sdshirtman

This is a bad ass miscalculation.I'm thinking if you could replicate the same thing with the addition of a veneer on the back of the head stock it would look incredible. Just MHO.

Thanks Scott. I got my question answered so I edited my original post. I was having trouble setting up my new buffer. So yeah, I coughed up and bought a SM buffer. I was going to try and save some cash and build my own. That was until I calculated everything out. In the end the SM package was only $75 more than building my own out of comparable parts. Home made came to $577 vs the SM version at $654. That figure included a rake, buffs, compounds and all the shipping. The two most expensive parts for the home made version were going to be a good 3' x 1" machined shaft at $150 and a 3/4 HP motor at around $160. To me $75 was worth saving all the time and headaches of assembling everything from scratch. That and I get a cover for the belt and pulley wheels with the SM version. I'm happy with the investment. So heres some wet sanding pics my Daughter took Sunday. Because everyone likes pictures right?

When I was younger I worked for a company that did custom finishes on kitchen cabinets. We would get mirror like finishes using dual action/random orbital sanders. They used these custom made hard DA pads made from plexiglass with a thin layer of rubber between the pad and the paper. We were using the pneumatic type DA's with the nice speed adjustment levers on them. These hard disks would chatter like hell until you dialed in the sweet spot on the speed. Once you found that ideal speed they worked incredibly well and gave you a super flat and even base to paint over and get a mirror like finish. I dont know how some of these guitar companies get a decent flat finish with the ones with soft pads. I sand all the flat parts of my guitars by hand with a flat 3M block.

Edited.

I use the same method but I drill the pilot hole slightly larger and remove the bits as soon as its glued. I think leaving it and filing a notch in the tang will work just fine although its really going to piss of the person who re frets that someday.

Yuppers. Thats the Vittorio Emanuele II monument. One of my fav building in Rome. Funny thing was I wasnt even supposed to be going to Italy but Air France rerouted us through there due to the pilot strikes and I got to spend a few extra days there. Been there several times before and still one of my favorite cites in the world. I have to agree Scott. It was pretty spectacular for sure. Especially when your standing under it. I had been to the one in Vegas a few times before but I wasn't really prepared for how big the original was. Almost exactly twice the size as the one in Vegas. When you do go make sure you spend the money and go to the top for a while.

Jessie, I didnt go over this with CA glue. I did some experiments and it ended up too difficult to level using CA. In place of that U used minwax wood hardener. In the first session I used almost 3/4 of a bottle. When I was done with the carve I gave it another treatment. Even using this method it was difficult to level properly as the softer spots sand at a different rate as the harder parts. Scott, You always offer everyone the nicest comments. I have to admit it was hard to leave this one as plain as I did but I figured in the end it would work out and the flame would stand on its own. I was going to give it a subtle burst but due to time restrictions was not able to. I havent updated in about three weeks but I have a decent excuse. I had an unexpected offer to go to Europe with most expenses paid so I did what anyone else would have done and went. It was an interesting journey and like all the previous trips to Europe I always feel a little different when I get back. I've been back for a week but I've been playing catch up so I dont have a huge amount of time to post today. I will give a full update soon. In the meantime here are a few selfies I took over the last three weeks. Fun time but its good to be back in the states.

Just out of curiosity. Can you post a pic of what the donut looks like sitting in position in that area?

Not a huge update but I'm finally getting around to shooting these. I put a little bit of a burst on the blue one. I like the way it came out. The spalted one is soaking up a fair amount of lacquer even with all the wood hardener its already soaked up. I dont think there will be too many more carved spalt guitars in my future.

I've thoroughly enjoyed this thread and thanks for posting, mistakes and all. Before you destroy it post a clip of it being played. For that matter post a clip of you destroying it.

Congrats on your win. Well deserved.

Those are good questions Scott. Sure there's a little added pressure but nothing that makes me lose sleep just yet. These aren't being built to spec for a specific client (Well sort of. Your aware of where these three are headed Scott). If they were commissioned builds for specific individual clients I think I would feel the squeeze more than I do. That being said if that were the case they would most likely be complete by now. As far as being enjoyable. It goes through cycles for me with most of the process being positive. Some stages like carving, shaping and fretwork are more enjoyable than let's say grain filling or wet sanding. I'd be interested to hear how others here would answer that question.

Pretty sure I'm not going to hit that goal so yes, but we'll see where I'm at in 4 months.

Hello from Sunny San Diego again and thanks for the previous comments on the repair. No huge update today but I did finally manage to finally find some time to finish these three up. Well at least the actual build portion. I still have to grain fill and shoot em. Ahh the joys of grain filling. Its an ugly job but someone has to do it. This is the back of the one with the spalted top. I'm using chocolate pudding this time with a brush. It takes a little longer to dry and can gum up your paper something fierce but I think its going to make for a tasty guitar. And a little wood porn. I regularly visit my lumber suppliers but I usually come back empty handed. Not this time though. I just picked up two really nice pieces of very tight and evenly figured maple. Top pieces is 1" x 5" x 6ft Bottom piece is about 1" x 7" x 8ft. Stole these for $70. These are going to make some way cool necks.

All nice entries this month. I love binding on a guitar and really like the Faded Blue Jeans slim design. Looks like a fun guitar to play. I would love to spend a few hours putting her through her paces. I had to vote for Justins based on the finish and the custom carved volute. Crazy.

That's an incredible piece of timber there.

I kinda like the soft look of those recesses. It gives it a unique organic type feel. IMO you could even soften them up a little more on the thick side (pickup side) where theres still a bit of an edge and make them blend in even more. Its been said many times that its not how bad you screw something up (you will, we all do) its how well you can hide it or turn it into a feature. Looking good and cant wait to see it finished.

Thank you. I honestly have a hard time finding it now myself.

And a few actual guitar related pics. This is the extent of the dye job this one is getting. Just enough to enhance the figure. Four drops med brown and one drop amber trans tint to about a half cup of water. Hit it twice and sanded back. Third little pig in this run gets the black treatment before sand back. Just before clearcoat. After first coat of clear. After a few more coats the color starts to get a breath of life and come into its own. This stage always gets me going.

Here's a follow up to the repair after dying. Hardly noticeable. I'll post another when its clear coated. Heres something not really guitar related but I figured someone could use the info. Remember that super rusty book press I picked up? The previous owner had this sitting outside for years. Time to clean it up. I'm sure most of you are familiar with electrolysis rust removal but for those that aren't this is a very effective and cheap way to remove rust from steel or iron. This is a great method of bringing back old tools found at swap meets and garage sales. The nice thing about the electrolysis method is it only removes the rust and doesn't harm the base metal like strong acids can. I wont go into the scientific explanation on how it works here. if you really want to know You can google it. I'm not going to go too far into details on the setup because there is already so much info on this on the web. I really just wanted to show whats possible with this method. The materials needed to do this are simple. Here are the basics things you'll need. 1. A plastic container (So it wont conduct) 2. Arm and hammer washing soda which is sodium carbonate. Its important to note to NOT use baking soda, which is sodium Bicarbonate. 3. Some sacrificial steel electrodes (I used rebar. Its cheap and available at home depot for like a dollar per ft. ) 4. Copper wire. 5. A car battery charger. 2 amps will work but 6-10 amps works a little faster. 6. Water. 7. A little patience. Fill a container with water and keep track of how many gallons you put into it. Once full add one tablespoon of washing soda for each gallon of water. This is your electrolyte. Firmly attach your sacrificial steel pieces (rebar in this case) around the sides of your container. Connect these together using wire. You might have to sand a piece to bare metal to make good contact. These will be your anodes and will get connected to the POSITIVE side of your charger. This is important as its where your rust will gather. Just remember red = rust. Connect another piece of wire firmly to the pieces to be cleaned. This piece of wire can be submerged if need be. This piece will become your cathode. You can suspend this piece with wire over the bucket or just place it in there but it must NOT touch any of the anodes. If the anodes touch the cathodes the process wont work and you'll burn up your charger. Once set up you can connect the batter charger. Remember positive to the anode (rebar) and negative to the piece to be cleaned (cathode). Plug in the charger and wait. This is what my setup looked like. This is a big piece and I needed a large container. Its over kill for something small like a hand plane. For most small parts a five gallon bucket works fine. And this is what it looked like an hour later. You can already see the reaction happening. Small hydrogen bubbles fizz at the top and the whole muck slowly swirls around to let you know its working. This was pulling about 7 amps from my charger when I started it. http://s129.photobucket.com/user/sdshirtman/media/DAG%20builds/IMG_1073_zpsbe72ab8c.jpg.html?sort=3&o=42 The next day it was pulling just under 2 amps. This means your anodes are dirty. Unplug the charger and remove them for cleaning with a wire brush. This is what they looked like the next day. Replace the anodes back into the water the and plug the charger back in. You'll be drawing more amps now. Repeat this as needed until the piece has no more rust. Some things worth noting. 1. This piece was pretty heavily rusted and took 7 days to do. During that process I took the piece out twice and removed the bigger chunks of rust that had loosened up to help it along. Your results will vary depending on how rusty your piece is. 2. This precess releases hydrogen gas which is potentially explosive, so do this outdoors. 3. DO NOT use stainless steel as your anode. It will release hexavalent chromate which is very toxic. This is the same stuff that the Erin Brockovich movie was about. Here is the mixture on day 7. There is no more churning and no more hydrogen bubbles rising from it. Its pretty much finished. the bucket in the lower left hand side is all the rust I cleaned off the anodes over 7 days. Rust that was once attached to my piece. Heres the piece just after removing. At this stage you need to take a brass wire brush to it to remove the black oxidation that forms on it. It comes off very easily. Once this is done you have to coat it with oil, wax or paint it immediately or it will rust again. And here is the same piece 8 days later with a coat of paint on it. The surface is a little pitted from being outside for so many years but thats to be expected. The electrolysis even removed the rust from the screw mechanism. A little grease and its ready for another 100 years of service. Hope you enjoyed. Now to glue up a top with it!

One of my favorite things on that guitar (and the wonka pickups).

Super cool Doug. Care to show us how you did the knobs?

Mighty kind. I wish there were 28 hrs in a day and two of me. Dedication I could have done without. Lol There are times when you take the time to post and ya get crickets. Makes ya wonder if anyone's paying attention. Glad someone got something from it and thanks for saying so. Amazingly good save! Sounds like good food for a frontpaged repair tutorial, don't you think? I hope that you saved your scrap test pieces because I highly suspect that the glue will prevent dye taking straight to the patch wood. You might be lucky with only the glueline not taking dye however the patch may well contain glue within the wood, also preventing dye take-up. Since it looks good as bare wood, it might be worth considering whether a sealer coat over the Maple and shooting colour over the top is an option rather than dyeing straight to the wood. You might not see it now, but it can happily re-present itself once you bring colour into the equation. Just sharing a repair I was more or less forced into. When you search google for something similar not much comes up. I guess it wouldn't hurt. If you think its worthy of a tutorial go for it. Sealing and shooting with tinted lacquer would be ideal if I hadn't wanted/needed to direct dye it to enhance the grain. I was concerned about how it would stain and if I would have a ring around it. I used stainable glue in hopes of eliminating that. I'll post the pics of the stain soon but it took it quite well with one little thing I hadn't planned on. (But should have) I always raise the grain with water and sand back down before I direct dye. This part went off no problem. When I actuall applied dye to this I gave it a light pre wetting to give me a little control over how much this soaked up. The excessive moisture was a little much for it and the repair started lifting a bit on one end. I had to put some weight on it and reclamp while the dye dried. All was ok in the end though and it still looks good. (Whew!) Even though I dont like using it, in retrospect I should have used an alcohol based dye.

"Solving the back of the guitar." It does look like a puzzle. On the tall pickups. It looks like you have that solved but I was wondering if you had considered a set of Alimitones from Lace. They're pretty low profile and IMHO would enhance the look of that "thing".

Now that you mention it it does ring a bell. No wonder I like it so much. Again great job.