ADFinlayson

I would not recommend taping over a colour coat, I have pulled paint off before doing that, the colour is always very delicate - it's not the end of the world if it's a solid colour because you can touch it up but if it's a cherry shader etc, you are never hiding that without stripping it all and doing it again.

I tend to tape off the edge of the top if that is going to be natural, spray the colour coat on the back/side then pull the tape and tidy up edges before spraying clear. There is a bit of a ridge to begin with but if you spray a couple of coats, do some levelling and spray a couple more, the ridge should disappear. 

Almost looks like yellow is the main colour in from some angles, you've really captured the figure in that top, stunning mate. 

32 minutes ago, Professor Woozle said:

Hope you manage to get it sorted, with the top looking as wonderful as it was before! I think I'd have been experimenting with solvents like xylene to try and get the original finish to uncheck ...

If it was a guitar for me then I might experiment but in this case it's for someone else and the checks went all the way down to bare wood and came from screwing the hardware down therefore I felt the paint wasn't bonded to the wood so I felt stripping it was the best option here.

Well this guitar is truly testing my metal. I get it wired up, fretwork done etc and it's one of the best looking tops, one of the best sounding and possibly the best playing guitar I've done. Photographer pops round on Sat to take pics for me and I'm talking logistics with the customer (I need to post it to US).

I get it out the case to dust it off and the lacquer has checked all over.

Everywhere there is a screw or pot tightened down, there are cracks emanating from, even the jack plate screws and strap button screws 

So today I got the sander out, started sanding to see if they were just surface cracks from spraying too thick, but these cracks go all the way down to bare wood so clearly the lacquer has not bonded to the wood properly so that tin of lacquer has gone in the bin. 

I need to finish stripping it completely and do over with some new lacquer for what will hopefully be 3rd time lucky. Approaching 40 builds and none have ever gone as wrong as this one has

If you've already used nitrocellulose lacquer then you need to use the same thing to spray your burst, you can't spray poly over lacquer 

Every time I've used abs or celluloid binding I've stuck it on with medium CA glue sparingly, taped the binding down then flooded with thin CA. You can also ruff up the inside of the binding with a bit of 220 sandpaper and use titebond but I haven't done it. The nice thing about CA is you can sit there and hold it on the waist while it quickly dries as that's the most awkward area to keep the binding in place and where the binding can end up a bit thin if it's not glued in perfectly. 

ooh yeah I bet that required some new under pants. I had a similar horror show with my trim router the other day - it was in the cheap katsu router base as my makeshift workmate router table and the retention clip failed while I was routing a binding channel, router fell through the bottom on to the floor missing my toes by a few inches and danced around on the floor while I jumped out of the way and hit the emergency stop on the wall, first time I've used the big red button when it wasn't a drill. 

I've had many goes with angelus purple. The trouble with it is it's such a strong pigment so it hides all the figure when it goes on neat, but at the same time it's also one of the worst colours for fading, particularly the blues in purple will fade so if you do a heavy sand back and go over it with rose, you will end up with a mostly pink guitar. I like to do a light sand back and use light-rose instead which gives more of a regal purple as a finished colour. If you just go purple and then do a light sand back with no other colours, you get more of an indigo for a final result. Although I am talking about the finish with nitrocellulose sprayed over it which will impact the final colour, if you wipe an epoxy over the dye then you will find that lifts some of the colour out (same with oil finishes) which will make it look less vibrant too

I uploaded a youtube video last week where I do the full finish process for a purple guitar with angelus dye

On my last acoustic, I had to plus and redrill before I got tuner holes right on the third time, I was absolutely livid with myself. 

You will be absolutely fine, my guitars only have about 7 or 8 mm under the neck tenon anyway with similar heel shape. While I don't cave the area under the neck pocket thinner like patrick eggle does, their bodies are quite a bit thicker than mine to begin with 

Hi Fabio, welcome to the forum. I am not an expert and I'm sure more experienced users will chime in. But when I did a build with a kahler trem not that long ago, I Got the neck and fretboard in place (I was doing a neck through) then I routed my trem cavity so that the strings would sit correctly relative to the fretboard. I don't see the principle being any different for a set neck or bolt on guitar.

So I would suggest routing your neck pocket so it is correct for your neck, then route your cavities for your trem. You could route the cavity for your trem block first, place the bridge where it should be, then use a straight edge from the neck to the bridge to determine how deep you need to route the trem recess cavity.

the pickup routes will be much closer together on a 24 fret body, also if it's a 22 fret body and you've got a 24 fret neck, the correct location for the bridge will be in the bridge pickup route. 

That's looking rather nice, love the burst. 

I don't have the stewmac callipers, just some regular digital ones from my local store. I use them for measuring the really precise things like bridge holes, tuner locations etc. So always zero the callipers every time I measure anything. I do also use them to measure crown height with the tail so the little cut-out stewmac do is unnecessary IMO.

You want the neck pickup to be on the same plane as the fretboard, so the angle part of the top should go at least as far as that. I tent to go a bit further and smooth the transition out between the two pickups. 

Unrelated, but that inlay work is awesome!

Looks good to me!

1 minute ago, henrim said:

Ok, nice. I was just curious if it really was an option. I'll take your word on it, I have no intention to try unless I really have to.

No of course, the real solution is to get a spray gun.

1 hour ago, henrim said:

Have you done this for a whole guitar body? For small repairs it obviously works but I would imagine it's not the easiest job to brush a large surface evenly with fast drying stuff like nitrocellulose lacquer. 

Yes I have. cellulose flashes off very quickly when it's been atomised in a spray gun, but when it's still in liquid form it takes considerable longer, yes you don't want to hang around and get it on and not keep going over, it's no different to applying poly with a brush like @Andyjr1515 does. 

Andy has the issue exactly right, it's called ghosting or witness lines which occurs with poly.

Once you are happy that the paint is flat, do a last thin coat, maybe 2 if needed, then buff that. Typically with cellulose (nitro) you would spray many thin coats, 12-15 is what I normally do, but with poly you tend to spray just a few much thicker coats so when you come to level sand you never go through the coat you've just sprayed. The trouble with wipe on poly is that it's very hard to put on a thick coat with a rag or brush and have it go on level enough to not require a load of level sanding, so it gets applied in lots of thin coats like you would with cellulose but without the benefit of having the coats melt into one homogeneous layer.

FYI you can thin and brush on cellulose and have the benefit of the coats melting into each other.

I have made about 30 guitars with a break angle and a wraparound bridge and never once increased scale length to compensate for the angle. 

Re stud hole position - place the studs on the bridge and look at the bridge and the centre of the studs relative to where the top E string will finish, if the centre of the stud is level with the scale line, then the stud hole goes on the scale line. But on quite a few bridges the studs have to go further back (I just eyeball it). But a good example is the Schaller signum bridge, the studs sit about 5mm behind the scale line. On a Golden age bridge, the studs sit on the scale line. See if you can find a spec drawing for the bridge you have and you will be able to tell.

Unrelated but important: 1.5º may not be enough to give you good string action unless your fretboard sits pretty high off the body. You might want to consider tweaking your neck tenon so the angle is a bit steeper, I normally go between 2.5º - 3.5 for a typical wraparound bridge.

12 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

Ah - we maybe at crossed purposes.  

When you say 'white mahogany stain', do you mean this?   

If so, then no - that was the 'before'.  It was a finish that Gibson produced for a while - a bit like chalk-paint in the way it looked and behaved but, as far as I know, was actually a nitro finish.  Happily, the owner hated the above (the photo is, actually, flattering.  In real life, I had to agree with him..it was a bit naff) which is why he asked me to strip it all off.

This is the tru-oil slurry and buffed chestnut stain mix on top of the light mahogany neck that was under the chalk paint:

 

 

So, is the change an Andyjr1515 triumph or an Andyjr1515 act of vandalism, we're all wondering 

 

 

 

Oh never mind! I really liked the grained blonde look

Oh I have that same sampler pack and I've used up a few of the colours, I wasn't a big fan of the colours themselves though. I do really like their regular wood stain colours, like black mahogany brown etc. I use those to tint my lacquer for shaders and bursts.

So the white mahogany stain you did, that was with calligraphy ink?  

@Andyjr1515 that white mahogany stain job is lovely, what was the stain you used to achieve that? 

Another little bit of unsolicited advice from me... Before you bind an open-grain wood like mahogany or walnut, it's a good idea to do some grain filling because when you make your binding putty to fill any gaps, it's a real pita to get white binding sludge out of the open grain. 

Walnut vs mahogany vs maple, it's all just an aesthetic and doesn't really matter IMO.

You might find it's easier to have the seam for the back binding where the strap button is at the other end - Those bends around the neck pocket can be pretty tricky and it will be way easier to start there, get that area glued down and then work your way round to the other end. If you do get any gaps then you can make some putty out of chopped up binding an acetone to fill any gaps.