Nic's Tele-ish Build

[Bizman62]

39 minutes ago, Nicco said:

Fitting prior to dye makes sense to me, so all the shaping and sanding can be fully fettled, but I'm not sure how to keep the binding clear during dye. I could leave them to glue on after I've dyed, but it just seems like there's plenty of margin for error in that process. What's the normal way of doing this bit? 

There's no "normal" way. Whatever works for you to get a structurally sound end result is right.

• If you dye before fitting the binding filling any gaps with natural or dyed dust and glue can be easier.
• If you fit the binding first and have to fill gaps, they won't take the dye as well as plain wood.
• If you manage to get the binding air tight, either way works equally well.

For masking the natural binding the first option to pop into mind is masking tape but as you know, the dye will creep under the tape no matter what. Covering the binding with lacquer is a much better option. If you don't need it elsewhere, clear nail varnish will do instead of a gallon. You can leave the lacquer on no matter what you use for finishing the rest of the body - even if you use oil.

I guess the rubbery coating they use for masking stone prior to sand blasting might work as well. I've seen that being used for writing names on tombstones, they wipe it on and let dry, then cut and peel the letters open and finally peel the protective shield off. Then again, a gallon v.s. a tiny bottle with a brush...

[Nicco]

Awesome, thanks mate, some great suggestions there. I'll see how it all looks after I've bent them up and done the rough shaping to work out the best plan of attack from there. 

As for getting such a good fit up that I won't need to fill the gaps... ha ha, yeah, nah not likely.

[Bizman62]

4 hours ago, Nicco said:

As for getting such a good fit up that I won't need to fill the gaps... ha ha, yeah, nah not likely.

Ask me why I thought about that...

[Nicco]

Ha ha, oh yeah? Sounds like an interesting story. Why did you think that? 

[Bizman62]

Oh well... I've done binding on one guitar only. Twice. The rosewood wanted to crack rather than bend and the binding channel was slanted. After lots of filling I noticed that the binding was partially razor sharp looking from the top so I made the body a bit smaller and rerouted the channel, this time for fake turtle. A little better success, but there was some splinters missing at the edge of the body so glue and dust to the rescue it was. Next Saturday will show if the top will take dye at the edges...

[Nicco]

Ah yeah right. I did see your post about bringing the shape in by a smidge and redoing the binding channel. Good luck with the dye then, fingers crossed it takes evenly! 

[Nicco]

Got started on bending my binding strips yesterday. Got most the of body done, but couldn't get it to bend with out breaking on the tip of the horn. Had to take a break. 

I've ended up with a bit of charring on the face of the binding where I've done the concave bends. Hoping I'll be able to sand them out fairly easily, but I'm a little worried that they'll be deep and write the binding off. I think a big part of that is using the wrong tools; all I've got to do the heating is a soldering iron, so very concentrated heat. 

I think I'm going to have to buy some plastic binding as back up. 

[Nicco]

Slowly slowly getting more done. I've got my bindings all bent up to suit, including around the horn.  There is still quite a bit of charring as I said before, but in going to soldier on for now. 

 

Started working on the carve of the top. Used an angle grinder with a flap disc to rough it in, then a mix of sanding, files and the plane in a few spota to get it levelled out. I feel like there's better ways to do it, but they're the tools I have at the moment. 

Also had a play around with colour, so I think I know where I'm going with it now. Can't wait to see the colour on the body, but have a lot more sanding and finessing of the carve to do first. 

[Charlie H 72]

Sweet! Carve looks great, and that color is intense. Looking forward to seeing it on the body too. 

[Nicco]

So I'm potentially going to have to change tack on the colour... I was doing more sanding yesterday arvo and hit the top with some turps to clean it up... and it looks really good as just natural timber.

I looked over at the blue test piece (which looks more vivid in the photos than in person) and I can't shake the feeling that it'll be nicer without the dye. 

I've got quite a bit more sanding to do, which gives me time to decide, but yeah, perhaps a change of plan. 

Photos of the top with turps on it attached. Unfortunately, it was hard to really photograph well with a phone camera. 

[Bizman62]

That really is some very pretty wood there! Natural is a valid option, then again some matching coloured stain or filler might bring the grain up even better, and maybe a burst to accentuate the shape? You decide...

[Nicco]

Thanks for the reply, mate. Yeah, I'm not quite sure which way to turn. Completely natural feels a bit dull, but the blue dye didn't quite highlight the timber how I was hoping. 

I'm definitely going to have to do some more test pieces to work out which way to go.

[Bizman62]

If you already haven't, study @Drak's "Beryl" and how she evolved from a bit dull natural beauty to a stylish club rose and further to a mindblowingly vivacious personality. That said, the wood used for "Beryl" was stunning to start with, your's is more down-to-earth. If your build was mine, I might consider something like the "club" looks. I also wonder how it would work with a blue burst but that definitely would require some in-depth testing!

[Drak]

Since I was namedropped ()...

It looks fantastic so far, and Big Hands to you for hesitating when you're not sure and asking yourself 'Is this Really what I want'? I do that all the time.

The flapdisc on the angle grinder is exactly how I do all of my contours, followed by a quick orbital sander then a little hand-sanding. That's it, I think your method is perfect and it only gets faster and easier the more you do it. I can generally whack out a body contour in less than 1/2 hour now, so I think your method is spot-on.

OK, the blue. Just from a personal standpoint, blue on a guitar (usually) gets old quick for me, its not a color I can live with for 20 years, usually, but that's just me. Unless its done really, really tastefully, I have pics of blue-ish guitars that are jaw-dropping gorgeous, but everything has to be 'right'. The wood itself, the figuring, the tasteful use of the blue, its like a dance where the whole troupe has to be in step with each other, its not like a soloist where there's one spotlight on one person and they can hog all the glory while the musicians are unseen in the orchestra pit. For a blue to be OK with me 20 years down the road, there's going to be a lot of finesse surrounding it, it won't be just grab a rag and lay it down and boom its gorgeous forever. And I have experimented with it for years, that's just how I see blue, it doesn't work on all woods.

Your wood looks to me an awful lot like Oak in texture and appearance. So if that were mine I would treat it like an Oak guitar. Usually with Oak type of woods, I don't dye the body directly, usually. Instead, I revert to my alternate finish routine, which is to use a dark pore filler to accent the pores. Then spray clearcoats until its level sanded, then shoot a shader coat over the top, then more clear. Some woods react really well to dye right on the wood, and some don't.

These are all Oak type of guitars, with all kinds of different finish applications. But what they are not is the standard dye-right-on-the-wood.

With these kinds of woods, I enhance the Pores, since there is no 'figure' for the dye to work with.

Pore enhancement vs. figure enhancement, those are my two finishing 'paths', and your wood looks like a pore job, not a figure job.

If I was to do your body in blue, I would do a black pore-fill first, clearcoats to level sand, then shoot a light shader coat of blue over it, then more clearcoats to done.

I would not put blue dye directly on that (Oak) type of body, but that's just me.

 

 

[Nicco]

Hey fellas, just wanted to say thanks for all the info. I'll get a chance to read through and respond properly soon. 

[Nicco]

Bizman, thanks for the link to Drak's Beryl build; very cool. When you say you'd be tempted to go for the "club" look in this case, what exactly do you mean? And also, in your previous post you mentioned possibly going a matching colour grain fill? Did you mean a matching the timber colour, or matching the dye colour? Or something else?

Drak, thanks again for chiming in, I see you popping up in a lot of topics talking about finishing, so really appreciate your input. Yep, you've picked the wood type, it's Tasmanian Oak, which is in no way related to real oak, but looks and acts a lot like it. Ha ha. 

I went and had a look through your table top tele's build thread, so saw the before and after the grain fill on one of them, I actually couldn't believe how much of a difference it made. Looking at the pores on my timber, they look a lot closer to what you've got on the yellow one you've linked here; in terms of it's going to be lots of random little dark pores scattered, more so than the nice, structured grain lines (if that makes sense) like the table top ones, or even the crazy looking middle guitar you posted. 

So when you say you're spraying clear and shader coats, are you using a proper spray gun in your case? And is it a lacquer, or something else you're using? And do you mix up the shader coats yourself with a bit of pigment from somewhere?

I don't have any spray equipment here, and the dye I currently have (I know I can always buy more, but as a starting point) is a water based dye. Could I use a similar approach using a wipe on, water based polyurethane; my thought being I can use my existing dyes to do the colour coat; or am I just way barking up the wrong tree here? I could use a spray on clear which would be easily found in a aerosol can, but not sure where/if you can get colours in that around here other than the basics or solid colours.

I've started a small test piece with the polyurethane and some dark filler, will see how it looks. I'll probably get to chuck some colour on it over the weekend, hopefully. Thanks again for all the ideas though, I'm definitely keen to play around with different options and get something cool - my biggest fear is ending up with a guitar that looks it's best when you see it from behind, ha ha.

Cheers,

Nic.

[Nicco]

[Bizman62]

26 minutes ago, Nicco said:

When you say you'd be tempted to go for the "club" look in this case, what exactly do you mean?

The in-between version of "Beryl" makes me think of an old men's club with dark brown leather and wood furniture and tobacco stained walls. A bit of aristocracy, upper class feeling if you get what I mean. Think about the leisure clothes of the very rich - jeans and checkered flanel shirts - that look similar to the regular ones until you take a close look to the seams and other parts where quality of materials and workmanship show the reason why they cost ten times more than the cheaper alternatives.

35 minutes ago, Nicco said:

you mentioned possibly going a matching colour grain fill? Did you mean a matching the timber colour, or matching the dye colour?

I was thinking about enhancing the grain with a darker shade of the brown that's already there. So matching timber colour was what I meant. Making it more natural, so to say. I'm not too fond of pure black for popping the grain or other pattern strenghteners - even charred wood is very dark brown instead of bluish black.

Then again, I've seen some very nice bursts created with colours you rarely see on wood like turquoise and pink used together on flamed maple for a Caribbean Sea surfing impression!

[Nicco]

Yeah, I get you now on the club look, agreed, I think it looks great too. 

Also hearing you on the grain filler thing. 

I should probably add why I'm aiming for the blue. So most importantly, I was looking at the other guitars hanging on the wall and basically it's a gap in the colours. Ha ha. I've got a cheapie black bass as well as an Ibanez, my first guitar which was a strat knock off is a wicked metallic green, I've got an old cheapie accoustic with it's natural yellowy colour, then my one I made at the course all those years ago which is the pinky/purple explorer. 

So the bluey coloured stone in the fret board was picked to fit that and to hopefully tie it all together. 

Having said all of that, if I can't make it look good then I would still be okay with a more natural finish on the body and just have the blue accent on the fret board.

My test piece is looking okay though. So I started again to sand it closer to a finished point than the image I posted before, the coats of clear, then mixed the finish and dye 1:1 and did a colour coat. It's a little splotchy in places as it was starting to dry while I was applying it; so there's a lesson in that for when I'm trying to do a whole guitar body.

Next step will be a dark burst edging. 

I actually really like the colour, but I'm a bit disappointed at how little the grain of the timber shows through, maybe it's cause I'm doing a wipe on finish, but it seems the grain gets distorted and hard to see after the colour goes on. 

[Bizman62]

Have you thought about a blue burst?

The way the greenish tele upper on this thread was made should work with blue as well, the problem being that it was done by spraying dye on wet lacquer and you're doing a wipe-on finish.

This lead me to think that you should be able to mix some dye into the wipe on as well! The procedure would then be:

1. a layer of properly dried clear wipe-on, or maybe even two for depth
2. sand lightly between every layer
3. a layer of very lightly tinted wipe-on, let dry properly
4. more layers of lightly tinted wipe-on, even over the entire body or just on the edges for a somewhat stepped burst. For a burst I'd start with the outermost ring, increasing the width of the burst with every layer as I imagine that would add depth
5. lastly a couple of coats of clear wipe-on to seal your artwork

Note that when you're applying over a dried layer you can easily wipe any splashes away, or scrape and sand them after they've dried. For a burst you can also try sweeping towards the center to feather the inner edge.

TEST ON SCRAP FIRST!!! I've not tried the above, nor have I seen it done. Logically it should work, though.

[Nicco]

Yeah, definitely aiming to do a burst. Was going to put a dark layer over this, but yes, dark should probably go first in hindsight. 

As for mixing the dye in with the finish, that's exactly what I've done in that test piece above, it worked pretty well actually. 

[Bizman62]

11 minutes ago, Nicco said:

As for mixing the dye in with the finish, that's exactly what I've done in that test piece above, it worked pretty well actually. 

But did you have a clear layer under the dyed version, that's the question! It may make a big difference. Several layers with a low dye content should make the finish look like blue glass instead of clear glass over blue wood, also the dye shouldn't blend with the wood colour that way.

[Nicco]

Yeah, that was grain fill, 3 layers of clear then one with colour mixed in. 

[Bizman62]

In the picture the colour looks pretty solid for one single layer. If you're after something similar to the greenish tele on Drak's post, you'd need much less dye.

[Drak]

So, a few things.

Dye enhances Figure, not Grain (or Pores). You don't have any figure on that wood, so of course the dye isn't going to enhance anything, because there's nothing to enhance. It will, of course, dye the wood, but with very little to no enhancement of anything. So there's that. If you want to enhance the look of your wood, you need to Enhance the Pores with a colored (probably black) Pore Filler (I use Timbermate).

About 'filling the color hole' with blue. I would be very careful about that choice and I will explain why. Just from a personal standpoint, I spend a lot of time in the construction of a guitar. That is Time out of My Life, and My Life has value and is important to me. Time spent on that and not doing some other thing I enjoy instead. So by the time its coming down the line to finishing it, the color scheme I choose Must mean something personal to me. It has to Knock Me On My Ass or I will not finish it and I'll move on to another project.

So, tho I have nothing against blue per se, what I do call issue with is your decision-making process behind that color selection. In other words, you can do better than that, just 'filling in a color hole' in your guitar collection. Because what will happen is if you make the wrong decision, you'll quickly tire of the instrument and rarely use it. All that time it took to build it, wasted. All that thought that went into design decisions, wasted. If that instrument doesn't scream at you to take it off the wall and play it, it was all time wasted. Or, at least there are no returns on your investment of your own time spent on it.

Time is the single commodity you can never regain, the moments of your life tick away, one by one, and you can never get them back, so the decisions you make are actually very important. To You. Good decisions pay off with compound interest that return to you down the line, where the guitar becomes a treasured and valued creation you created and continually use and admire. Poor decisions wind up as either lessons learned (which are good as long as you actually learn the lesson and don't continually repeat it) or valuable time totally wasted and shot right down the drain. Do you really want to look at that guitar as a 'lesson learned'? Or as an investment that keeps returning dividends back to you time and again?

The two parameters I use are: What knocks me on my ass I like it so much, and, what does the Wood Itself want to be? And I am very aware of what colors are in my boathouse. All you have to do is look around you in your home, office, or maybe your car, the colors you naturally gravitate towards will be all around you. For example, my colors are earth tones...yellows, orange, red, brown, into green. Occasionally I dig really stark contrasts (the black/white/blue thing is a high contrast item) There's probably not a single piece of a blue anything in my house that I'm aware of. I've tried to make blue guitars before, it never worked, because blue just isn't in 'my' natural color palette. Nothing against blue at all, I like it in certain situations, the point is I'm Aware of what my personal color palatte is. What is your color palette? If you don't know, you should investigate that for yourself.

Different woods react differently to different colors, and you want to choose something that shows off your wood and makes you very happy.

In my opinion, blue is not the prime choice (1) based on your own comments and (2) based on what wood you're working with. You want to enhance what's already there, not fight it or work against it or try to force the wood be something it can never really be.

 

Maybe @ScottR will chime in and say it a different way than I am, tho I know he knows what I'm trying to say. We both understand what it is to work With the Wood, to allow the wood to be a player in the game of your construction, to have great respect and admiration of this natural resource and not think you can make it be anything you dream up, that is a road to eventual disappointment if you don't allow the wood itself to have a say-so in the decisions.

Because, you can believe this or not, but the wood will fight you, it will fight back and things won't go smoothly. That's a sign to reconsider what's going on and instead look for the harmony in the build, where you find yourself in the 'Zen Zone' instead of the 'Warfare on Wood' zone <I kid a little, of course>. Not that reaching harmony means everything goes like buttah, but there is something to what I'm saying, there is a difference, and when you're tuned in, you can feel it, its a real thing that takes a bit of awareness to understand, and then begin to focus in on and accentuate.