Doc

[Thanks for the info. I'm going to order a bridge, ferrules and a pair of the "hot bargain" HB's from these folks. This is my first real build and I'm just trying to learn the tricks and tweaks. The Saga kit build forced me to learn how to properly do a setup. Much thanks to the tutorials here. I got a piece of 8/4 kiln dried walnut 10" wide and 96" long from my local wholesaler's. 8% moisture by my meter. Paid about $57.00 with tax. Nice board with one small knot (1/2")and almost no sap. Only sap was on one edge of the bottom two feet. I should be able to get 4 or 5 good bodies out of it. I'm going to do another one, maybe at the same time with a tiger maple face. I've got more of that stuff than I know what to do with as leftovers from other cabinet jobs. Nice to have something to do with shorts. I think it's interesting that there is a perception that glued face blanks are deader sounding than solid blanks. I have never had any trouble with the sound of a Les Paul with a glued on face. Maybe I've just been in the power tools for too long and my hearing is going. I've owned two and loved 'em. I wonder if it's a function of the quality of the glue line or the glue line itself? I also wonder if anyone has played around with different types of glue to see if that has any influence. Sycamore is a really neat wood that doesn't get much use in the US. I've seen a lot of it on UK made furniture. It is tough to carve 'cause its a little stringy, but it finishes nicely.

I've decided that just putting a Saga kit together just doesn't satisfy the bug. I've gotten a mighty mite type neck form e-Bay and glued up a body blank from some 8/4 walnut. I'm gonna make a telecaster type . Natural finish walnut with the edges darkened and tiger maple binding. I want to put 2 humbuckers on it 'cause I already have the Saga tele and a Mosrite Ventures with two pre-humbuckers. I'm going to through string it. I'm looking at GFS pickups because I am trying to do it fairly cheaply. I can always upgrade later. Anyone got any feedback on a good non-integral pickup type bridge for this puppy? Guitar Fetish sells some through body hardtails for a really low price. Anyone ever used one?

I've probably used this trick a hundred times, no exaggeration. Got it from the same place too. Fine Woodworking is a great publication. I use Saran Wrap and don't worry about the wax. As another comment, Klingspore Abrasives (they have a website) makes an adjustable sanding block. Neat gadget.

It depends on what you're shooting. As a general rule things that cure by evaporation, like lacquer, are more influenced by moving air. This doesn't mean that it also shouldn't be at least 70F. A simple fan speeds up the cure. Things that cure by cross-linking, etc., like urethanes and epoxies will benefit most from heat. Water base finish is especially helped by infra-reds. Lacquer is okay to bake as long as you have let it cure for a while. I've had problems with blistering on high build finishes when too much heat gets around it and it's fresh. If there's residual solvent trapped in the wood it will blister like nobody's business. When I had the commercial shop open we had a bank of 12 250 watt I-R bulbs on a hanging frame that we used to cook conversion varnish, contact cement, and urethanes. Cured in no time flat. Sometimes too fast. I would worry about a heat lamp inside of a flammable cardboard box, but I'm just an over-cautious old fogey. I'd think about maybe using 1/4" plywood and duct tape for a low tech cheap and less flammable alternative.

The grain in maple will not be removed by bleaching. The grain in any wood will not be removed by bleaching. I build a lot of furniture with figured maple, and I have one interior designer who likes it all light, figured, with no darkness at all. Now the bad news. The grey brown stain in maple may not be removed by bleaching. Some mineral stains and spalting stains are the devil to get out of maple. You can bleach it dead white and the dark will just get a little lighter. This goes for oxalic acid, hypochlorite, and peroxide bleaches. A lot of times when you do get it out as soon as you add stain it "ghosts" back to life. Best I cn tell you is try it and see what happens. Sometimes when you stain a stain it becomes an interesting detail. You should be able to hide a lot with a brown burst.

You say that you aren't happy with what you're using. What aren't you happy with? What are you trying to achieve and where have the fiinishes that you've used fallen short? Like Devon says, you are gonna need a whole lot of stuff to shoot the polys. They off gas isocyanates which is what they use in gas chambers to kill people. Give the folks here some specifics as to what you've tried and what you've done. It may be that yoou just need to fine tune things.

Don't soak it down just go over it with a damp sponge. This will usually make the sanding lines and other little uglies more visible before staining when they're easier to correct. As long as you don't wet it too much and let it dry all the way it shouldn't interfere with your staining. If you're using a water base product to finish you pretty much have to do this. Nice to see someone has actually read Flexner's book. I agree with about 90% of what he says.

Good to see that you're still at it. Tell yourself " I will not give up to an inanimate object." Anything under 120 grit is really for removing wood. I never go coarser than 80 for this kind of woodworking. Each grit puts it's own scratches in and erases the scratches form the previous, hopefully coarser grit. It sounds like you have 60 grit type scratches and you'll need to gradually work them out. 80, 120, 150. 180, 220 Use each grit until all of the scratches are the same size. The size produced by that particular grit, and all of the scraches from the previous grit are gone. Use a sanding block unless you're really good. I have over twenty five years of doing this stuff for a living and still usually use a backer block. Random orbital sanders are great, but they have to be moved along at the right speed. When you're using them right they self erase most of the little corkscrew swirls. Too slow and they eat your wood up. Too fast and little swirls that don't show until you're staining. Never sand cross grain until you're using really fine grit. Like 180. Then wet your wood, let it dry so the little nibs pop up. Then sand first at a 45 degree angle to cut off the nibs. After that sand with the grain to get out any cross grain scratches.

If you didn't grain fill it the reason the ash is more difficult to get a harder finish with may have to do with the nature of oil finishes. They only cure where they are exposed to air. Maple is as pourous as glass, pretty much. Ash has gigantic crater like pores. It just takes a lot longer in between coats for an open grained wood to dry all the way. Use thinner coats and wait.

To answer one of your questions, rebates or rabbits were made with rebate or rabbiting planes. I've got a couple that I use when I just don't feel like putting up with a little screaming electric monster. They also take no time to set up and tend to not do catastrophic tearout damage on figured wood. I also use a router plane for some inlay work. Purfling cutters are modified mortice markers, with a blade instead of a pin. Go to ebay and look at Stanley planes and mortice guages. On something as small as a guitar sometimes it's relaxing to do this stuff by hand without power. I know that this is heresy but the world needs a few more good heretics.

If you have even a half decent gun the Behlen will give you a great result. I'd use their sanding sealer too. Make sure to build a really good smooth base with the sealer 'cause the lacquer is a lot harder to rub out than the sealer or Deft.

Just a safety tip: Naptha is really really flammable. Be careful with your rags or brushes. Make sure there are no pilot lights or open flames. Don't smoke while you're working. No oil finish is going to harden as much as a film finish. This is just the nature of the beast.So what? If you like the look go for it. It's really easy to repair by wiping another quick coat on.

Hey guys, Virtually everyting that is discussed in this forum in the way of nitrocellulose lacquer is modified nitrocellulose. You don't need to know what this means. It's all nitro for our purposes. Deft, and I've sprayed literally hundreds of gallons, doesn't dry quite as hard as some brands, like Behlen or M. L. Campbell or McFadden. The difference is inconsequential. The rattlecan variety is the best to use for guitar finishing purposes. The gallon can stuff has retarders in it so tht it can be brushed and A) dries too slowly for you impatient types and sometimes will act funny over some sanding sealers and stains. If you really need a harder than Deft finish the Behlen stuff comes in rattlecans. You can get sanding sealer and lacquer in all degrees of gloss. It is as good as it gets for lacquer. They also sell cans tinted to various wood tones. It's call "Jet-Spray". You can do a tobacco burst with them and nothing else. Just a comment. I have a '64 Epiphone FT-79 Texan just like John and Paul's. You know "Yesterday"? It got refinished by me with Deft in 1976 and I defy you to tell that it's not a factory finish. As a matter of fact it has held up better than the original Gibson finish did!! A little wax and it's good as new. Stick with Deft.

To glue teak you scrub the bejezeeus out of the glue line area with acetone. This gets the oil out for a short while. Use Borden's plastic resin glue. This is a nasty mix with water powder that will glue anything. Teak is heavy as lead, but it does oil finish nicely. When you cut or rout it the mineral inclusions make it shoot really neat sparks, so clean you work area of sawdust first.

Whitesides are good quality industrail bits. You need to use the 1/2" shank bits for this stuff. I use 2 flute bits. The helical bits are primarily designed for trimming laminate. They "push down as they cut and have less tendency to chip the plastic. If you're routing a body with a "cap" of another wood you may want to use a spiral bit. Again, I get good results with a 2 flute. I rout everything from walnut to Corion with only an occasional tearout. Once you get the hang of back routing you'll be okay. It does take a little while to figure out how big a bite to take each time. And, unfortunately, figured maple is about the worst wood to try to do pattern routing on. Wacko grain, hard, brittle, nothing worse.

If you're in the Us go to a Home Depot or Lowe's and look for Kleen Strip semi paste stripper. They even make one in a rattle can. Let it sit until it cuts through the stuff. It may take a while. Let the stripper do the work.

Make sure everything is really secured. The blank needs to be tight as a tick to your work surface. The bit needs to be tightly seated. Those long cutting edge bits tend to vibrate a lot. Use the shortest bit that will do the job!! If you're down to 1/16 or less back routing is the way to go. slowly cut from right to left. The router will have a tendency to run away and to dig in and bite. What I do is cut a starter slot about two inches from the start with the router. Then I reverse cut to it. Then another slot the rout to that, etc. There are quite a bunch of good books on router tips and techniques, Check Taunton Press. They also publish Fine Woodworking, which has a lot of how to do it tips in their archives. Patience, hand strength, and a sharp router bit, grasshopper.

The proportions are going to vary according to what kind of gun you're using, what kind of lacquer you're using, What is the temp and what is the humididty. I use a Sicmo type HVLP gun and usually have to thin almost 50/50 to get a good result. Make a test board and fiddle with it.

You can buy insulin syringes OTC in most states. They only become illegal if they have say heroin residue in them.

One of the reaons may be that untill recently sherry was really expensive compared to other domestic hardwoods. It isn't anymore if you compare it to say, maple When maple was $1.90 bft I was paying $4.20 for cherry. The other day 8/4 maple was 30% more than cherry and walnut was a bargain. I don't know how it sounds from personal experience, but it is very hard and pretty darn dense. It fabricates and finishes really nicely. It has a tendency to get splotchy with some stains, but that can be delt with. It does tend to have resin patches in it sometimes. These are stable but they do really show up becouse the stuff is dark purple. They look like someone dug out a pocket and packed it with purple wood filler.

I wouldn't use super glue. If it actually is a split: 1) you need something with a thin flat blade. I use a painter's spatula froma n artist's supply store. 2) work the crack open gently. 3) Blow out any dust and junk in ithe crack 4) Work some hide or PVA glue in with the spatula 5) Take an old bicycle inner tube. Cut it so it's one long piece. Wrap the whole neck where you put the glue. You can get more than enough force to hold it together. I use this on furniture repairs all the time. Works like a charm. The rubber doesn't stick to the glue.

That's really digusting. I can barely get walnut or cherry for that kind of money, and I have to buy $500.00 worth at a time to get that kind of pricing. Wonder what shipping on say four blanks would run to Virginia? Just wondering.

Sorry I missed your last post. I make my bags out of 20 or 30 mil pvc sheeting. I glue two opposite sied and leave the ends open. This way I can adjust the size. I make two end clamps out of 1' pvc water pipe. Cut about a 1/4' slot down the length of one. Fold the bag into it and squeeze another one into the crease.

I wouldn't even consider that particular planer if you're going to build solid body guitars. The small portables don't do a bad job with some figured wood, because of their speed, but some stuff they just can't handle. And they only do 12" wide. We've got a 18" Delta in the shop equipped with carbide blades and it's really dialed in nicely, but I use a Performax single drum sander for a large percent of the weird grained woods. The big beast will sometimes just tear stuff to shreds. If I could only have one machine and I had less than $1000.00 US to spend I'd get a single sided drum sander. Mine will do 32" wide in two passes and I paid about $750.00 for it two years ago. If you have access to Fine Woodworking magazine check out the articles they have run in the past on building one from scratch. There are also a couple of kits available.

A friend of mine uses "Armor-all" on pupleheart. It does cause some finishing problems, but it has a UV blocker that keeps the color good. He makes jewelry boxes and hand mirrors and such, and I've seen some that are a couple of years old and still look good. Just wipe it on and let it dry real well, then seal it.