ADFinlayson

Latest update in the medium of youtube

Love that, I never really considered spruce as a top wood for anything other than acoustic/archtop builds, I bet it's a lot nicer to carve than maple. The headstock and control cover are nice little touches too.

I don't cut the tangs when I'm not doing a bound fretboard, personally I don't mind having the fret tangs visible down the side of the fretboard - that is the norm. the only time IMO it can look weird is if the slots are cut way too deep. chip out when removing frets is possible anyway but can be avoided by hydrating the board with a dash of oil and heating up the frets with a soldering iron and pulling them very carefully. The only other con to having tangs visible at the sides is fret sprout if the fretboard shrinks, but even if tangs are cut. the edge of the crown will still stick out.

I only sealed the edges of the fhole with cellulose sealer prior to glue up, I doubt you'd have any issues with that with your crazy top radius. Also, I haven't tried it because I haven't got any but I've heard good things about teak oil as a sealer for stain because it's soaks in well. Some acoustic builders wipe it round the edge of their soundboards prior to routing the binding channel to prevent tearout. Def going to try that on my next finish

To do the thicker looking natural binding I think you're gonna have to tape off the inside of the top and seal the edge before staining. If I remember correctly, that's what @Lumberjack was doing for his natural binding. I can't be bothered with all that, I just stain the top being careful at the edges, seal it and roll over the edges with 120, praying that the end grain is going to be merciful. with the f hole on mine, I sealed it by brushing on slightly thinned sealer (few coats) on all the edges prior to glue up and that works well for me.

Love that, esp the tenon popping up between the pickups. Gorgeous.

Quickly enough to miss the odd scratch unfortunately

I had to fill and recut a couple of slots on an ebony board on I think my second build, ebony is quite forgiving if you fill with dust and super glue you will barely see it, but if you're 1mm out you wont see it at all if you use jumbo fret wire. Just fill and recut after it's had a good 24 hours to dry.

Latest update in the medium of youtube And a glam shot with the lacquer on it. I built up that low spot/ridge that I made when fixing my scratch with a couple of drop fills at lunch time, then I gave it a couple of coats after dinner to seal it all in. The other night I tried tinting a bit of lacquer with a drop of purple to fill in that area that wouldn't take stain and that worked well, but I have no idea why I didn't tint it with pink like the rest of the body was stained with I'll get another couple of coats on it when I get off work tomorrow which will total 10. Will try and get some more on later in the week but we're due thunder storms on wed. Doubt I'll have it finished in time for the GGBO competition at this rate. Bit off a bit more than I could chew with all the workshop stuff.

That's interesting, I thought thinner paint was better when it's hot, or addition of retarder. You've just put in doubt the very little I know

Looks like you ran out of things to do while glue was drying i wish I was as efficient a builder as you

Yeah having a camera or two setup for my youtube series is actually really helping me to see issues with my technique. This gun doesn't give the ability to control pressure unfortunately, I can control paint volume and the fan size and that's all and I have to thin the paint quite a bit to get a decent fan out of it, or I have to open up the volume a lot which creates a tone of over spray so I'm mixing my lacquer to somewhere between 60/40 - 50/50 (just by eye) and getting better results with thin coats.

yeah that's a good assumption, I often find taking pics with the iphone changes the colour significantly, I need to use something with a manual white balance. It makes filming really easy though. I've made some progress on the clear, I've got 3 coats on now mixed to around 60/40. Started to get a good gloss on the front sides and neck but the back seems to be really sucking it up, weird because I've spread a heavy coat of sealer on it this morning. I've got some orange peel, but it's much smaller nibs than what I have got when spraying previous builds. I expect this is mostly down to technique now but I still feel that this just chucks the paint on with too much pressure and that isn't something I can control. Vid below of coat 3.

I dunno, the finishing process is fairly stressful Yeah I do like the pink a lot actually, I'm tempted to do something that colour, maybe with a trans black burst around the edge so I can get my burst feet wet. no I put an even coat of the blue all round the body after the pink sand back, possible the sand back was uneven, but the pink photo above is how it was when I stained it and it seemed pretty even at the time. I'm about to fire a 3rd coat of lacquer over it, I'll inspect afterwards and report back.

Done some staining with Angelus dyes. First stained it Rose, then sanded back with a mirka pad. If I'd have left it like this my daughter would have been very happy. Then mixed light blue with netrual (diluted) 1 part blue to 2 parts neutral, and added a tiny dash of yellow and went over the top. Not the scratch below the blade switch, annoyed I didn't see that earlier, it's causing me no end of problems. Also note that weird light spot near the seam. Dunno what that is, thought at first it might be glue squeeze out that I didn't get, but there are several other smaller areas that wouldn't take stain so I dunno. I also used so little glue that I could have been accused of starving that joint. Sanded back the natural binding with 120, then finessed up to 320. Very happy with the binding, probably my best work. But I tried to get that scratch down by the blade switch, and removed it but ended up putting a slight ridge/low spot right under the switch. I was sanding only the scratch because that area is so thin that I daren't risk sanding any closer to the bottom screw hole. Restained that area which is noticable, so I'm pretty hacked off about that, I don't think there is much I can do about it though, so just went with it. Maybe I can build the area back up a bit with drop filling, dunno. This is after 5 coats of rattle can sealer, definitely noticing less orange peel than I was getting before. could be the booth, could be technique, I certainly have better light now than I'm used to. The booth did a really good job of extraction too - came back 5 minutes after spraying having left the fan running, all I could smell was what was off-gassing from the work piece

Planning your finish before you've even started the build. You're making the rest of us look bad. Looking forward to this one, that stain job looks awesome

Planning your finish before you've even started the build. You're making the rest of us look bad. Looking forward to this one, that stain job looks awesome

Nice one Ginner, well deserved. I don't think in the 2 years I've been on PG, that I've seen one of your builds and haven't said phwaaarr

I was toot tight to buy enough walnut for a V body a couple of years ago, anything goes!

Well it definitely wasn't perfect. If you look at the top edges of the bridge pickup route there are two really dark spots and there was another really nasty one that was cut out of the f-hole so I had to position the blank to hide those and I actually lost some nice figure that was just above the horns in order to hide all the blemishes, just gotta work with what natures gives us! Still, this bit of maple was a freebie and by far the nicest top I've worked with. Just wish it was less of a PITA to carve, but you can't have em all.

Another glam shot and the next video instalment

Ha, I can't afford to avoid pieces with imperfections. I'm trying to perfect the art of working around them Don't be fooled, everything has been shoved to one side. I really need some more storage. I'm thinking some wall hanging kitchen cabinets would be a good idea, potentially some workshop space over floor cupboards

Those streaks you mentioned on your other post, I didn't comment on because I don't know what they are, but this top is rife with them. I'm going for something purpley so I doubt they will be particularly visible when it's all done

A day of chors and visits from relatives today so didn't get a huge amount done. Did get the neck pocket routed and assessed the break angle though. I like it, maybe sitting a touch high so I'll sand the back fo the heel on a straight surface to bring it down a hair Mrs and my daughter are having a day of baking tomorrow, so I'm hoping I can get the pickups routed, a load of sanding and neck glued in by end of play.

Some progress I forgot to post - Neck is inlayed with abalone laminate left over from Davids PRS build of last year, bound with quilt offcuts from the top and with some jescar 55090, that's a medium sized fretwire, not quite jumbo. I did have some jumbo stainless to put on there but I decided to do a compound radius 9.5 - 12.5" and stainless on a compound radius is not a lot of fun. Gone with a different headstock shape for this one I've carved the neck but I forgot to take a pic, there is a video clip on my instagram though - https://www.instagram.com/p/CPiwduCly-R/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link Spent a good hour this evening doing shape sanding to sort tidy up the horns and put a subtle recarve around the edge from the waste to the bootie. I was a bit concerned about clearance for the blade switch as the whole body is 47mm thick in the middle, but after routing I had about 10mm of clearance, so I used a bit of ebony which was 5 mm to make the cover giving me a little bit of space to squeeze the wires onto the switch lugs, It'll be fine as long as I don't coat the back of the cover in anything conductive.