Jackson Kelly

[avengers63]

How many can I have going on at once! I have the High End, Kit Bash, Aelita, StraTeleCaster, Church guitar, and now this thing. I have to fight myself to not start the Rickenbacker 4000G I've been planning for months.

So I bought these bad boys at Christmas when Wylde was having a good sale. The pair were around $120 shipped.

 

As they are traditionally used as metal pickups, they needed a proper home. Not just any shape would do. As I've wanted a Kelly for years, here we go!

 

2-piece poplar body. I've also been jonesing to use some of the veneer I picked up a few months ago. Of the three I bought, it's the one I only picked up because it was really cheap that is wide enough to cover the body. I was really wanting to use the quilted maple and do a dye/sandback to make it look like lava, but that wasn't to be. Life goes on.

 

My high-tech jig to joint the edge of the veneer. Don't laugh - it works perfectly. Run that through the jointer and the veneer doesn't chip out.

 

And, of course, I was in the middle of the glue-up when I remembered about the contact cement. 

 

I'm going to experiment with some cutoff burl and some red dye. I haven't decided on the neck yet, but it'll prolly be African mahogany. For the bridge, I've been holding on to a gold Kahler-esque trem made by Schaller. You can see it in the bottom right of the last pic. This seems like the right home for it.

[avengers63]

I completely forgot that I had made a 2-piece Spanish cedar blank a few weeks ago. I've been wanting a SC neck for some time now. A bloodwood fretboard is appropriate as I'm hoping to make the body a woody red. Even if the dye doesn't work out, the burl has red undertones.

[avengers63]

Out of the clamping cauls. Even if the red dye doesn't work out, this burl is gonna be amazing under some lacquer.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it's my understanding that "march of the hammers" is a customary, if not mandatory, progress pic, even though nobody really cares about it.

[henrim]

15 hours ago, avengers63 said:

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it's my understanding that "march of the hammers" is a customary, if not mandatory, progress pic, even though nobody really cares about it.

May be so, but I for one like to see what kind of clamps people have  

[avengers63]

Burl is weird.

You see, it absorbs a crap-ton of both dye and finish.  It also reflects light in odd ways. This makes getting good photos of test pieces difficult. These pics look a TON better as a small pic rather than a large one. Hopefully, you'll be seeing these on a phone instead of a monitor. Maybe you can just look at the monitor from the other side of the room.

I did three test pieces, then hit them with some rattle can poly I had lying around. In order below are the plain burl, brown dye, heritage cherry dye, then a brown sanded back with the cherry over it. Once you view the last pic at the proper size, well.... there won't be any question what I'm going to do to this thing.

 

 

 

 

 

The uncolored burl is a little bland. The brown is pretty good. The red is total garbage. But the sandback.... dude!

[Professor Woozle]

The last one has an almost fractal look to it - it'll make for a fine top!

[avengers63]

 

[ADFinlayson]

oooh that veneer looks amazing, never see anything that nice around these parts

[avengers63]

57 minutes ago, ADFinlayson said:

oooh that veneer looks amazing, never see anything that nice around these parts

https://www.veneersupplies.com/

I can't imagine why they wouldn't ship to the UK.

[avengers63]

After the catastrophe of making the neck templates wrong, the new one is nearly ready to shape. It's 1-piece spanish cedar with a cherry fretboard. No pics.

I had forgotten just how easy it is to work with poplar. It cuts, drills, shapes, routes, and sands like butter. It's not terribly heavy, and it takes stain & dye as evenly as ash.. Today, I got the controls laid out.

 

It's really convenient that my wife runs a business out of the house making high-chairs for kids in immobilizer casts. This always gives me plenty of scrap MDF to make small templates from.

 

Just like the back of the high end build, I'll have to seal the top before gluing the binding. The C/A squeezes out onto the top, needing to be sanded off. I would definitely sand through the burl veneer, so it has to be dyed and have a few coats of finish applied before binding it. Say goodbye to the original burl!

 

Say hello to the first color - a deep chocolate brown. I'm seriously considering dyeing the rest of the body this color.

 

This is just sick as-is. It's going to get a significant sandback, then a red due applied. I MIGHT do another lighter sandback and put on yellow. We'll see.

[Bizman62]

The last pic looks like top class leather!

[avengers63]

sandback.....

 

red dye...

 

That's just some weird reflection on the trebel horn. 

I'm fiving VERY serious consideration to another sandback with yellow after.

I'm getting a really classy Gibson vibe from it. I'm starting to wonder what a LP pickguard would look like on it.

[avengers63]

I DID do the sandback to yellow this morning. With the brown & red before it, the yellow bled into amber, which is just perfect. This is the 2ns sealer coat of lacquer.

 

 

And now that I'm seeing the close-up I took, I can see Eddie's face just below where the bridge will be. This is a good omen for a traditionally metal guitar 

[JAK]

That burl got real nice and deep! Did not expect that much dimension

[avengers63]

7 hours ago, JAK said:

That burl got real nice and deep! Did not expect that much dimension

Neither did I. The extreme dark brown to yellow really brought out the depth. Honestly, I was concerned that it might have become muddy considering the original color of the burl.

[avengers63]

Binding day. I'd rather have gone with cream binding, but the rest of the plastic I have is black, so I'm stuck.

[avengers63]

 

The body has a vertical wall of blue tape around the edge as a dam and is getting a LOT of lacquer. Many much coats brushed on. I always sand through on the edge, and i REALLY don't wanna do that again. In the meantime, I got the cheap, plastic, Chinese sharkfins in today. Tomorrow is inlay day. Just under $11 for the set shipped.

[Bizman62]

8 hours ago, avengers63 said:

cheap, plastic, Chinese sharkfins

On the photo they look abaloney (abalone-ish?) enough to fool me. With strings on (the guitar, not you) I guess it's hard to tell the difference to shell material.

[avengers63]

5 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

On the photo they look abaloney (abalone-ish?) enough to fool me. With strings on (the guitar, not you) I guess it's hard to tell the difference to shell material.

Fake MOP. But you hit on the entire point I use in my head. Once they're flush and polished up, it's hard to tell the difference unless you know what to look for. At even 5 feet away, they're indistinguishable. So if it's a choice between a plastic set for $12 or a shell set for $75, it's a pretty easy decision. If I use real shell, it's either a really good deal or something special, like this......

 

 

[Bizman62]

6 hours ago, avengers63 said:

it's hard to tell the difference unless you know

Close enough is most often good enough. If it looks like shell and feels like shell, it is shell until proven otherwise. The vine above is a different thing, all the variations and reflections in colour are impossible in synthetic materials.

When trying to find an inexpensive leather strap from the Chinese web shops they often tell in the bottom line descriptions that it's "PU leather". I wonder what kind of an animal that PU is... 'Rubber-bull' is another name for that type of leather. That's easier to tell from the real thing than Mother of Toilet Seat.

 

 

[avengers63]

I loves me some mother of toilet seat

 

The markers went in easy enough. After doing the stupid-hard grape vine inlay, these fins are a breeze. With the markers being full width and the f/b already radiused, I improvised some runners so that the dremel would have a relatively flat surface with which to make a relatively flat bottomed cavity. Pre-radiusing the f/b before it's glued on is a real labor saver, but it inevitably creates other issues you need to be aware of and potentially compensate for.

As the cherry fretboard darkens over time, these fins will really pop.

[avengers63]

Say hello to my old friend, amber tinted shellac. I just love my bug juice. It's so easy to use. It's a good, durable finish that's almost as hard as lacquer, but without the fumes. The amber is also a near clone of the vintage Fender amber tint. 

 

 

In addition to being a barrier finish that is cheap & easy to repair, it's giving the whole thing a lovely amber glow. This is making the white pearloid inlays turn slightly golden. This will compliment the gold hardware nicely.  I didn't even consider this happening, much less plan on it, but it's a welcome surprise.

[avengers63]

I was gonna buff the neck out today, BUT.... The closed grain cherry fretboard is fine. The open grain spanish cedar needs some more finish. On the good side, there's one big benefit of shellac I had forgotten about. It's almost impossible to get bubbles or brush streaks in it. It's not impossible, but you have to be trying to make it happen. Even then, you really have to work on it.

Amber shellac on both maple and spanish cedar.

[avengers63]

4 bodies that need to be buffed out.

A fresh stack of micromesh sanding disks that go up to 10k grit

A 5" round sanding block

A 5" random orbital sander

5 hours set aside after everyone has gone to bed. (I'm working overnights now)

This will either be insanely satisfying or you will hear me cussing in Texas, Finland, England, and Australia.

 

[avengers63]

Almost immediately, disaster tried to ruin my night.

I put a couple of light coats of amber shellac on the back of the Kelly body. Poplar is plain and kinda weird looking, but it takes color like a champ. The amber evened out the color and looked damn good!. The first swipe with 220 on the ROS immediately sanded through. (My inner thug takes over) Dat's aight. That is ALLLLLLL right. I got sumpem fo you ass. Ima strip it all off, buff that wood up to 10K - you know, when it feels like plastic. Then Ima dye & oil it. Can't sand through it THEN can ya! How ya like me now?

I get like this sometimes. I don't get a lot of human interaction outside of my house. Working overnights is just gonna make it worse.