ADFinlayson

Chuck a bit of glitter in your spray gun and call it metallic

Pretty much every strat-type guitar I've seen has adhesive foil stuck to the underside of the pickguard, I imagine this is down to whomever manufactures it for them putting it on, even a £5 scratch plate from amazon or ebay normally has the foil on it. When I was researching grounding a while back for my first build, I saw lots of threads saying that coating the cavities with something conductive was not deemed necessary by manufacturers as it's more down to the power supply in the location than the guitar itself and the faraday cage made no difference in factory conditions, especially on guitars fitted with humbuckers. Generally I tend to setup my builds prior to finish to make sure I'm happy with neck carve etc, so get them playing before I've painted the control cavities with conductive paint and I've got to say that I've never noticed a difference between a shielded cavity and a non-shielded cavity in terms of noise, but domestic wiring in the UK is a lot better than it is in some parts of the world, which stands up with what I read. I shield all my cavities anyway because you never know when you're going to end up playing in a scabby venue with ancient wiring.

Thanks, I've got rid of the majority of the bobbles with all the scuff and wet sanding I did, clearly sanding through the sealer was as far as I needed to go I'm going to add another couple of wipe on coats, then sand another coat in with wet and dry and hopefully that will do it.

They look flippin' awesome

Ha not if I keep sanding all the red off. its not perfect, but we are back on track

Yeah if I apply another coat, it will disappear

So here is the problem area re-stained, it's not a million miles off I guess, we will see what it comes out like under finish. You can see there is another problem area between the pots which I've touched up the same. But can you see all this milky wierdness? What do I do about it?

You're probably right re the spirit stain getting lifted off, but every time I've used any wipe on finish (oil or poly) over a stained top (be it spirit or water-based) I've noticed some lifting of stain, the bobbly type marks you referenced from the sealer did in fact disappear when the sealer had dried over night, I also went over the sealer with some 0000 and as you say, it was as smooth as a baby's butt. Looking back, I think my issue has been that I started with higher grit, sanded and sanded, still had high spots to moved to lower grits and ultimately just took too much off. The majority of the top looks fantastic so I don't think the method is the problem, I think it's just my shit execution of the method. I think I need to have one more go at spot staining the problem area, seal it again and try to make good of what is there before take it all off. Kudos to you lot that can pull these finishes off well, definitely that hardest part of the job!

These are the sealers I've been using. They also do an acrylic sealer but I don't think is compatible with the wipe on poly I'm got

I have the same sealer in wipe on form and it does a good job of sealing but it lifts off some of the stain, not so bad if it's applied carefully with a brush but removes a lot of stain if it's wiped on with a cloth. Multiple mist coats with the spray can version seals the colour in without removing anything. Short answer, the wipe on sealer is perfect for a natural top but less good for a stained top. None of that matters though until I master the level sanding process.

You're right the end result probably will be better if I start again, although I'm not looking forward to sanding it back to bare wood to the point where it will consistently take stain again. I did try to fix the problem area by restaining, but I couldn't get it looking anything close to what was there, to get the colour current colour, I stained it black, sanded it back, stained crimson red then stained used as a spirit stain to do some highlights. I'm also out of sealer so I need to wait for another couple of cans to turn up before I can start the process again which is annoying but I think I'll use to the time to do some more research level sanding etc so I hopefully don't cock it up again.

This is pretty much what went on, I had the majority of the body looking great and just had this one little problem area, so I wet sanded it a bit more and bam, straight through.

I was until catastrophe. Sanded through the sealer in a big way. Not really sure how as I was sanding a very bobbly area with 1200 that was clearly high, tried restraining but it looks terrible and it’s right close to the f hole so is glaringly obvious. Looks like my only choice is to get the orbital sander out and start again

OK so i just scuff sanded the top and sides with 1500 and I could see high spots starting to go white so clearly getting knocked down, p2000 was obviously doing nothing but polish the high spots. So then I went crazy and scuffed the whole thing with 800 thinking this would be potentially catastrophic but with the mind set of fuck it, if it goes wrong, I'll sand it back allover again, it's my guitar. Anyway 800 grit didn't go through anything, I was clearly a lot more worried than I should have been, I've now eliminated the vast majority of the high spots and also mostly fixed the edges whee the drips were. The top turned a consistent dull red and I was worried at this point, but when I cleaned it all up and added another coat of poly (this time 70/30 poly/thinners) it went back to it's original vibrant red. So I guess now I need to go back to building up the layers, then perhaps levelling off with something higher than 800, maybe 1200 or 1500 and then more layers until I've got the appropriate amount of gloss and a level surface before I try wet sanding poly in with 2000. My problem was two-fold, 1. I didn't have enough patience and I clearly need more coats and more sanding to create a quality finish. and 2. I was assuming that sanding back with such a high grit would be sufficient to remove high spots when in reality, 2000+ sand paper really does very little in terms of removing material.

blobby is a good way to describe it, I've wet sanded quite a bit between coats with 2000, I'm assuming this means I need to go lower to remove the blobs but I'm worried about going through the colour, I know the more layers of poly I add, the less likely I am to go through the stain, but surely I need to sand down to where blobs are regardless of how many layers there are.

I’m struggling to remove those little specs or dots that can be seen in certain direct light, it’s weird because I never had this issue with testers. I suspect it might be the sprayed on sealer, not the poly. Could this be the result of spraying on too much in one go? Said spots were visible even after the very first and lightest mist coat, but they disappeared when the sealer dried, so maybe it’s not the sealer

My friend is a store manager at chain here in the UK, he said they aim to get 35% of RRP but they never really get that on the high end instruments, margins are tight especially competing with the online traders.

Where are you getting these? €10/3 rods is a lot cheaper than I've been paying!

Well it definitely isn't perfect, but it also sort of is because I freakin' love it I wish I followed Andy's advice from the off and did the back first, then top and sides together, because I had a couple of drips from the sider over to the front thatI haven't been able to totally eliminate, they're smooth and can't be felt but visible in certain light, you can see one near the 3-way toggle here. If I did the top and sides then this drip would be on the back and I could sand more aggressively, but here I'm in danger of going through the top. Anyway, I've lost count of how many 50/50 coats I've done, I finished up wet sanding poly into the top and sides with p2000 which did a great job of smoothing out and removing the odd spec and hair. Going to hand buff with a light cutting compound next. I did the same thing on the blue tester for the V and it came up super smooth The ovangkol vs the maple looks absolutely bangin' under finish I also got the celluloid sanded up to 3000k grit which made a huge difference to it's lack fo shine, thanks for the tip @ScottR and @Bizman62

If you’ve ever made an ebony fretboard, you’ll have plenty of offcuts to make some wedges

Glue and dust in my experience has always resulted in a slightly different colour to the fretboard, although ebony is the lost forgiving, it tends to be slightly visible and looks worse than just seeing fret tangs so I normally make binding strips from the fretboard offcut before slotting. I’m going to try this method though because it looks a damn sight faster than a bound board, thanks

See that's where you and I are two very different people.. I sand the guitar, then hoover the house

it's looking awesome, what finish have you gone for this time? the deep black ripples look great I'm hoping I can achieve that sort of thing on the V so do share your process!

@Andyjr1515 thanks, the microfibre towels I'm using look identical to the ones in your tutorial pics - 10 pack on amazon for £6.45!

Dude that's a massive help, thanks so much My rationale for doing the top first was to protect it when it's turned over (just in case) but I didn't do the sides, I did however do the edges of the top with an unloaded cloth as you suggested. So I'll do the sides and back, then go back to top and sides. Thanks