Bryan316

Looks horrible. You should just get rid of it and start over. I'll gladly take it off your hands for you, no charge. Okay, now that my sarcastic jealousy is out of the way... DAMN. For that chair photo, did you swipe it with alcohol?

Dude. WOW. I have no idea how you did the binding on the fretboard. I'm probably too afraid to even learn how! But the pickguard swap was ABSOLUTELY PERFECT. Coming from a guy who hates pickguards of any kind, that guitar is a class act now. Matching the pickup rings, even matching the binding... exactly what that guitar needed. Looks totally appropriate in every way. \m/ \m/

I'm loving that pick guard!!!

Like a bottle of Jose Cuervo! I HAD TO!!! LOL

Suggestions - Make clamped-on rails so your router can't go past them. Use some straight scraps of wood or go buy fresh clean straight boards. Build a box around your router's base, to assure that you don't move it further than you want it to go. That will guarantee the right size pickup cavity and straight clean edges. Good work so far. You should look into buying a Microplane to do your neck heel cleanup. They're my favorite new woodworking tool.

If you're gonna go that route (enraging Greenpeace), cover the thing with baby seal pelts, use genuine ivory for the nut & tuner buttons, and mount the wood over a smokestack of a rubber-burning plant and let the heat dry it. Denis Leary would love it... matches his 1970 Cadillac El Dorado Convertible and styrofoam Big Mac containers!

I think I may like this finish... sand it back to flatten it, and see what it looks like. Remember... many of the world's greatest discoveries were accidents!

You never finished this guitar. It's still a chunk of firewood. It never existed. Hah hah. Sucka. No proof that you made it. Hah hah. There! I've properly taunted him! Let's see if he DARES to post pictures now!

Hence, the "almost" portion of your statement. LOL I want a bass made from a coral reef. That should really piss off the Greenpeace guys! Yes, I'm evil.

Well... let's take my current ideas. The quilted top is getting a red and yellow staining scheme, and the rest of the body is getting burned with a propane torch to scorch the surface and blacken it with ash. Then I'll rub away the loose ash, and tung-oil or Tru-Oil the entire body. Two things. First, I've not tested Tru-Oil over my stains. Second, I actually love how I can "feel" the grain after burning wood. It pops physically as well as visually, and once it's jet black, the tung oil over it looks absolutely awesome. Like a centuries-old castle's wooden pillars... aged, ancient, and worn by weather and time. So... if my stained areas can't accept the oil finish without bad discoloration, I need options to keep the stained effect protected. Will sanding sealer affect a stain's penetration and performance? Will a sanding sealer over a stain work? I really need to stain some wood and put the tung oil over it, to see if my ideas are compatible. If anyone's oiled over a stained finish, let me know how it turned out.

Add a very very fine automotive metallic clearcoat over that blue??? Hmm???

CHROME those rings! Gawd, this is a fabulous looking guitar. Absolutely look painstaking to have built it, and can appreciate it. Chrome pickup rings are totally FTW. We definitely need a Youtube video of your test run once you got everything set and the electronics completed. GOTM. I think that's the first time I actually recommended a guitar for GOTM! DOOOO EEEET!!!!

Quite simple. SLOOOOOW. Get your stain, and some alcohol, and a plastic tub. Cool Whip makes awesome mixing tubs. Use the alcohol to thin your stain out a lot. A LOT. Then use an old shirt for your applicator. Soak the whole rag in the stain, BUT ring it back out, so there's not a lot of stain in the shirt. Start rubbing the stain in, which will take a lot of coats to get it dark and solid. This gives you a lot of room to fudge around and make sure it goes in evenly.

The camo Warlock really needs to get on a stage, and get PLAYED TO DEATH! That is such a catchy guitar. The Kelly, I don't like. Cuz you stole my favorite idea for a kelly/Explorer shaped guitar! Big pointy guitars with silverbursts are so awesome, so I can't like it out of sheer jealousy.

Hmm. I say again, HMMMMM. I'm really digging the color scheme of the croc. REALLY works together! Shoulda kept the color scheme going into the headstock, but that's cuz I love matching headstocks. The body does look like you took the whole design, and turned the body crooked to the centerline of the neck. Interesting, and I kinda dig it. I wonder how fun it would be to do a more drastic crooked turn? Make it really look like a crooked guitar? Or does that sound too gimmicky? The tele.... yes, you're just learning. So while the actual fit and functionality is probably quite comfy, that burst finish looks BAD. I say this not to insult you or to rag on your skills, but to tell you with all honesty, this is where you need to practice and improve. I love the very dark nature of the colors you chose, so it's not that it's a bad idea, just bad execution. So... before your next attempt, build some crap mockups from some pine 2x8's from Home Depot, and practice that burst effect. There's lots of info here on the actual technique, so do your homework and learn everything you can. Please don't hate me, I wanna be honest-to-a-fault because I want you to improve. Your ideas are quite solid and your build skills are adequate. To improve, you must make mistakes to learn from, right? Now do that Croc with an archtop body!!! OH YEAAAAH!!!! \m/ \m/

Just got done searching, can't really find explanations as to WHY you would use these phases of finishing. I want to learn perhaps by comparison, why you would use sanding sealer, as opposed to just priming and painting? Or why you'd use grain filler instead of sanding sealer? Or what you really should or shouldn't use when doing a clear or stained finish? It's just one of those choices, that never really seems to get a thorough explanation from the ground up. More like, "I had X wood, so I used grain filler first..." Bring forth your n00bian insults and belittle me with belittlement!

For temp repairs, I'd suggest sanding down the chipped edges of the finish so they don't have sharp edges. Some time spent with 220-grit paper and a beer or two, you'll be done in a short evening. Then, simply mask the area off and spraypaint it black. When it's time to refinish, the spraypaint will just sand right off. But until then, it'll repel moisture and keep the damage slightly camoflaged. This is the dead-simplest thing you could do for an actual repair. Aside from that, get some black duct tape and fergeddaboudit!

Give it a golden oak stain, then clear coat it. Give it a rich deep color, and that grain will stand out like safety flares!

That's it. I'm making a pine bass. Carbon fiber reinforcement bars and truss rod SHOULD keep the neck strong. I'll get some of that Select Pine from the HD, and laminate them together for the thru-neck. Then, some 1x8 boards stacked should be good for body wings. I'ma make a 2 pound bass!!! LOL

Exactly what I'm doing. And I'm ready to do another, to change the idea for my curved hooks in the body, to sculpt them deep into the body. More wood, Gaston!

My only concern with using plywood, is sustain. Will plywood allow the vibrations to bounce back and forth, up and down the neck and body, to let a note ring out and sustain long enough to be, and here's the key word... MUSICAL? We all know, wood vibrates. Whether plywood, with all that extra glue embedded in there, can let a musical note sustain desirably, is my only fear.

I'm not necessarily saying these as bad criticism, just honest criticism. It's just an Ibanez RG. Nothing fancy or groundbreaking, here. Having said that... if it's got even two of the typical, usual flaws an RG can come with, it's a far superior guitar already! I know, I know... I'm biased and like seeing original, borderline radical, designs. But if you can take a good design, and build it GREAT, then that's worth mention and praise. Now then... ARE there any flaws or ideas to improve? Are you satisfied with all your joints, fit and finish, tightness in the neck pocket, cleanliness of soldering in the cavity, accuracy with intonation and holding its tuning? If so... mission accomplished!

I built a prototype body, with an Ibanez EX series neck and hardware. The body wood was a maple butcher's chopping block table. It's heavy as hell, looks brutish, but it just growls. Loud, obnoxious, and arrogant. Just the way I like it! As I was cutting it, I discovered that the router bit burned it nicely. So... torched it! Got the propane torch, and started scorching the whole body black. Wiped off the loose ash with a rag, and started layering on polyurethane. Turned out well enough, is comfy and playable. And the EMG's make it snarl and growl like a wolf. But... it's still crap wood! My third and final invocation of this design will have a longer top horn, white ash body, quilted maple top, carved, and fireburst top. THEN burnt soot black! My current test body, which is letting me figure out all my carving ideas, is nothing more than a 2x8" of pine, glued up. It does the job for test-shaping! So your idea is quite valid to do your PRS sculpting, just as I am. Where's those pics...

The matching truss rod cover gets me. Nice dark headstock, then that cover just pops with the same scheme as the body. Brilliant!!! It's little details like that, which squeezes the whole theme of a guitar together and unifies all the design aspects. Now then.... YOUTUBE that sucka! We need to hear it!

A flying V cello. You know you want to.