pan_kara

On this guitar its mostly brushing. I did spray some sealer over the headstock decal to not mess it up with a brush, and then brushed nitro over that. The cavity cover is RPC brushed.

Nice clean classic look. Love it!

pan_kara, you sure did an amazing job there, man! I watch this forum for quite some years, and this is one of my favorite builds since then. And the use of simple tools is inspiring to me, as I'm yet to build my first guitar.

Thanks for sharing all that progress!

Thanks nandobang

It is indeed possible with simple tools and no woodworking experience - as in my case - so go for it! I'm happy that you like this build, I absolutely love the way its turning out, had a friend over a couple of days ago when the guitar was still assembled, he didn't want to put her down and kept commenting how comfortable it was to play.

Can't wait to finish it!

Yea, I think its soaking in. I'll put some more oil on there today and tomorrow and see after Easter how it looks (gonna be gone for a few days).

I aggree, the oil should do better. This is not a scientific comparison yet. I was sanding the part that got the RPC after having oiled the other part so maybe there's some dust or something. And there's only two coats of oil on there. I will put some more on and check again.

I broke out the RPC to paint cavity covers yesterday. Here's the one for this guitar - thin HDF with wenge veneer, painted with conductive tape on the bottom and sides - and three layers of RPC brushed over the wenge.

The reflection of my white wall makes it look less dark than it really is

So while I was painting I also did a piece of the imbuia top (and the body mahogany but I forgot to take a pic of that). Here it is, top left is 3 coats of RPC, below that is Danish Oil (only 2 coats or so, so ca get better) and on the right is bare wood on the body.

I'll put some more oil on the oiled part, level and buff the RPC part and do the same to the headstock where I have nitro. Then its decision time.

Yea, you can immediately say its Daemoness. Those inlays are insane.

Thanks for the Black Limba links. The one page that did give me a shipping quote to EU charges about $70 for shipping alone. I guess I'll wait till some friend of mine has some business overseas and I'll tell him to take a big suitcase

Interesting. Thanks guys, good to know it is possible to do that. I was actually thinking of doing it the other way - oiling the top and putting RPC on the back and the sides. Right now I'm doing my first try with RPC, painting the cavity covers for this guitar and another one. I put in on off-cuts from the body and top so I'll have something to base my decision on.

Meanwhile I'm doing the neck. I leveled the nitro on the faceplate and started wetsanding it. Then I sanded the back all the way to P320 and put in the first coat of danish oil:

I had to spend some time on my other projects to bring them up to a similar level of completeness.

I played this one a bit and fooled aroud with a scraped until I got a nice asymmetric neck profile that feels good in my hand. Now I need to take her apart from finishing, so I need to decide on this. I'm pretty much convinced that the neck will just have Danish Oil, but I'm thinking about the body.

I started oiling an offcut from the imbuia top and its looking really nice. The headstock is done with nitro so I can compare, and to me with such a dark color the glossy nitro finish looks like not the best idea, since its hard to see the features in the wood through all the reflections.

Then again I'm not sure I'd want the body to have JUST oil, I thought of maybe doing the back and sides with Rustins Plastic Coat that I have waiting to be tried out, and juts oil the front. Or is this king of mixing up different stuff in different parts just asking for trouble?

Any opinions?

Meanwhile here's a family photo of all my three projects, in testing with strings on:

Top to bottom these are:

1. the nylon one that this thread is about

2. sapelle body and macassar fretboard (and 2-piece maple neck)

3. my test vehicle for several things - poplar body with poplar burl veneer painted in blue translucent nitro, 3-ply plastic binding, the back painted solid black, 3-piece (flamed) maple neck and a rosewood fingerboard that was taken from my "CMS guitar".

Wow, they're both lookin awesome! Black limba and black&white ebony - two woods that I always wanted to try but can't seem to find any reasonalbe source in Europe..

I'm currently trying the same thing, though I just brushed on thick nitro with a brush, it builds much quicker (but needs a lot more sanding to get flat obviously).

My guess would be that after 6 coats of rattle can nitro you should be able to blend the edges nicely with sandpaper, so that after a few more turns of spray-sand-spray-sand you get a perfectly level surface.

It would be cool to crack a color coat and then clear over it (without cracks of course).

And here she is after test assembly:

The volute. I don't really know how it should be done. I figured that to create the correct shape from the headstock side it will be ok to just run into the transition region with the robosander while doing the final thicknessing on the headstock. Here it is:

Then I tried to shape it with files (I need to get finer files), sandpaper and scrapers. I ended up with something like this:

Not perfectly happy with that, maybe I'll end up tuning it up a bit more. I think the headstock wings are interfering, I should have probably moved them further away (i.e. made the hs longer). We'll see. The plan now is anyway to string the guitar up and play it a bit to fine tune the neck shape to my taste (I didn't use and templates for the neck profile). So I might revisit the volute then.

I also made a logo decal, put it on the headstock, sprayed 2 coats of sanding sealer, leveled a bit with P320 and brushed on a few coats of thick nitro. I will try to get the gigantic brush marks out with sandpaper later on.

Got the neck carved finally. Now I just need to shape the neck-headstock transition region and then its sanding and finishing time.

What I did recently, trying to solve a more or less similar problem, was to use HDF. I couldn't find hardwood with the proper thickness. I cut it with a coping saw and then fine-tuned the shape with sandpaper. Then I painted the inside with conductive tape and glued on some veneer on the back. I just need to lacquer the back and that'll be it.

Here's an in-progress shot:

I hear you

I'm currently scraping binding back to white after painting poplar burl veneered top blue (in fact that guitar has a 3x maple laminated neck just like Starpainter's bass here, just with padauk instead of pau ferro veneer - laminated necks on first builds FTW) and I have another sheet ready for the future... but I'm still eyeing that store. They have plenty of nice looking tops at pretty reasonable prices.

Poplar burl is a great looking wood. I found one place for it in the EU with reasonable prices here - Prostheta you might want to check it out.

I got a lot of tools from the UK, the prices are better, but this time the shipping killed me (for some of the luthier-specific shops I had the same problem). So looks like I'll have to spend a bit more on the drill itself but less in total

Seems like the best option is this:

http://www.hmdiffusion.com/Perceuse-a-colonne-d-etabli-Leman-PRE023-11-19832-p.htm

at least it has good throat depth and I found a store that ships for free in France.

Some people in forums say that these should be better quality

http://www.optimum-machines.com/products/drilling-machines/b-17-pro-b-23-pro-b-26-pro-b-33-pro/index.html

but the small one that's within my price range (barely) has only 152 throat... too small I guess.

Wow, axminster quoted me around 100 EUR for shipping..

Looks like for bigger machinery I need to find something more local (France or Switzerland)

Nice, looking forward to seeing this progress! How thick is the poplar top?

Thanks Shelvock

They have the floor standing one even cheaper now, but I don't think I have a place to put it in my workshop which is moving between my ktichen, living room and balcony

I'm currently using my drill with wobbly chuck for sanding by putting the bottom part of the robosander (the threaded part that's sticking out) in a ball bearing that I fix to the base. This is working pretty well as a temporary solution, and I intend to do something along the same lines with my next setup (i.e. the drill press).

I think I nearly decided that I will need to get a drill press for the next round of builds - I managed to loosen the bearings on my cheapo Bosch drill that I was using in a drill stand through too much robosanding - still works, but I need something quieter and more reliable.

Initially I was thinking of getting a good quality drill but I figured for the same amount of money I could just get a decent drill press and keep using the old one for the handheld jobs.

Looking around whats available in the EU I'm leaning towards this one:

http://www.axminster.co.uk/axminster-axminster-wd16b-pillar-drill-prod725428/

I'm planning to use this mainly for:

- the usual drilling jobs: tuner holes, string through (I need to check the throat depth vs my body shape template to make sure its enough), etc

- forstner bit action (cavities, neck pocket etc)

- robosanding body edges and thicknessing fingerboards/necks

any suggestions on this? Is this overkill? Or maybe not good enough? Other options?

Thanks!

Hey man, welcome back! Good luck with the fan-fret

Yea, I was more afraid that the frets might put the neck into some backbow if I make it completely flat so I put some relief into the fretboard before fretting. But wow - a 5 string bass with no truss-rod? Thats brave Must be cool with an ebony neck.