New build - The Verdict

[henrim]

Getting better black now with the new ebonizer solution.

My previous ebonized swamp ash body was finished with Osmo oils. And while I got the look I wanted it’s not the hardest finish. I’m now going to wipe on matte polyurethane. I’ll first run some tests with colored poly. One mixed with charcoal black and other batch mixed with graphite. That is to even out and deepen the ebonized surface. Test will show how that works out.

Why wipe on poly? While I have the tools, paint booth and skills to spray finish I rather try something new.

[henrim]

Gave it the first coat of “ebonizer”. That looks like a good start.

I made test pieces with wipe on polyurethane. Waterborne and solvent based. I just thinned regular stuff. I don’t know what is in those “wipe-on-poly” cans.

Anyway by mixing the pigments in the previous post I got pretty nice charcoal black tint. Especially “kimrööki” (charcoal black) worked well. For color. The problem is it starts to build up heavily in to the open grain and I loose grain detail quickly. I’ll run some more tests with color on just the first one or two coats and then continue with clear. Maybe spray the stuff after all. Or start with black tinted danish oil.

 

[Bizman62]

10 hours ago, henrim said:

Why wipe on poly? While I have the tools, paint booth and skills to spray finish I rather try something new.

I wonder if you could mix solvent based poly with Osmo and turpentine, similarly to mixing poly with BLO for a home made TruOil.

[henrim]

9 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

I wonder if you could mix solvent based poly with Osmo and turpentine, similarly to mixing poly with BLO for a home made TruOil.

Yeah, well, with “something new” I actually meant something new to me.

I haven’t ever tried wiping polyurethane. Yesterday I tried on test pieces and I wasn’t fully convinced about that method. I guess it works but I think I would rather brush the finish on. And then I think why to brush if I can spray. 

[Prostheta]

@Andyjr1515 is absolutely the man for this sort of approach.

[henrim]

I brushed an other coat of tannin solution on top of the ebonized surfaces this morning and it looks like I have full coverage. Meaning that there is no bare wood showing in the grain. Which may be an issue with swamp ash being so porous. This looked like a better start than ever before. On closer inspection I found a few minor scratches I was about to ignore but then I found a bump I cannot live with. So an other round of sanding is due.

[Stu.]

Great results with the stain! It looks blacker than the void itself.

[henrim]

44 minutes ago, Stu. said:

Great results with the stain! It looks blacker than the void itself.

Cheers!

Here's a picture of my previous ebonized guitar body. A tad warmer color maybe this time, although there is sky reflected on the picture so it looks bluer than it really is. But it is coldish black anyway. The single cut was finished with Osmo oil/wax and this time I'd like to have something harder but not too shiny. Not full matte either.  

[Stu.]

13 minutes ago, henrim said:

Cheers!

Here's a picture of my previous ebonized guitar body. A tad warmer color maybe this time, although there is sky reflected on the picture so it looks bluer than it really is. But it is coldish black anyway. The single cut was finished with Osmo oil/wax and this time I'd like to have something harder but not too shiny. Not full matte either.  

 

It looks like a really cool alternative to paint for preserving the facets of the ash. Have you ever tried a coloured grain fill on top, a la Mayones?

[henrim]

1 minute ago, Stu. said:

Have you ever tried a coloured grain fill on top

Haven’t tried that. I’ll put that to The List. 

I have done ash furniture that I painted black. It worked pretty well for the same effect I’m after here. Thin paint and clear on top. So I’m not out of alternatives but I just have a strange fixation to this coloring process. 

[henrim]

So I figured if you want it to look and feel like oil you better use the real stuff.

I added some carbon and graphite to the mix to get desired color and feel. Obviously it may look different on the full size body than it looked on small test piece. Fingers crossed  

Comapared to the previous build I’m now using danish oil instead of osmo so I have the possibilty to top coat the body after oil.

[Prostheta]

The best property of Osmo oils is their relative colourlessness. Danish oil will yellow the black.

"Golden black, texture like Ash."

I don't know the specific oils Osmo use, however Safflower is the lightest colour drying oil that I am aware of. It may be part of their secret. Whaddayaknow. Thanks Google.

"sunflower, soybean and thistle oil"

[henrim]

11 minutes ago, Prostheta said:

Golden black, texture like Ash.

Love it! I’ll borrow it if I ever need a slogan. For anything!

[Prostheta]

I'm a secret Stranglers fan.

[henrim]

Handcrafted washers from Finland.

This is now how the pots and the switch are going to be mounted. 9mm potentiometers and small 3-position rotary switch.

The switch is suboptimal. I’ll keep searching if I can find one with small footprint that I can trust. I could fit 16mm pots but for now I mount 9mm ones. Signal doesn’t care but small pots don’t have as long lifespan as 24mm ones. I could easily do 24mm if I used those watermelon sized knobs like in my single cut above.

Pots are 1M because those are the ones I had in stock. I’ll likely change them to 500k when I order some other stuff.

This time I even drilled blind holes for the potentiometer tabs that keep them in place. Usually I just grind the tab away. Which is obviously a stupid thing to do. 

[henrim]

@mattharris75 shared his brilliant knob making process so I thought I’d share mine as I do it with different tools.

I have some European ash I reclaimed from furniture I made ages ago. I cut the 20mm thick ash roughly into pieces and glued them together.

 

Then I turned the stock in mini (metal) lathe to chosen diameter and sanded to 240.

 

I cut the bar back to pieces along the glue lines.

 

Then I put the pieces back to lathe and cleaned the faces.

So for now I have dimensioned buttons and I’ll have to figure out what to do with them

 

I know I will make metal (likely aluminum) inserts with a set screws to them. I’ll just have to decide how to shape the knobs. I think I’ll ebonize them like the body is ebonized. But clear coat them gloss instead. Kinda crossover between black hardware and matte(ish) black ash body.
 

If that doesn’t work I guess I make black anodized aluminum knobs.

[Prostheta]

12 hours ago, henrim said:

Then I turned the stock in mini (metal) lathe to chosen diameter and sanded to 240.

 

How metal your lathe is was not lost on me.

[henrim]

7 minutes ago, Prostheta said:

How metal your lathe is was not lost on me.

Ye, you actually want to have more RPM with wood.

[Prostheta]

80085 RPM?

[henrim]

57 minutes ago, Prostheta said:

80085 RPM?

Now I suddenly remember primary school math classes when we got to use calculators for the first time. 

[henrim]

It was fun as long as it lasted. I got a beautiful graffiti black color. But. When I started to apply danish oil I realized there were couple of minor dents and scratches in the wood I hadn’t noticed while sanding. I decided to ignore them.
Then there were some spots where the ebonizer solution had not penetrated good. And they started to show underlying wood. Ebonized surface is tricky to spot repair. But you can sand a larger area and fade the repair in. I managed to fix one spot nicely but an other spot was stubborn. In the process I introduced a few more dents. While minor they added pressure to go back. Which I did today. I’ll wait till tomorrow before I decide whether to start the same process again or go with paint. Likely the latter.

[Bizman62]

Bummer. It looked so nice with the grain showing.

[henrim]

3 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

Bummer. It looked so nice with the grain showing.

Yes, I definitely want to have the grain visible. I have done it with paint on European ash so it should be possible with swamp ash too.

I think I’ll start with ferric acetate though. I’ll do multiple layers sanding back in between. Blow the dust more carefully out of grain after sanding. I make sure I have full penetration before I proceed with top coat. I was hoping I could fill any thin spots with tinted oil, but that didn’t work out. I got a nice overall dark graphite grey color, but it did not cover anything that was not already deep black.

if I can’t get fully evenly black I go on with thin paint layer and then fill the grain with clear coat. It would be different but the grain structure would still be visible under an even clear coat surface.

[Bizman62]

49 minutes ago, henrim said:

the grain structure would still be visible under an even clear coat surface.

Ooh, a glass smooth surface on a 3D surface, that'd be nice!

[Prostheta]

Depending on the end result, I would consider something like a finishing epoxy like the ZAP stuff I used to seal the Sapele on my Mirage bodies. It's very penetrative, and as long as it doesn't remobilise the staining in the wood it should help build a smooth layer. I used rubber squeegees to lay on epoxy and then remove as much as was physically possible. There's a few demonstrations on YouTube, the one that springs to mind is a ukelele, or maybe an acoustic. I put together something like 4g per session, so a super accurate scale is necessary.