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3rd?!? Shhhh...


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Shellac is sticky stuff, so it sounds like it might be hanging onto the white coat more than you want it to. It got me to thinking which shellac the guy in that video was using. Most commonly the shellac used between coats is super-blonde dewaxed.

Another video which I was considering posting was this one:

 

It's good information, but a lot of it was outside of the context of what you're trying to achieve. He starts working on the filling technique around 9:00 after he's blackened the wood with ferric acetate. He doesn't use shellac, rather a thin coat of clear ("lacquer"). I figured that the previous video would be more informative.

Have you been using the same kind of products as the guy in the first video?

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i rewatched the first video that you posted and noticed that his actually looks a lot like I got with the milk paint, before he applied the contrast color his black was really black, after applying the white and scraping it off his black ended up very dull like I am getting. 

I will sit down and watch the second video when I get a little free time today. 

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Yeah, well that's why I figured the first would be more useful to you. I reckon shooting a lacquer sealer as opposed to shellac should allow a better differentiation of colours. The plastic-y looking red/black thing is a bit too extreme and artificial for my personal tastes, however it shows that we can add in some high contrast stuff.

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I understand that, I think personally the plasticy look from the mayones just looks more professional to me than the weathered ish look I have been getting. I will play around with it more at a later date. 

I decided to get some actual work done on this thing last night and today. Got the fretboard thicknessed, slotted, tapered and glued on to the neck. Got the neck tapered down, headstock shaped and neck cavity routed. I originally planned on making this a set neck guitar which is why in some of the pics you see a lot of length left on the heel where the fretboard ends. I ended up screwing up on the heels so had to cut it off, so now we are going bolt on again. 

I really need to find a better way to route the corners of my neck cavity, on the last guitar it was covered up by the fretboard overhang which was fine with me but on this one I didn't do the overhang so I could set the neck deeper into the body. I don't think it will be very noticeable after I get the finish and everything on it but I need to figure something else out for later builds. 

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Don't knock how it looks until you get a clearcoat on it....a lot of finishes look "unspectacular" until that stage. This is totally why experimenting with methods at this stage means you know exactly what will happen right through to the finishing post. No pun intended.

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That is very true! I'm trying to actually plan ahead on this one and know exactly what I am wanting before I am even to the place of actually doing it. 

I think that's one reason that having to go bolt on is bothering me so much, I planned and planned on how I was going to execute the set neck and then totally fubared it. 

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As for the clear coat on the finish, that makes a lot of sense. I'm going to Arkansas for the weekend to spend some time in the "mountains" but when I get back I will throw some nitro on my test piece and see how I feel about it at that point. 

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I'm planning on doing a zero fret for this build, can someone clear this up for me? 

So im trying to figure out the math for my zero fret slot, if I was to do a regular nut the distance would be 1.431" from the edge of the nut to the first fret slot. But on a zero fret the break point should be in the middle of the zero fret, right? would I simply add half of the width of my fret wire to that 1.431" measurement?

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Ahh duh! Sorry about that I just had a blonde moment lol.  The middle of the fret slot would still be where the edge of the nut would have been, that makes sense, I don't know why I was thinking it would have been moved over, adding the width of the fret would have put the edge of the fret where the middle of the fret needed to be. 

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Oh yeah I know exactly! As for the finish on the top I messed around with it a few different ways last night and still haven't been able to come up with a decent way to do it. Yesterday I focused on doing the white first, then shellacking, then sand all the shellac/white down on the closed Grain and then dying black which didn't work. I guess I didn't get enough shellac In the open pores and everything turned out black. 

Its starting to get a little frustrating. I did come up with a pretty cool looking finish that I liked a lot with the grey gel stain, it was kind of like a grey wash, I wiped the gel stain on and let it sit for about 20 minutes and then wiped it off. I think that if I could find a way to do that with the open pores black I would be completely satisfied. 

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Neck has been carved, this has been the best carve I've done yet! I'm really happy with it, due to @KnightroExpress showing me to use the router to thickness the neck I was able to get it more flat in the middle than the rounded I have been getting and it worked amazingly. Thank you for that! 

I'm also pretty happy with how the scarf joint came out. 

I still need to run a file down it and finish sand it but here's some pics. 

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Day before yesterday I got the electronics cavities routed out, had a little screw up in the volume tone cavity but at least it'll be covered up with a cover, 

i also got the neck ferrule holes drilled and the neck drilled for the screws.shes all one piece now!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well I think I will be able to fix this, I'm still not happy because if this does end up working I will have to paint the top a solid color instead of doing the finish I was planning on but here's what I decided to do. 

My cavity was .875 deep and the extra ash that I have laying around is .800 thick so I cut a piece to go in the cavity and cut up 4 pieces of walnut veneer, put a bit of glue in and put in a piece of veneer so on and so on, then glued in my piece of ash that I cut up. It's perfectly level with my top but there's a few gaps around the corners so I think I will have to make up a glue/saw dust mix to fill these. 

Fingers crossed!

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10 hours ago, 2.5itim said:

Well I think I will be able to fix this, I'm still not happy because if this does end up working I will have to paint the top a solid color instead of doing the finish I was planning on but here's what I decided to do. 

Make a small scratch plate? Then you'd have a feature rather than a mistake & can still use your intended finish

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Thank you knightro, I searched and searched for hours thru all of my ash for a piece that would follow the grain pattern of the top but couldn't find anything I would be happy enough with. So I think that this will work fine!

@Norris that is a great idea, I will see if I can come up with some designs I think that I could live with!

@Prostheta I routed my bridge humbucker cavity way to close to my neck pickup cavity, I had a complete brain fart and drew a line for the front of my neck pickup location, measured the distance from the back of the neck pickup to where I wanted the front of the bridge pickup and then marked that measurement from my front of the neck pickup mark. Which resulted in my pickup cavities being about an inch apart instead of the 2.5" that I wanted. 

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