Started a T-type

[Bizman62]

8 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

If you've got runs in lacquer, take the top off them with a razor blade and get it as close to the surrounding areas as you can before you do any sanding

That was the plan, already did it with the previous layer. Thanks anyway, someone reading this thread may find the tip useful.

[Charlie H 72]

The color looks great with some clear and the whole thing just pops! On the home stretch now? 

[Bizman62]

12 hours ago, Charlie H 72 said:

On the home stretch now?

Let's see... Yesterday was May 1st so I had other things to do. The workshop is open six days a week but after a day at work I don't feel like being in the right mood.

There's quite some runs to deal with, also I think I'd better check the hardware fitting before applying the final layer. I fear for having to reroute the control cavity a bit!

[Bizman62]

Well, my wife seemed not so happy that the workshop is open until July compared to that the course would already have ended, as she would like me to join her with the gardening. Today I got lucky: It has been raining all day so any outdoor activities would have been out of question anyway

So it was time to do something to the runs which were plenty. A fellow builder had advised to cut them with a blade while the lacquer was still wet but I never had the time to do that. To my surprise the runs were still soft after two weeks in the semi-cold porch. They cut easily with a razor blade and the cuts were still a bit tacky. And of course things happened... On the front one cut was too deep and on the edge I sanded through in a couple of places. I'm hesitant about the front: Should I just fix the cut or sand bare and use some dark filler to enhance the pores?

[Bizman62]

Thanks to @Drak I rethought the top. Although the burst was somewhat of a success it made the subtle natural miscolouring vanish so since I managed to cut through the finish when removing a drop I decided to sand the entire top. Then I mixed some 400 grit brown sawdust with Titebond to a slurry and slabbed it all over the top in order to accent the pores. It didn't work, apparently the pores aren't deep enough to catch such a filler, so I ended up sanding her clean again. And I liked what I saw! The deep Cherry Red base makes the natural top pop. Or what say you?

[ScottR]

7 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

And I liked what I saw! The deep Cherry Red base makes the natural top pop. Or what say you?

 

I agree. That looks nice just the way it is.

SR

[Crusader]

Yeah, a natural choice!

[mistermikev]

nat top looks great. def stay with that.  

[Drak]

I was going to post a reply but the news wasn't very upbeat.

Since we live in this new strange world where everyone gets a new car and deserves a gold star, I just usually don't reply anymore.

What I 'was' going to say, in my experience, is that once a burst is blown, there's very little chance of saving it, usually.

I have had to face my own music many times over that, I'm used to it now, it doesn't phase me anymore.

But some people really get bogged down and stuck over trying to save a shat cake, they just can't let it go and move on forward.

But you found your way forward, and that is what I would have recommended had I posted about it.

Rip it off, learn whatever there was to be learned, ingest the lesson, and start over again, which you did.

Looks better now, a new beginning, a new chance for a different successful outcome.

[Bizman62]

So... The lacquer on the binding had suffered during the sanding process of the top so I tried to scrape it off in order to hide the seam between old and new lacquer at the seam of the binding. That didn't end well, there was a ridge with a garbled edge. Sometimes you just have to make something less pretty to make it prettier than it was at that stage.

 

[mistermikev]

well, take a step back... hold up your thumb... eye it up and dive back in there.  that binding looks real nice against the nat top. 

[Drak]

I think, really, it is only by the sheer accumulation of mistakes over time that brings the true expertise and skill to a thing.

Ask any really good craftsman how many mistakes they've made in the past and they will usually fall down laughing, because the count is so high.

[Bizman62]

@mistermikev although the binding really looks nice against the natural, the sides have to be restained. With the neck glued sanding all the colour off and redoing the binding is no longer an option.

@Drak this project has been a test bench from the very start. Although my previous build was sort of a challenge with the both sides carved hollow top, with this one I've experimented and challenged myself much more. Routing a binding cavity is a no-brainer, routing my first ever binding channels on a radiused top with a handheld router on wood that's so soft that the bearing digs into the sides... Same goes with the staining, I had never used them before and although I did some testing on scrap pieces on offcuts of the very same blank I had actually not visualized what I was after. In hindsight I should have made test pieces including the binding, then again I had to replace the original rosewood so this project has really been brewing all along the process.

What's nice about this - and this is why I have been so careless - is that the body has cost me absolutely nothing. That is, unless you count the hours and gas used for cutting the blanks of the stump! The few drops of dye, a couple of rattle cans of lacquer, 1.80€/hour for the workshop etc. aren't worth counting as every hobby has its price. Knowing that I'm not ruining a 200€ triple A Paulownia one piece super light body is tranquilizing. If I end up ruining this I can simply cut the neck off and remake a body. There's a couple of usable pieces of that very same stump left...

[mistermikev]

8 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

@mistermikev although the binding really looks nice against the natural, the sides have to be restained. With the neck glued sanding all the colour off and redoing the binding is no longer an option.

@Drak this project has been a test bench from the very start. Although my previous build was sort of a challenge with the both sides carved hollow top, with this one I've experimented and challenged myself much more. Routing a binding cavity is a no-brainer, routing my first ever binding channels on a radiused top with a handheld router on wood that's so soft that the bearing digs into the sides... Same goes with the staining, I had never used them before and although I did some testing on scrap pieces on offcuts of the very same blank I had actually not visualized what I was after. In hindsight I should have made test pieces including the binding, then again I had to replace the original rosewood so this project has really been brewing all along the process.

What's nice about this - and this is why I have been so careless - is that the body has cost me absolutely nothing. That is, unless you count the hours and gas used for cutting the blanks of the stump! The few drops of dye, a couple of rattle cans of lacquer, 1.80€/hour for the workshop etc. aren't worth counting as every hobby has its price. Knowing that I'm not ruining a 200€ triple A Paulownia one piece super light body is tranquilizing. If I end up ruining this I can simply cut the neck off and remake a body. There's a couple of usable pieces of that very same stump left...

right on.

[Bizman62]

And the saga continues...

The course started again last Saturday and despite all the social aspects I managed to make some progress. Reshaped the control cavity template and rerouted the cavity accordingly to better fit the tubular jack. Also scraped off the burst on the headstock as best as I could - now I fear I made it too thin!

[Andyjr1515]

Good that things are back on the move.

How thick is the headstock?  Unlikely that you will have sanded it too thin just reducing the burst....

[Bizman62]

1 hour ago, Andyjr1515 said:

How thick is the headstock?

Since you asked I had to bite the bullet and measure it. It's about 13-14 mm at the low E hole. But the radius of the dip (or whatever it's called) is now much tighter than it was as I really had to scrape quite a lot to get the dye off the end grain. 96% alcohol really made the dye penetrate into end grain!

[Andyjr1515]

50 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

Since you asked I had to bite the bullet and measure it. It's about 13-14 mm at the low E hole. But the radius of the dip (or whatever it's called) is now much tighter than it was as I really had to scrape quite a lot to get the dye off the end grain. 96% alcohol really made the dye penetrate into end grain!

With most tuners, anything above 12mm thick is usually OK.

[Bizman62]

A tiny update: Last Saturday I scraped and sanded the sides and redyed them. Despite having wiped with a damp rag the fibres raised a bit so tomorrow I'll have to very lightly sand them down and reapply some dye. As the alcohol dries very fast I believe rattling a rattle can will be within reason as well...

[ScottR]

Good to see you back into the fray.

SR

[Bizman62]

A little update from last Saturday.

Sanded the grain down and restained the sides, also gave a thorough sanding through the grits up to 400 for the top, moistening in between to raise the grain. And as I had hoped, there was enough time to rattle the can. I must say this poplar is a PITA to level! No matter how much I've moistened the wood between very light handed sanding it still raised the grain with the lacquer! Oh well, I'll consider this to be a sanding sealer or primer or whatever it should be called. It's not too bad and the colour won't change.

I also leveled the headstock and reshaped it! Yes, despite I liked the bevels curling around the edge they didn't match with the simplicity of the body. A few minutes at the large belt sander took care of them and also made the guitar a bit lighter... Later that day I also managed to snap the sanding belt, fortunately and also by design the loose ends didn't slap me in the face, instead they fell on the rear side of the sander. - And goddammit those extension pieces of the maple catch my eye every time, the wood just doesn't match with the rest of the neck! Oh well, this is an experimental guitar anyway built of scrap from other projects and other unorthodox woods so I guess I'll just accept the fact.

[Bizman62]

Not much progress, we had the autumn holiday hiatus. Anyhow, the finish was starting to look like it could protect the guitar from laying masking tape on for fitting the bridge so that's what I did. Poor planning was evident again: The bottom of the bridge is flat and the top of the guitar is radiused. Oh well... So I cut the outlines with a utility knife and chiseled and scraped the area flat. I can tell that the inexpensive automotive acryl lacquer is pretty hard! Not bad for the price, some €6 for a rattle can. A third can is required for the final buffable thick coat but €20 total isn't too bad.

And the poplar is a PITA to work, especially with blunt tools. There's all kinds of fibres, flat, round, thin, broad baked into fluff - think about having aligned threads and twines in bread... I tried to sharpen a card scraper best I could which is quite good if I may say so but it just didn't want to make shavings. But finally I got it flat enough to fit the bridge - less than a millimetre at the deepest! The string holes need some love and affection with a small round file before applying more lacquer but that should not take long.

[mistermikev]

22 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

Not much progress, we had the autumn holiday hiatus. Anyhow, the finish was starting to look like it could protect the guitar from laying masking tape on for fitting the bridge so that's what I did. Poor planning was evident again: The bottom of the bridge is flat and the top of the guitar is radiused. Oh well... So I cut the outlines with a utility knife and chiseled and scraped the area flat. I can tell that the inexpensive automotive acryl lacquer is pretty hard! Not bad for the price, some €6 for a rattle can. A third can is required for the final buffable thick coat but €20 total isn't too bad.

And the poplar is a PITA to work, especially with blunt tools. There's all kinds of fibres, flat, round, thin, broad baked into fluff - think about having aligned threads and twines in bread... I tried to sharpen a card scraper best I could which is quite good if I may say so but it just didn't want to make shavings. But finally I got it flat enough to fit the bridge - less than a millimetre at the deepest! The string holes need some love and affection with a small round file before applying more lacquer but that should not take long.

would have been a good use for a router plane jig.  I got an extra one but I'm pretty sure I'd have to mortgage my house to ship it to you!!  at the end of the day... doesn't matter how you get to the church... just that you are there.  I'm sure I'm  repeating myself... by that top is really lovely in natural.

[Bizman62]

A router plane jig was an option but it would have required modifying the router base. For doing that I would have had to wait until the following Monday to be able to buy some plywood and then two weeks until next Saturday which will be the first workshop day after the hiatus. Killing a fly with a cannon, wouldn't you agree... For leveling the entire surface of a guitar with the neck glued on that would have been a real option though.

I agree with the top, the little yellowness enhanced by the clearcoat makes it look even nicer. And the cherry red top looks just like mahogany so it looks like a mahog body with a poplar top!

[mistermikev]

3 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

A router plane jig was an option but it would have required modifying the router base. For doing that I would have had to wait until the following Monday to be able to buy some plywood and then two weeks until next Saturday which will be the first workshop day after the hiatus. Killing a fly with a cannon, wouldn't you agree... For leveling the entire surface of a guitar with the neck glued on that would have been a real option though.

I agree with the top, the little yellowness enhanced by the clearcoat makes it look even nicer. And the cherry red top looks just like mahogany so it looks like a mahog body with a poplar top!

well... my router jig is adjustable in height so... idk if that's what you mean.  also, I find cannons or hammers get the most use in my tool arsenal!  Everything looks like a nail... er, um... cannon fodder.