresponding grainpattern

[javacody]

I could be wrong, I admit, I just want to make sure we don't give someone wrong advice based on a lower res image.

[Southpa]

Looks to me like the total upper half is all one piece wood, I see grain matching up all over that area. The only place where I see some veneer remnants is the yellowish patch covering the vol. and tone knob area.

[Maiden69]

OK, I don't see how some moght have a problem seeing it, but there is a veneer that's almost paperthin now covering the lower half of the body (where the controls are) I had the same thing on my Jackson body! and as mentioned it is for the sole purpose of finishing...

The body wood looks a lot like ash, so this will leave you the staining option out... unless you are very good at it and have a lot of patience. You are better off sanding the venner out, grain filling the ash with black epoxy and then doing a black burst edge with whatever color you want. Also you can seal the neck first with lacquer before filling the grain with epoxy if you want to leave the neck natural color. if not just graing fill the ash, and use a tinted clear (translucent color) to give you the tone you want and then do a black burst and clear over the entire guitar, like Guitarfrenzy did on his Red ash guitar on the inprogress area

[chunkielad]

The veneer on the trebble side at the back end is sanded through to a 'fade' and the rest is a solid line - DEFO a veneer.

Sand the veneer off and take it back to the solid wood underneath. The Epoxy bit would be covered up if you did a burst but otherwise will be visible even if you use a wood filler. They never match up exactly and a glue with sawdust filler won't take stain the same as the rest of the wood. Either way you'll see it if it isn't painted over - a burst would do that and give you a trans or opaque finish centre of the guitar.

[unsane]

whoah...looks like i triggered off a nice little debate here heh..

i got the body back from routing today and started sanding.. *drumroll*

its a veneer. i can see how the pic i originally posted was misleading,some of the grain lines actually did seem to match but once i examined it closely it was pretty obvious..

in any case,a few hours of sanding later...its gone! it looks pretty damn good right now IMHO..here's a pic,sorry about the poor lighting though.

i'm liking the grain on it even though its nothing really special..

does anyone know exactly what wood the wings are made of? i was under the impression it was alder....

thanks for all the help..you guys rock. i love this place.

[Maiden69]

A closer look wil help. On the 1st pics it looked a lot like ash, but on this it looks a bit like alder. The only way is to see the grain in a close up. if it is open big pore graing it is ash, if it is tiny small pores like poplar then it is alder.

[thegarehanman]

...so where's my prize?

[chunkielad]

And mine! He he he!

That's looking REALLY nice now - just a shame about the epoxy repair - any thoughts on what you'll do for that - are you going to cut out and fill or just burst or something else?