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I think the red is the right colour as it hints at the red from the jap flag. The only thing is that there isn't a transition in the burst. It look too much like red has just been sprayed around the edge. Check out the reraunch tutorial on applying a burst. Re Ranch web site

Yeah the wax is to give it a bit of a shine. On mine I ended up sealing the finish with an oil based sealer and then i have put on some tung oil based burnishing oil. Its got some wax in it. I haven't finished applying it yet but I'll let you know how it goes. as for the spray on lacquer I think that if its done with a thin coat its okay .I think the the companys use that method as its the quickist way to get a deep wet look and it does protect the guitar better from the enviroment and the best thing from the manufacturers point of view is that it dosn't need any upkeep. The problem with it though is that alot of companys have realised that its a great way to cover up poor wood or multi laminates and other mistakes so they smother the guitar in it and destroy any resonant tone. That is scratches and is difficult to touch up is not their worry. But tone wise thin coats are okay on the body. I think Ive said it before, no lacquer on the neck thanks. All my guitars have oiled necks now , when I play a lacquered or worse painted neck I can't beleive the disconnect from the feel of real wood. Oil finish is so easy cheep and mistake friendly that its the best method by far for hobbyist/plonker like myself. I have done nitro and acyrilic finishes but without a spray booth they can quickly become a nightmare with zero room for error. My last nitro job nearly drve me nuts. I think I did it about 4 times.Thats the translucent black guitar in my avitar.

I don't know of one but for what its worth; 1. sand down through the grades to about 320 2.sand with oil ( danish or a tung oil are the most common) with 320 o 380 , a slurry will form and this is real good for filling the grain so when you have finished sanding wipe the slurry across the grain to fill it. 3. leave to dry overnight you could repeat steps 2 and 3 it depends on how well the grain filling went. 4. sand with 400 ( no oil this time)and down to what you want the final finish to be 5. Heat oil to warm in the microwave or in a double boiler. Oil the wood again and let soak in for 10-15 min. If you leave the oil on too long it gets tacky. If this happens just wipe oil on to it and it will clean it up. 6. wipe off the oil so its dry and leave overnight. 7.sand with a dry bit of 1000 wet and dry lightly and apply the oil again. 8. Leave overnight. after a week you can polish. Thats it, works for me. My observations are that its not a great finish for oil stained timbers as i found that the stain does pull out a little bit,be careful and wipe on lightly. A water stain I would emagine would be ok. As far as duribility ,Its not as good as nitro or acrilic lacquer but its very easy to do repairs on. For necks its the only way to go, can't go back to lacquer . Any rag used for the oil must be soaked with water so it don't combust during the night.

Well i am back to where I was after a few days detour.. This with one oil coat. I used my spray gun for the sealing coat which went realy well.I used a feast and watson product called proof seal diluted 50 % with metho.It drys in 10 min so I was able to put on 3 very thin coats and it has done a good job of isolating the stain. Mattia please tell me more about the schellac coat. like how do you apply it and what to do after.Is it normal or white schellac ie clear. .thanks. Kev

For two scratches? Couldn't do it myself...but then, there's nothing I admire more than a well-played, nicely scratched and scuffed guitar... When I was in London a few weeks ago, I went into a store with an amazing collections of vintage guitars --including a 50s era LP Jr, of course. After that, I went into a store with new guitars...all those shiny, flawless guitars...left me cold. Thats the irony isn't it. The guitars I covert the most are well worn vintage guitars and here I am worrying about a couple of scratches I don't get it either but there is something about damage from the heat of battle and scratches from poor workmanship. As much as I like the relic idea,Its a bit false , too much like ovedone brest implants....but I digress..

Intresting discussion, I can't beleive the cross section of the join.Is that a real gibson?? I had a real good look at the finish and noticed two sanding scratches so the problem was that I would have to sand through the finish to gt to them. I could have left tham as I doubt that anyone ould have noticed. I also still had an issue with the burst, I thought that the burst around the rear was too subtle.So I took a big breath and sanded the finish off ( sanded body ) The next set of shots are of the new finish process. yellow stain first burst Second burst , no oil on yet. From my experiance when the oil goes on it will reduce the burst transition contrast and even it up a bit. Tomorrow I will seal the stain in. and hopefully get some oil on.

Very nice Dan I like the understated look. Beautiful wood especially the flame on the maranti. The neck join looks great it kinda makes gibsons neck join look way overcomplicated. What oil did you use for the finish? You have been to my post so you know I am doing an oil finish but lately I have had a change of heart as the danish oil did not provide enough wear protection to the stain I am applying. I have rubbed it all back and will redo the stain then use a tung oil based finish thats designed for floors so it should be tough enough. Any issues with the finish you used?? Another question ; What neck angle did you end up using? Kev

Mickgard for what its worth this is what I think I like the modified tele design although if you make your own neck you could make a dano style 3 a side headstock. I know it doubles the work but if you can , make a neck. Remember this will be a guitar that you will play for years so an extra month building it will soon be forgotten. Once you decide to make the neck then you have so many more options as to the design of the neck to body join. If you decide on a bolt on (which is what i would do ) you could have a heal block large enough to give good support, you could even build in a small rail on the bottom of the neck join area to fit a channel in the heel block for lateral stability. Any of the designs would then be feasible. A set neck is a posibility although youwould have to extend the tenon into the neck pup route if a normal heal is desired. It would be the same join a the Gibson SG. Keep the strat length as the shorter gibson scale would not lok as good IMHO . Longhorns look the best with a long neck and the fender scale will give you an extra 3/4". I would have a solid block under the bridge to reduce the chance of squeeling feedback at high volumes. It would change the tone a bit towards the fuller tone end of things but I guess it depends on what you are aiming for tone wise.As you are fitting humbuckers then I would assume you want a chunky sound .iIf a low fi tone is what you want then stick with your toughts. Looking good Kev

Mickgard 6 screws should be okay for the neck join. The only reason I used that unusual join was so that I could put the neck pup around the second octave point and still have total neck access. If you are only having a bridge pup then you could have had an extended tenon through the body covered by the pickgard. As 6 aside headstocks go the Dolphin style I don't mind. IMHO I would prefer that to the tele.

Hi Jeff it looks great. How did you mask the bullseye so well??...Kev

Ah so COOL . Love the Longhorns, good to see there are other sick puppys like myself. Should have done the dano headstock though. maybe for anothr one. I made one in the 90's with a gold floyd rose and a bling paint job (it was the end of thr hair bands ). LONGHORN rear I took the trem off a couple of years ago and fitted a regular wood bridge. Much better. Anyway I don't want to high jack the post . Keep it going

The drilling for the bridge is no big deal. Its a wrap around style so its onlt two holes. More progress after the second oil coat back of the body showing unusual grain in the mahogany. The side view shows the nice contrast between the two woods. I did contemplate binding earlier but now Iam glad I didn't use it. The waist cut was left out after some serious pondering. Side View The faded style burst has come together after some last minute addition of some more dark stain to the edges and horns. I took the faded burst idea from looking at a book of mine that has lots of detailed photos of 1955-1960 Les Paul sunburst guitars. I somehow wanted to recreate that look. Now to make up some control acvity covers whilst the the finish drys..Cio

Sanding block with 100 grit to start will fix up the body bevels.

Nice neck and I agree oil is the go..!!

The plan is to fit the nut to the neck and do a guide cut then glue the neck on. I'll fit the two e string machine heads and string up the bridge with these two strings. This will allow me to check the bridge position alignment with the neck and pup poles. Any very minor adjustments will still be able to be done. As I have worked off a center line there should'nt be any alignment problems but this gives me an option if there is. Normaly i would have drilled them by now but I wanted to give this a try after my last one was a knats dick out . I have increased the burst border dark tones with a bit of jarrah wich seems to have brought everything back to what I was aiming for. The second coat of Danish oil is drying over night.

Thanks guys for the comments. I had some more time so I dressed the frets. This went well as the frets were very even so not much leveling had to be done. Then polished them with 400 , 600,1000 , 1200 wetand dry and then some chrome polish. Also I filed the ends of the frets so to get rid of any sharp edges. neck frets dressed. After staining the top I let it dry overnight . I oiled the body all over with Danish oil. It went on okay with minimal stain pulling out which I was worried about. The result is that the light tones have popped out more than I imagined they would .This has the affect of reducing the transitions of the burst alot. First I was worried that the transitions were too obvious but now I would have liked them to be more.Cant win!! The burst is more obvious than in the pic, it looks like the light I used blew out any subtulty. The mahogany back and sides have darken to a nice rich natural tone.

Thanks for your replys guys, I went ahead with the oil finnish on my headstock after letting the stain cure overnight. It went on okay but I did notice a fair bit of stain on my oil wiping rag.I wiped on the oil lightly after that. The actual colour stain on the headstock didn't change noticably so it might have been excess stain on the surface. On the second coat of oil the rag was clear of stain. So my next question I have is after doing a wipe on burst (on the body)with the stains I would like to know what would be the best way to seal it noting that the stain is oil based. I thought of shallac as hat would allow me to finnish with nitro. An danish oil finnish is also on the cards. Headstock Thanks

More work done. This is realy getting in the way of guitar playing,looking forward to finnishing it. I got the control cavitys started. It was nice to meet up with the pre routed wiring channels which were done prior to gluing the top on. rear cavitys I am only having one volume and one tone. Even the tone control is an extravigance in my opinion. I have started the staining of the top.This is a first for me as I wanted to do a rub on burst with stains. I couldnt find a good tutorial so after a bit of hesitation I just jumped in. First though I grain filled and put on some sanding sealer. top prestain Then I covered all the top with the first stain, a light Gold teak I don't have a pic of that. Then I added some Cedar to the gold teak,just a bit 3:1 teak to cedar.and ran around the edges. second stain coat Then some more cedar so not its about 2:1 third stain coat And for the forth stain I added more cedar so its about 1:1 The stains I have been using are oil based stains as thats all I can get around here. What I need to know is can I shoot a coat of white shellac over to seal it. If I spray nitro or oil the top as it is I think the stain will bleed out a bit. I'll wait a bit to see if ny more stain is required but a the moment I might leave it at that. Cheers.. I have just seen the photo and the lower transition looks more obvious than it is in real life. That maybe due to the side light from the window doing tricks.

To make a belly / waist cut or not ??? not sure.

Its close , how much is the flamed maple...Cheers ..Kev

This is looking great .I will follow this one keep the posts up. I love LP Jrs You can onle cock it up from here Lets us know all the details , finish hardware ect. Rgs Kev

The single cuts are very good. I don't care for the Yamaha although the finish on that one is good. The SG is a shocker.Sorry SG's should not be pretty, no flame ,no quilt just good mahogany . Red brown or faded and maybe black is ok. The butterfly is sus not to sure on that. The super strat could be quite good. You did ask!! Back to the single cuts - very good .

Thanks Mate. I had a look at your web site, I can beleive the similaritys between our guitar building, same year, same book ,same initial projects. The only differance is that you have gone on to build acoustics and guitars for others. Are there any pics of the work you have done. I have even made a mini guitar LP shape . For the scale length I got my , at the time 8Y/O son to hold a strat and his left hand fell at the 5th fret so that the scale lg I made. Same as your mini. I have also made a guitar out of the left overs of projects. Rgs Kev Ps Good luck in the world cup, I don`t think you will meet up with Australia and Aussi Guus.

Okay so now I have finished the headstock and I have oiled the neck. The headstock has a light oil based stain that is a mix of ceder 1 part,and golden oak 2 parts.i tried the "stain with dark , rub back , stain with light tint method" on a test piece but it didn't bring out the flame in the grain any better that a straight tint. After tinting and waiting for it to dry a day I applied the danish oil to the headplate. It caused a bit of a problem as it pulled out the tint a bit .I could see from the stain on the oiled rag. After a short panic attack I continued to apply the oil being careful not to rub too hard. I think it went ok. After allowing the oil to dry I applied a another light coat , this time no stain on the rag so it must have got locked in under the first coat. No that its dry there are no problems I was toying with the idea of staining the neck but in the end I just applied some danish oil. I am realy glad I held off with the tint as the oiled neck now has a realy nice chocolate look to it.Not a great photo but a bit rushed. neck oiled