Drak

Thanks for the kind words! Another hard left turn. Decided to ditch the pointy headstock neck and go with a 3x3. So now on to making another Koa headstock overlay and spraying the new neck to match the Pecan Brown. A 3x3 simply fits the 'Jam-band' build template better than the present one did, as I kind of knew all along.

So here are the updates and the new look. This thing looks completely Jam-Band approved now, absolutely dead-on (pun totally intended) what the goal was at the beginning, tho things changed. So with the two pieces of Koa, the headstock and rear cover, I needed a third, and central, piece, to tie everything in. And, now that I have decided pickups (Lawrence L-560's) and electronics selections (EMG active, like most of my older Steerheads)... I decided I didn't need the middle pickup anymore, but I did absolutely need a 'pickguard' to 'draw in' the rest of the Koa pieces. And so with the remaining piece of Koa I had left over, I made a Koa pickguard. A note: I decided to 'go big or go home' with it, so it extends behind, and encompasses, the bridge by a bit. Since I'm using a harmonica bridge (which adjusts from the top) I could still mount the studs right into the body and just go right through the Koa with the adjusting screws, there are no 'thumbwheels'. So I thought that was a great idea to enhance the Koa even more. I also listened to K(omodo) and gave the body a super-light Pecan Brown back and edge-burst, which blends with the Koa and doesn't hide the Spruce. So here's where we're at today:

Many moons ago, (20, 30 years ago) there was some sort of women's religious 'thing' sitting at a busy intersection in a nearby town. Women's Catholic monastary maybe? I don't know, it was a long time ago. But right at the corner of the intersection there was a tall tree sitting beside the place, 50 ft. about. They hired some company to do a 'tree-art' carve thing to it, exactly what you're doing on a much larger scale. It was a full-on tree carve, from top to bottom. The progress was slow, months and months, as it slowly took form and shape. Finally everyone could see what it was going to be, a full-scale Indian that looked proud and majestic. Chief? Warrior? Something...it was a long time ago. Anyway, the progress kept continuing as the months passed. It was turning out to be magnificent, an absolutely majestic, jaw-dropping, and mind-blowing tree-art carving. It was stunning, it really, really was stunning to see. So, after a time I figured it was done, it seemed to be 'done' and was unchanged for a few weeks or maybe a month. THEN... they started painting the whole thing, and gave the Indian chief some sort of stupid silly-ass Bozo-looking grin. Totally, completely, and utterly ruined the entire project. It was disgusting what they did to the tree and to the carve. Before, I couldn't wait to see it when I was driving through the town. Afterward, I couldn't even bear to look at it, it was so hideously ugly. I think within a year they cut the whole thing down to the ground. I'd be willing to bet it was some sort of political or power-grab or otherwise authoritarian religious decision-making that swerved it from one thing to another. No coorelation between your stunning work and that Indian, its just whenever I see your work it makes me think of that tree. How absolutely beautiful the carve was and how they completely annihilated its proud beauty with paint and a stupid monkey smiley-face. Then cut the whole thing down. Weird.

Link-1 Link-2 Link-3 ...I could easily find and post more, if you like .

Well, I will leave you with this as a brain-teaser. And no, this mustache bridge is not going on the guitar, that's why it's a brain-teaser! This is a bridge from an old 60's Framus (I think) acoustic I bought ages ago and stripped it of its parts. It had an influence on what's coming up tho, yes it did.

Oh, I think I can do better that now. OK, lets get caught up a little. This build literally just exploded hard left right in front of me. Very unexpected and unplanned, but allowing things to 'happen' is part of the fun. And indeed things 'happened', so follow the bouncing ball. So...what I did next was to choose a headstock cap. I really sweated this one for a bit. I have dozens on top of dozens of cutoff pieces from all kinds of spectacular wood I've worked over the years. So I started by ruling out a lot of pieces that I didn't think gelled well. No Rosewoods, no figured Maples, no Redwoods, no burls, no this, no that. I contemplated either a plain Mahogany cap or a plain Spruce cap to match the body but I realized this was a place to bring in some additional bling, so those were out too. I finally landed on a piece of highly flamed Koa that had an interesting 'raw bark edge' to it I wanted to try and exploit. I originally bought this piece off of Ebay and it was advertised as gun stock lumber that I had resawn into slices. So I glued up the Koa on the headstock and started shooting finish on it. It looked AWESOME, exactly what I wanted, blinged to hell and back, and a good match. So that's the first thing that happened, which led to the next thing that happened. I was watching TV, and generally when I watch TV, my mind is only half-watching, I'm usually sorting out/mulling over other issues. And it came to me out of nowhere that I 'probably' still had the control cavity cover for the Koa guitar (that guitar was in the neighborhood of 20 years ago and is long gone toast, why, I don't remember) sitting in a bag I have old control cavity covers from builds long gone. So I go grab the bag and presto, its there! That guitar I had shot a light red toner coat over the Koa, so there was some minimal cleanup, shaping, and further detailing I had to do to it. Got that ready, shot it, and AWESOME struck again! I'm going to stop here tho there is MUCH more coming, it just gets better and better, stay tuned!

I've made my own custom pickguards before. The material is completely up to you. I'm making a custom wooden one right now AAMOF. The one I'm doing now is a one-off, and I'll bevel the edges myself. But when I did this one, I made a router template for it which performs a very important double-duty function: 1. The shape for a pattern cutting bit on the router when sat on top of the material 2. The necessary depth to use a 45 degree edge bevel router bit to give the pickguard a beveled edge when the template is sat underneath the material.

This thing has taken a severe hard left turn all the sudden. Very unexpected turn of events in the past 48 hours. All prior plans have nearly completely changed, further details to come.

Thanks Mike. That piece of spalt was one of the most dodgiest pieces of spalt I ever worked. Softer and more rotten than Balsa wood it was, with a few harder portions here and there mixed into it to further confuse the issue. You can see the imperfections around the curves if you look close. It was literally crumbling and falling apart as I tried to even and smooth out the edges, even with loads of CA glue to bolster it. At some point I had to stop chasing it and just say 'good enough, it'll do'. Doug.

My thoughts were the gold covers brought in too much bling and made it over-blingy. There's already an appreciable amount of gold presenting w/o those covers, I think they take it into the 'over-baked' zone. Too capitalist, consumptionist, gaudy, craven, too showy. Too much Mar-A-Lago and not enough Margaritaville. That wouldn't really jive with the whole Deadhead/Garcia/natural/earthy/wholeness/peace/granola ethic. The black looked too industrial, stark, too 'serious'. My thoughts on it...still lovin' the creme!

I got the implication that Scott suggested we not steer you toward, or away from, any particular color, which I agree with, and I think it important you know what colors 'move' you, so I will not comment on your colors, that's for you to get comfortable with. Tho I see some very nice colors there, so you've got choices. Just wanted to add in how I fine tune a color recipe. I look at it as a graph with an x and y axis, I literally see this in my head when I'm doing color selections. The x axis is left to right, and represents the color bands...yellow> orange> red> brown> green> blue> etc., you get the idea, and comes first. The y axis is where you really start dialing things in once you have chosen your x axis, your primary color selection. Say I have chosen a lush tropical fern green and not a spearmint green (which would be more yellow, less blue), or I have a fern green dye already. So the x axis is done, I know my color. Then I dial in the strength with the y axis by dilution. Even with one color, there are many possibilities available depending on the strength. So I could choose a very pale fern green, still showing much of the original wood underneath, or a very dark and tropical fern green that renders the base wood almost meaningless. Once I know generally what color I want (x axis), then its down to how strong I want it to be (y axis). That's how I dial a color in.

OK, some shots from just the past 2-3 days that include a few clearcoats and different pickup looks and configs as I was trying to sort out what I want out of this. Does that Spruce look vintage German beautiful or What? I was really taken by surprise how much I liked how it turned out straight-up clear. Nevermind these various mockups, the final combo isn't shown here. The gold P-90 covers, I don't think made the cut. Creme looks Vintage Boss on this one.

Yes, I bought those things probably 20 years ago, collecting dust in my P-90 box for all these years. OK, here is one where I did an edgeburst spray to accentuate the contours. I love this look and was figuring to do the same to this present one, but its not going to go down like that I don't believe.

OK, we're quickly impinging on the present moment. I finished up all the leftover details and started finishing. My standard approach is water-thin CA glue for the initial sealer coat, especially with the Spruce being as soft as Spruce is. I decided to not do the rear contour on this one. It's all gloss from here forward.

This is a group shot from February 2015. It's the one all the way in the back, nothing changed since 2011. Having a play with hardware several years ago. IMO, these really take on the real Garcia 'look' when you use a 3x3 headstock. Once you leave that space and go for a 6-on-a-side, they look less Jerry and more whatever 'you're' design is. I really, really like Both ways, and am having a hard time deciding which way to go.

So I've built several of this body shape, obviously (duh) highly influenced by Steve Cripes and his Garcia builds. Each one is a little different from the others. I named these my 'Scarabs', I don't really know why or how I came about that name. I'm not a big Dead fan or anything like that, I do like them, along with Phish and others of the ilk, but I'm not a rabid follower, I just really loved the design. There is no CAD or CNC in my builds, I hand-drew the design from online pics of Cripes holding one of his many years ago. I had to re-draw it many times over until I was happy with it. The first ones looked like Spires on an old European castle, they didn't look like the typical Jerry 'wolf ears' at all... You'll see a shot of most of them half-finished lined up further down. I think I started most of them around 2010-2011. The first raw body pics I have of this one are from May 2011, so that's where the story starts with this one, While the Sean Costello and Beryl are hanging and drying, I picked this one back up where I left off. When I shot the first coats on it a few days ago, I was really surprised and taken aback how absolutely beautiful it looked, like an old 50's German carve guitar look. It's a Mahogany core topped with 3/4" Spruce that was going to be an archtop top back in the day. I had intentions to spray the outer carve edges to accent the shape (which I have done on another one and looks great) but this just dropped me to my knees it looked so pretty completely natural and I decided this stays exactly the way it is now, all completely natural. I'll post a pic of the other one I did where the edges are bursted so you can see the difference. Have been working on the hardware and electronics choices the past few days, still needs more clearcoats. Most of these first pics are from the summer of 2011. The 'island' in the middle got removed, I always leave that there for the router to sit on while I plow away at the rest, then take it out at the end. Spruce top glued on. Making the rear neck cutaway Top carve design penciled in. At this point, I wasn't really sure where this was heading, specifically, but I had seen pics of the Cripes guitars with the three pickups and a 'mounting plate' thing-y. So I decided to just have a play with this and routed in this 'pickup pocket', although obviously P-90's don't 'need' any mounting plate. It was just to do something a little different that looked more like a 'Jerry thang'. I use a binding channel bit to set my bottom carve limit. Carving away, never allowing the carve to go lower than the binding cut. So I'll stop here for the first post, this was what happened in 2011.

Beautiful! Should I delete? I will add, about 20 years ago I did buy a gallon of pre-cat lacquer and its accompanying agent and shot a few Coco-Bolo guitars with it. Which is why I bought it in the first place, as Coco-Bolo oils seep up into film finishes and darken them, like a tint, which ticked me off. I needed a finish that didn't melt into previous coats and the sealer coat would 'stop' any CB oils from seeping, it 'locks' them up. Using the same methods that I've always used, I could never get them to shine and gloss up sitting side-by-side with my lacquer jobs. They had a slightly 'matte' look to them in comparison and my finishing research reading materials backed up my own experiences. That information is what I posted here, I didn't just 'make it up'. But pictures don't lie, that looks great from here.

As far as I know, the 2k aerosols are going to be much more similar to an epoxy finish than any film finish (i.e. shellac, lacquer). Film finishes that melt into each other are called 'brittle' finishes, where crosslinking A/B finishes are called 'tough' finishes (think like a tire tread here). They may both look glossy, but as a finished, dried product, they have nearly nothing in common with each other. Film finishes via their brittle nature, allow you to 'finish the finish' via sanding to finer and finer grits, then final buff and polish. 2-part crosslinkers with resins and hardening agents don't respond to 'finishing the finish' without expensive pedestal buffing stands, very high heat, the right products, and the educational skill sets on how to use all of that equipment. 99% of which 2k aerosol users don't have access to...if they did, they wouldn't be using aerosol spray cans in the first place. Imagine trying to polish a tire tread to a high gloss finish using finer and finer grits and you get the picture of 2k products. I believe what they do is actually 'melt' the top with the pedestal buffing stand, very high heat, and the correct products and it takes experience to know how to do that. This is the drawback to using the 2k products, your final coat must be perfect, because once you shoot it, you're done. There is no 'finishing the finish' with 2k's usually. Yes, of course you can level sand prior coats to achieve a dead-flat level surface on which to spray that final coat on to. But once that final coat is sprayed down, its game over and done. There is no 'finishing the finish' on a 2k product w/o all the correct (and very expensive) finishing equipment. I believe I've read with those 2k aerosols to heat them up first in warm to semi-hot water, which makes perfect sense because that's exactly what you do when using 2-part epoxy, at least I always have. Which shows you the 2k's are much more like an epoxy finish, and it helps to wrap your mind around that and get away from thinking its any kind of lacquer-ish product, because its not 'that', at all. And I would agree on some sort of chemical interaction between the vinyl sealer and the 2k, as that seems to be the only difference between the top and the rest of the guitar. Its possible the 2k product, while it was chemically reacting (curing) attacked the vinyl sealer. The old finishing rule is never apply a harder finish over a softer finish. You can go the other way around and be OK tho.

So, a few things. Dye enhances Figure, not Grain (or Pores). You don't have any figure on that wood, so of course the dye isn't going to enhance anything, because there's nothing to enhance. It will, of course, dye the wood, but with very little to no enhancement of anything. So there's that. If you want to enhance the look of your wood, you need to Enhance the Pores with a colored (probably black) Pore Filler (I use Timbermate). About 'filling the color hole' with blue. I would be very careful about that choice and I will explain why. Just from a personal standpoint, I spend a lot of time in the construction of a guitar. That is Time out of My Life, and My Life has value and is important to me. Time spent on that and not doing some other thing I enjoy instead. So by the time its coming down the line to finishing it, the color scheme I choose Must mean something personal to me. It has to Knock Me On My Ass or I will not finish it and I'll move on to another project. So, tho I have nothing against blue per se, what I do call issue with is your decision-making process behind that color selection. In other words, you can do better than that, just 'filling in a color hole' in your guitar collection. Because what will happen is if you make the wrong decision, you'll quickly tire of the instrument and rarely use it. All that time it took to build it, wasted. All that thought that went into design decisions, wasted. If that instrument doesn't scream at you to take it off the wall and play it, it was all time wasted. Or, at least there are no returns on your investment of your own time spent on it. Time is the single commodity you can never regain, the moments of your life tick away, one by one, and you can never get them back, so the decisions you make are actually very important. To You. Good decisions pay off with compound interest that return to you down the line, where the guitar becomes a treasured and valued creation you created and continually use and admire. Poor decisions wind up as either lessons learned (which are good as long as you actually learn the lesson and don't continually repeat it) or valuable time totally wasted and shot right down the drain. Do you really want to look at that guitar as a 'lesson learned'? Or as an investment that keeps returning dividends back to you time and again? The two parameters I use are: What knocks me on my ass I like it so much, and, what does the Wood Itself want to be? And I am very aware of what colors are in my boathouse. All you have to do is look around you in your home, office, or maybe your car, the colors you naturally gravitate towards will be all around you. For example, my colors are earth tones...yellows, orange, red, brown, into green. Occasionally I dig really stark contrasts (the black/white/blue thing is a high contrast item) There's probably not a single piece of a blue anything in my house that I'm aware of. I've tried to make blue guitars before, it never worked, because blue just isn't in 'my' natural color palette. Nothing against blue at all, I like it in certain situations, the point is I'm Aware of what my personal color palatte is. What is your color palette? If you don't know, you should investigate that for yourself. Different woods react differently to different colors, and you want to choose something that shows off your wood and makes you very happy. In my opinion, blue is not the prime choice (1) based on your own comments and (2) based on what wood you're working with. You want to enhance what's already there, not fight it or work against it or try to force the wood be something it can never really be. Maybe @ScottR will chime in and say it a different way than I am, tho I know he knows what I'm trying to say. We both understand what it is to work With the Wood, to allow the wood to be a player in the game of your construction, to have great respect and admiration of this natural resource and not think you can make it be anything you dream up, that is a road to eventual disappointment if you don't allow the wood itself to have a say-so in the decisions. Because, you can believe this or not, but the wood will fight you, it will fight back and things won't go smoothly. That's a sign to reconsider what's going on and instead look for the harmony in the build, where you find yourself in the 'Zen Zone' instead of the 'Warfare on Wood' zone <I kid a little, of course>. Not that reaching harmony means everything goes like buttah, but there is something to what I'm saying, there is a difference, and when you're tuned in, you can feel it, its a real thing that takes a bit of awareness to understand, and then begin to focus in on and accentuate.

If you're going to paint it, there's all kinds of things you can use as a primer coat before paint. So, usually when someone uses the word 'primer coat', its usually in reference to the paint coming on top of it/behind it. But in this case, I'm using the term primer as simply referring to any product that stops up the pores and stabilizes the wood pre-paint. Yes, shellac would work, CA glue would work, pore-filler would work, A/B epoxy would work (tho it wouldn't be my first choice). Hell, you could use the paint you're going to use, just lay a first coat down, let it dry, and give it a light level sand. You're just looking to stop up/lock up the open pores, and lots of products will do that. Now, if you're trying to get a Dead-Level Smooth surface pre-paint, that's different, tho its not exactly what you asked for. But if you said you're sanding to 400 grit, I'm guessing/assuming you're trying to get a Dead-Level surface before painting. In that case, I would use Timbermate pore-filler. That's its job, that's exactly its role in life. Since you're painting it, color doesn't matter (it comes in 17 different colors I think) Your shellac will work, but it will take multiple coats to bring the surface up to Dead-Level Smooth. Using shellac will take time and multiple coats to achieve dead-level flatness. Pore-filler, if you let it dry and sand it level, one coat and you should be done. Look up Timbermate on YT to see some examples of it in use. You will see several different people using it several different ways, so don't feel like you have to follow anyone specifically in a biblical manner, its a very user-friendly product and can be used several different ways and they're all right, they're all correct, they're all legit. Even tho everyone will be espousing their own recipe.

Just for laughs, I looked up 'POF acronym'. It gave me Plenty of Fish, a dating website

Since I was namedropped ()... It looks fantastic so far, and Big Hands to you for hesitating when you're not sure and asking yourself 'Is this Really what I want'? I do that all the time. The flapdisc on the angle grinder is exactly how I do all of my contours, followed by a quick orbital sander then a little hand-sanding. That's it, I think your method is perfect and it only gets faster and easier the more you do it. I can generally whack out a body contour in less than 1/2 hour now, so I think your method is spot-on. OK, the blue. Just from a personal standpoint, blue on a guitar (usually) gets old quick for me, its not a color I can live with for 20 years, usually, but that's just me. Unless its done really, really tastefully, I have pics of blue-ish guitars that are jaw-dropping gorgeous, but everything has to be 'right'. The wood itself, the figuring, the tasteful use of the blue, its like a dance where the whole troupe has to be in step with each other, its not like a soloist where there's one spotlight on one person and they can hog all the glory while the musicians are unseen in the orchestra pit. For a blue to be OK with me 20 years down the road, there's going to be a lot of finesse surrounding it, it won't be just grab a rag and lay it down and boom its gorgeous forever. And I have experimented with it for years, that's just how I see blue, it doesn't work on all woods. Your wood looks to me an awful lot like Oak in texture and appearance. So if that were mine I would treat it like an Oak guitar. Usually with Oak type of woods, I don't dye the body directly, usually. Instead, I revert to my alternate finish routine, which is to use a dark pore filler to accent the pores. Then spray clearcoats until its level sanded, then shoot a shader coat over the top, then more clear. Some woods react really well to dye right on the wood, and some don't. These are all Oak type of guitars, with all kinds of different finish applications. But what they are not is the standard dye-right-on-the-wood. With these kinds of woods, I enhance the Pores, since there is no 'figure' for the dye to work with. Pore enhancement vs. figure enhancement, those are my two finishing 'paths', and your wood looks like a pore job, not a figure job. If I was to do your body in blue, I would do a black pore-fill first, clearcoats to level sand, then shoot a light shader coat of blue over it, then more clearcoats to done. I would not put blue dye directly on that (Oak) type of body, but that's just me.

Ha! Yes, certain woods can be like a Rorschach test, yes they can. I don't even know how to categorize this one. It's not exactly what a heavy metal crowd would go for, or a jazz crowd, or a blues crowd, or a country crowd, ...you get the idea. It seems to have no particular 'association'? Except the fact that I built it and I love it, which is all that matters in the end I guess. Wood, indeed, is cool stuff, I never get tired of admiring what it has to offer. Funny how a little bit of color in the right places can affect things. The 'caramel' look, I don't think, would have elicited such grandeur thoughts!

So I figured I better get the back shot before too much time passed to make sure it turned out close to the top. So I shot it yesterday and got a few clearcoats on it. Totally happy with it, very close and similar to the front. If I had to do it over again, I would probably have extended the yellow section 'down' into the second layer of burl figure. But I was concentrating on laying it down just like I had done the top and wasn't completely aware of the possibility. Oh well, still looks great to me. At this point is where any shader coats would come into play, if there was anything that needed 'fixing' or 'touching up'. I would do that with a shader coat, but I don't see any need on this one, just do a thin darkburst around the sides and that's about it. I'm pretty sure black hardware for this one.

I must add this because its so hysterically funny. If you look at the neck headstock veneer I removed above... That neck 'was' relegated for the Beryl build. The headstock didn't match that caramel finish so well, ...but it was OK. If you look at the re-spray to the Bery build, the headstock (removed, above) would now be a Dead Perfect Match. I was 48 hours ahead of myself in removing that. I mean, I had no idea what I was going to do with the Beryl before I shot and clearcoated it, so there was no way to know. But now, I have to laugh its so hilarious. Its no big deal, I can make another similar to it, its just 'quirky', lets say, that 48 hours after removing that, I re-shot Beryl to look exactly like it.