SIMpleONe89

Some people have used simple scarf joint jigs to route/sand the surface flat so that can definitely help shape it quickly. How do you plan to carve the body?

That looks great, in fact I think it's perfect! Can't see the outline of the decal at all.

Welcome! Great job on the scarf joint for a first timer! The body looks nice as well. I started off with pine as well, made some mistakes but I guess that's how you learn. Practice on cheap wood first!

Nice! Can't wait to see how it turns out.

Love that scarf joint!

Looking good! I like ash.

I actually spilled my jar of brown stain when I was working on the neck, onto my makeshift MDF work bench. Then I didn't care about spilling any more and moments later that piece of MDF is looking rather colourful.

That's a nice picture!

What program is it?

Perfect! Are you going to do a burst as well?

Looks tedious and difficult! Hope all goes well with the scroll.

I think that looks great as it is.. Maybe 5 ply is over kill!

You should write books!

Thanks Carl. I'm trying to suppress the inner perfectionist in me that has caused me grief and anger issues many times in the past haha. Now I've learned to close one eye and live with imperfections. Those are my favourite tones as well! Glad you like it!

Yup so I have to make sure I put on a good amount of clear before wet sanding! Sanding through would be a disaster!

First coat of clear Third coat of clear on the body. Notice the disgusting orange peel. I'll try level it out more and probably wet sand after a few more coats. I'm using rattle cans so this is expected. Although the horns aren't as dark as I would like them to be, I'm quite happy with it so far. And it's impossible to have a dust free finish so I'll have to keep checking for dust nibs and lightly sand them off. I've also come to accept the fact that I can't get a 100% perfect finish with my setup but I've achieved some pretty impressive rattle can jobs in the past.

Thanks guys. I've already started the clear coating process. I love how the flames dance around in different angles.

You really love your RGs! Great job on the fretboard and frets.

I did the CA glue and sanding dust to hide fret tangs on my current build. Tedious job but it turned out nice. And yes I had to deal with the glue running down fretboard so that wasn't pleasant. There might have been some movement in the wood resulting in it being looser.

Rockhorst I use double-sided tape to tape scrap wood to one side of the router base and that gives me a lot of stability. For the horns where they're more tricky, I like to find some scrap that can fit in between the horns with about 10mm clearance between the scrap and the body. Stick it down and it will be stable to route the horns.

Remember your dusk mask! Mdf is nasty for lungs!

Whew hard part's over. Drilling bridge posts always makes me nervous. Glad you figured it out.

The headstock burst looks a bit darker compared to the body, but I can't get the body to get any darker so i may have to lightly sand the headstock. The colour on the back of the body and neck seem to match pretty well so I'll leave them alone.

Finally gotten down to dyeing the body. I first sprayed 2 coats of lacquer to seal the faux binding, then grain filled, then sprayed another 2 sealer coats over the faux binding. I'm not sure if the first 2 sealer coats were necessary in hindsight because when sanding off the timbermate grain filler I took off a bit of the sealer. But then again I didn't want the faux binding to be stained by the grain filler so I didn't take any chances. Sealing the faux binding, however, was necessary to prevent any dye from colouring it. I decided to pop the amazing figure with some brown dye. Then sanded back till my arms and thumbs were sore. And also dyed the mahogany brown. Then I put some yellow over the top and did a brown burst. I filmed the entire process and I'll post the video once it's done. However the top horns didn't receive the dye as well as the others so I couldn't get it very dark. I ended up sanding back the whole thing the next day after drying and tried again. Picture without flash: With flash: To do the faux binding, I sanded and scraped the edges to get it round over. The sealer coats helped prevent any dye from getting on to it.

I like how we plan for the next build while the current one is still in its infant stage.