Doc

That's probably the best thing that is readily available for this application. It does take about thirty days to harden all the way, but then it's about as hard as a bowling ball. Minwax is a good brand of acrylic polyurethane.

I use lacquer over tung oil on a regular basis on the furniture that I build. As long as it's reltively dry I've had gew problems. If you're new to this stuff I'd suggest using the reattlecans of Deft. Does a good job, is simple, looks great.

Check the search for this topic. Do your reading and come back with questions that aren't answered there already. Mention what you're palnning on using, brand names and such.

I'm one of the guys who come from the furniture side. I've used HVLP's for years and hardly ever use my old Bink's No7 or No69 anymore. I mostly shoot nitrocellulose and don't ever shoot urethane because of toxixcity issues. I disagree that the purpose of HVLP is simply to put out more finish faster. It can but that's not the whole deal. !) You get lots less overspray with HVLP. This means less on small areas like guitars but it still does help. 2) You put more of the finish on the wood and less in the air and on the floor so you do spend less over the long haul on finish. When I switched over I was shooting about 25 gallons of lacquer on a light week. We figured at the end of a year we saved about 15% on finish even figuring in the extra thinner and retarder that you wind up using toget it to lay out. In aprodiuction setting thats real money. 3) You don't have condensation problems if you use a turbine setup. I'm not sure that $500 buys you everything. I think that you need a fairly big tank (10 gal min) and at least a 1.5 hp compressor or you work it to death. You also need a moisture trap. No way to avoid it. I'm not sure why no one else seems to mention these. I'm in Richmond, Va where the humidity is so high all year that an untrapped gun starts spitting water after a half a day of shooting. Once you get water in the lines it's the devil to get out all the way. Nothing messes your day up worse than little water filled blisters in the last coat of finish. Stay away from Wagner. Not a terrible gun but not the best for the buck. Check out Fine Woodworking magazine. They had a really good review of turbine Hvlp guns a couple months back. If I had to buy one today I'd check out American Turbine. They use a simple basic Sicmo type gun. Which took me no time to get used to and I've had that typt of gun for almost twenty years.. Has all the adjustments that anyone needs and is durable as a tank. They sell 'em occasionally on ebay as a promo. Graco also makes really nice setups for a little more. They come with a variety of setups and will shoot pretty much anything. If your gonna shoot the real exotic finishes a lot you probably need to go conventional, but a small production shop can do very high quality work with a turbine HVLP setup. I used to keep two men busy all day every day shooting furniture and we used both types. When I went back to working mostly by myself I almost exclusively use HVLP turbine for evrything from epoxy to nitro. Hope this helps and doesn't confuse.

I'm not goning to pretend that I have a whole lot of screw on neck experience but I do have a lot of woodworking experience. Like SirKent said You want the hole in the body to be large enough so that the threads don't grab the body. You want the screw to suck the two pieces together. I assume this is true for both furniture and guitars. Something that you should always do is lube your screws. Use candle wax. Keep an old nub handy and just drag the threads through it. Makes 'em go in ten times easier. Don't use soap. It's hygroscopic and makes the screws rust in time. A fairly short time. I'm considering using only threaded inserts and bolts. Has anyone got anything that I need to know about this system? Any problems or tips? It just seems to make more sense to me. Bolts tend to be less snap prone than screws and I can get them with allen heads or square heads which are light years better than Phillips.

I'm with Devon here. You need to have your dry glue joint as close to perfect as you can. If you have to clamp the bejeezus out of it to bring the pieces together no glue will hold long term. Ten pounds of pressure is all you should be putting on a structural joint to clamp it up. Any of the Titebonds are good, any Borden's wood glue is good. Hide glue is okay but I think you have to be British for it to work easily. Polyurethane glue (gorilla brand) is unnecessary. It's best for wierd materials or high moisture environments. It'll work for a body but it's messy and takes longer to set up.

I do a lot of turning for funiture parts and architectural details. I have a big cast iron W&H but I use a small Jet for small stuff. Nice little beast. $75 at a yard sale. All of the small lathes under $300 are great for small turnings. Chair legs, finials, rosettes, etc. You'll get an occasional lemon, more in the cheaper lathes, but you'll also get the occasional diamond. It's a crap shoot with anything made in China. Do yourself a favor and give the tools to someone you don't like. They don't hold an edge worth anything. Get a set of Robert Larsens or Sorby's.

Today's your lucky day. I've been around long enough tht I remeber when HS steel was the good stuf and carbide was industrail black magic. HS steel ends mills will do a very good job in a 1/2" chuck router. Welcome to the deep end of the pool. Be aware that they are just not going to hold up anywhere near as long as a carbide. I've got an old apprentice who builds really high end furniture. He uses an acurouter 3 axis shaper and does most of his mortice and tenon work with an end mill. He works with some really difficult wood and swears by the steel over carbide because it doesn't chip as easily in really hard, squiggly wood with knots, like Carpathian elm burl. Remember that it is easier to heat it up and burn thatn carbide and you should probably use a woodworking spray lube on it. Grab on tight and enjoy the ride. You might also check out Ridge carbide. An old small user friendly company that makes really top drwer bits and sawblades for woodworking. I'm pretty sure that they have a web site.

What blush eraser is is retarder in a can. Behlen blush eraser is a necessity if you live in an area like the mid-atlantic where the humidity is always up. You should just keep a can around. How it works is it redisolves the finish and keeps it redissolved for long enough for the water to float to the surface and evaporate. At least that what the folks who sell it claim. I personally think that it's magic and they just don't want to tell us. It's great to come in first thing in the morning to get something that has to go out that morning and find it with a thick opaque haze. The first time you hit it with eraser and it goes clear you want to run back and kiss whoever sold it to you.

The what do I start with question begs another or two. How much do you need to remove and how much do you like to sand? If you don't have any scratches or tool marks to remove you can start with the very fine stuff. If you have planer marks, etc you can take 'em out with 220 but you are gonna have really large forearms. I start finish sanding with 120 go to 150 then 180 and rarely sand raw wood any finer. Occasionally I go to 220 on hardasabrick stuff or endgrain. I know that puts me in the minority around here but that's how I have learned to do it I am also using a random orbital sander for most work.

Jeremy you can eat burritos as long as you provide proper emergency breathing equipment for all guests and pets, and get an EPA premit. Remember to put the toxic waste zone signs in your window as a courtesy to passers by.

Don't even think hard about strippers. They'll all screw up the clear. Take some either grey or white (if you can find it) Scotch Brite. Don't use the red or green, too coarse. Scrub the paint off using "Goof off"as a lube. You can find that at any place that sells paint. if that doesn't budge it try mineral spirits. Wipe it down good. Buff it back up to gloss with rubbing compound. If you're lucky it will come right off. If you're not it will, worse case, you'll get some craters where the paint has etched the finish, and you'll have to buff. Most guitars are finished with stuff that paint doesn't really like to adhere to so cross your fingers.

The Saf-t-planer is a great little Popular Mechanics type tool that every woodworker should have just 'cause it looks so Mickey Mouse but works so well. The guy I used to split my shop with had one and used it all the time for small difficult wood, like an Fb. I have a similar one that Craftsman used to make for radial arm saws. Hadn't used it in 25 years until I saw the Wagner that Bobby had working. You'll have to do almost no cleanup with it and it takes less time than a router jig.

Use your search button. There is a whole bunch of info available. Read 'em and repost anything you're still in the dark about. Shiney.......hmmmmmm. No. Oil finish is just not going to get real glossy. It is fast, simple, nearly foolproof, easily repaired and maintained, but not particularly shiney.

For the bucks these are really good durable chisels. They will take a good edge and hold it for a while. The handles are also comfortable and will take a fair amount of abuse. You can do a lot better job sharpening them than the factory edge. I take them through a superfine diamond plate and then power strop them with polishing compund and they slice right through maple. To get a better set you're going to have to shell out more than you pay for a set for 1 chisel.

If you're going to use veneer just buy it don't make it. It's incredibly wasteful unless you have a slicer. There are beaucoups of suppliers. I recommennd Certainly Wood. In twenty years they've been nothing but great.

You can get around the screw problem by using threaded inserts and bolts instead of screws. McFeeley's sell all kinds of stuff like that. Might be neat to give it a try. I'd definitely think semi-hollow because of the weight. They do make an ultra-light grade for the cabinet industry.

If you're using straight laundry bleach strength is the issue. Get some wood bleach , which is oxalic acid, read the instructions and use that. It may take a couple of applications but it will lighten most anything. Sometimes things get too washed out with it so watch it. Kleen Strip also makes a two part peroxide bleach that Lowe's and Home Depot sell. It's pretty strong stuff too. Remember to wear goggles even with household bleach. It'll tear your eyes up. And ventilate your work space or do it outside.

Lindy Fralin makes some wonderful sounding tel type pickups. Not cheap but really jangly. He's a working guitarist who is really particular about sound quality. I had them rewind a dead Mosrite pickup and it is as close to perfect as you could want.

I build speaker cabinets out of it because of it's dampening characteristics. I'm just guessing but it will probably make the world's deadest sounding guitar. And no, that doesn't mean you'll sound just like Jerry Garcia or Bob Weir.

I run my shop off of a phase converter and have for over five years. Don't buy a static converter, buy a rotary. Made that mistake once. The rotary is worth the extra moolah. Cleaner power, less maintainence, less headaches. Much longer life. Buy the next largest size if you can swing the bucks. This is because if you decide to buy one that is exactly the size that you need you will almost immediuately find a tool that you can't live with out at a great price that will have the larger motor. Murphy. Look at the Kay Industries converters. Reliable and quiet, for a converter. Website is Kayind.com. Great units, superb customer service. Not cheap but since you probably came close to theft on the pin router you can afford it. I have a bunch of info from the IWF trade show in Atlanta. I'll dig through it this weekend and see if I can find who the distributor was for that beast, and I'll post it for you. The Italian stuff is great but can be annoying to find manuals, parts, etc. I am envious.

The more oil finished guitars I see the better I like them. Especially the exotic woods. I'm going to start finishing the walnut one I'm doing now with oil and may go no further. I use Tung oil and finish off with a good coat of wax. I use the stuff I get from Liberon.

This is just an opinion so feel free to ignore me or call me names. Do you really need to finish wood down to 1000 grit? There is a reason that woodworking sandpaper stops at about 280 and you have to shift to metal or paint type paper. At over 280 you aren't really sanding you're burnishing. Some of the finsh gurus like Dresner and Flexner don't recomend going any where near that fine (1000) 'cause it can cause toubles with stain absorption. You should maybe look at using cabinet scrapers. Properly used they give an absolutely glass smooth surface. Thes are the rectangular ones not the paint scraper type. Check Klingspore for sleeves. They're a manufacturer that sells to anyone. They're online and sell the widest range of sanding supplies that I've seen.

One of my customers has a cheapie Epi Paul that he 86'd the bridge pickup out of. He had me make a 1/4" thick figured maple piece. I used his p'up trim ring as a pattern. Drilled four holes in it and screwed it in place. Stained it yellow to match his burst. Looks neat. I think I charged him about $20. I wondered why he didn't just replace the pickup but there's no accounting for taste.

For some nut material check your local countertop fabricator. If you want to make your own see if they'll cut you a strip off of a scrap piece of solid surface. (Corion is one brand). Most shops do some work with this stuff these days. Takes a minute to set up a saw to the right setting and run a three foot scrap through. Comes in nifty colors too. I'll do something like that for a ten spot, so I image, will most other woodchucks.