ADFinlayson

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. 

On 2/1/2024 at 2:08 PM, Andyjr1515 said:

Quite agree.  I love my Mirka and the abranet pad system, but serious removal (wood or hard finish) isn't, in my experience, one of their strengths

I've been using 600 & 1000 grit Abranet pads to dry level sand the cellulose on another build I'm currently finishing and I have to say they are working wonderfully for that, in fact I'm totally sold on those instead of wet sanding. it just seems to be poly that they really don't want to go through. 

Edit: I am not using them on the sander, just hand sanding with the abranet pads

The whole point of wanting a 22 fret neck instead of a 24 is that the neck is not as long, the only way you change out a neck and get the desired outcome is if the 22nd fret ends up where the 24th fret use to be, which means the bridge needs to move. 

28 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

Can't you accept a rescue route when it's offered to you on a golden plate?

It may go on the forsale ad..

3 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

Are you 100% positive that it's dye? To me it looks similar to the discoloration caused by fungus seen in many pale woods. The vertical lines on the top seem to have similar bluish greyness in a number of shades.

While that is possible, I think it's unlikely. The greyish look in the top is because there is still a small amount of blue in there too, I am planning on doing a black/sandback on this guitar so I haven't gone as far as sanding every spec of dye out of the top - The blue dye is very heavily faded so it looks grey, the blue colour we saw at the beginning of this little expedition has come almost entirely from the paint...I think. 

This top reminds me of some of the maple tops I've worked on originating in Eastern Europe. It was obviously a big and old tree from how close together the grain lines are together and it has a those fine brown mineral runs that follow the grain lines along withthe ever so slightly wavy grain direction. I think I've got a couple of Croatian tops in the pile so I will compare. Although it's all just for fun because I have no way of actually knowing the origin of the top on this guitar. 

2 hours ago, henrim said:

What ever it is, I'd be surprised if the dye wasn't so deep in the endgrain that you have to sand off more than just the surface.

Completely agree, maple endgrain is extremely thirsty and I don't think I'm ever going to get it out completely. 

Well. getting all this dye out is proving to be a real pain in the butt. It's pretty much only in the end grain now, I don't know whether to keep sanding (this is 80 grit with the random orbital) and risk altering the shape slightly, or just live with it. I have given this a quick wipe down with white spirits so I think this is probably the most obvious it is going to be.

I kind of think that the combination of dyed top and a dark shader over the mahogany will probably make it not obvious, but at the same time you know when you've seen something you can never unsee it.

I was doing some rough level sanding of cellulose with P600 abranet this afternoon and it seems to work really well for dry sanding lacquer. I have also been using the p1000 pads to scuff up lacquer if I haven't sprayed anything for a few days. 

2 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

I've noticed something similar with Abranet. It works fine for some surfaces but not so well on others. My local car paint dealer once gave me a sample pack of 3M™ Cubitron™ II Hookit™ pads which are intended for sanding finishes smoothly but effectively. They also seem to work well on wood. Abranet still has its use but it depends on the task at hand, often requiring testing which one works best.

I think Abranet is good at sanding wood, raelly good actually, it seems to skip over poly though

2 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

I consider you pro enough, just pointing out that there's really rough grits for really tough finishes.

And I guess after all these years you knew what I meant. Or, as @mistermikev put it shortly after I followed you to this forum, "I thought he was your friend!"

that's alright I was just jesting, I would gladly have taken it to someone who is better at sanding than me!

I am just getting to that point where I have had just about enough of sanding. It doesn't look too bad like this

But when I wiped it down with spirits I could see quite a lot of dye still in the wood

It's weird, there is the clearcoat and the colour which I was able to sand through quite quickly, but then the lighter blue/greeny looking stuff (on the outside of the horn) is some kind of base coat over top of the dyed wood that has taken on colour from either the dye or the colour coat above but it is absolutely a separate layer and considerably harder to sand through than the paint above.

Something else I found interesting, the Mirka abranet pads are barely touching it, I switched the sander over to the 5" pad so I could use my 5" xtract discs and they were considerably more affective at removing paint. 

It's getting close, probably another hour of sanding the top before I can move on to finer grits. Apart from the upper horn, everywhere else is getting raised grain with water so I think it's at a point where it will take stain again.

The bowl sander made mincemeat of the pot recesses too, I used an 80 grit bobbin follow by a 120 and got through the paint in no time. That tool was such a good purchase.

On 1/25/2024 at 7:12 AM, Bizman62 said:

Back in the day when we bought this house we wanted to get rid of the old paint on the floor and hired a pro to do it with a big belt sander, the base was a square foot or so. And the belts: Starting at 16 grit he used several sequences before getting to 100 g for bare wood. The actual thickness of the old paint may have been somewhere around one mm or even less but the old skool floor paint was made to last.

Are you saying I should hire a pro with a belt sander? 

6 minutes ago, RVA said:

There was a very nice back hiding under there! 

yes, it's all lovely wood, nice and light too. Clearly 2005 was a year when it was still easy to find light-weight mahogany. 

After a successful neck removal yesterday, I made a start on sanding this evening. I used the bobbin sander with 80 grit to get a lot off the sides, especially the concave regions but I took the worst off the convex areas with that sander too.

The bobbin sander tends to skip over convex curves and leave loads of tiny ridges, that's why I didn't finish the job with the bobbin sander. I then used the random orbital sander to tidy everything up at 120g.

Then I got on to sanding the back. 80 grit abrenet pad, this took a long time - the finish on the back was seriously thick. If I took an 80 grit random orbital on full speed to one if my builds, I would be through the lacquer in seconds.

After at least 20 mins sanding the back, this is where it's at now

With a bit more sanding I think I should be able to get the faux binding to come up pretty nice, I think I will move up a grit to finish off though. I am conscious about altering the shape with all this sanding. 

I am getting the back and sides perfect before I touch the top because there is a lot of moving it around while sanding and I want to protect the top as well as I can.

This all escalated much quicker than I expected

I scored all around where the neck joins the body, inwards at a 45º angle to cut through the poly. although the finish had been sanded off the neck, it was still thick right at the join. Then I did about 15 minutes of iron. 

And pop, came out dead easy. Almost too easy...

3 hours ago, RVA said:

Very interested to see this. When my PRS "V12" finish started to flake off like a sunburn, they refinished it for free without affecting the "fade" stain. Quite impressive to me. 

before

after

That's a cool looking stain job, I think mine will be a little bit more conservative though. I think those sea shore style fades work a lot better with quilt than with flame. Ah I've done 3 guitars in purple over the last 10 months so I don't really want to do another one, also purple fades like blue does.

I've been looking around in the usual places on the internet over the last 6 months or so for a beaten up PRS that I could get for a refin project. Having struggled to find anything that a). was a price I was willing to pay for a knocked around guitar. b) seller was prepared to ship or was very local, I had pretty much given up but having just stripped and refinished one of my builds I had a renewed interest. So a few days ago something did come up.

It's a 2005 custom 22 Artist Pack, Royal blue with the wraparound finish (no faux binding) rosewood/abalone inlays. It doesn't look too bad on the face of it but all the finish has been remove from the neck, including serial number and there are lots of nasty chips along the edge. 

We can see the finish was clearly stripped with a heat gun which has caused some slightly bubbling either side of the neck pocket along with a visible seam where the top meets the body and lots of discolouration of the poly. There's a lot of fret sprout too which I'm assuming is down to heating the neck up, fortunately the frets are fairly level and not particularly warn and the neck appears to still be good and straight.

The royal blue dye has gone entirely and only a turquoise shader remains

I'm trying to decide what colour to make it, I don't really want to do blue again, while I like blue, it's not my favourite colour and it is the worst for fading, I'm also fairly limited on colours that go well with gold hardware. I am tempted by red or some kind of amber/tobacco. I am thinking of using proper nitro rather than pre-cat and doing a checked finish, although not on spec with PRS, I think that would be sympathetic to the ageing of the hardware.

I think given the state of the area around the neck pocket, this will be a neck off job to strip it properly so I'll start there.

I had a guitar in the shop a little while ago with that issue - the neck and middle positions weren't working because they guitar had always been left in the bridge position allowing the connectors on the otherside to become oxidised, eventually enough to prevent conductivity. 

A fine piece of sand paper (I used 320), put it in between the connection for the pup that isn't working and a couple of pulls on either side will remove the crud. 

This can be prevented in future by leaving the guitar in the middle position so both connectors are always touching

6 hours ago, RVA said:

Yes, thank you for the suggestion. I have the neck dead straight and the wraparound bridge decked. 

Since the Golden Age low profile is adjustable, I would presume it may have more height than the non-adjustable PRS wraparound as measure from the saddle notches, but since nobody ever provides that spec, I would need to measure to be sure. Which PRS bridge do you have?

Great thought about filing on the 12" radius. Thank you.

As I sit here and play it, I will say that it is plenty low enough for my taste. And it is buzz free with a dead flat neck. I might not even want it any lower, but IMHO you should be able to bottom out the strings to the frets and I want to KNOW I don't want it any lower. 

Concern for these details could be how many of us landed on this forum in the first place, I imagine!

I have both the non-adjustable wraparound on my Mira and I also have the PRS adjustable stoptail on one on my builds. 

If the neck is straight and the bridge is decked and you can't get good action, then the only real solution to fix it properly is to do a neck reset. It's actually quite simple to remove a neck, especially if it's a double cut model like cu22.

Have you checked the neck for straightness? If you've got too much forward bow/relief, then that will raise your action and straightening it out with the truss rod will make it more playable. I have to adjust the rod in my Core Mira from time to time, it usually bows a bit in winter. 

The golden age wraparound bridge from stewmac might actually be a hair lower than the PRS Stoptail bridge, I haven't got anything to measure to hand but I've got a PRS here and one of my guitars with the golden age and it looks slightly lower by eye. Re 12" radius issue, all you need to do is file the saddle slots for the outer strings down slightly and you can tighten that radius.

8 hours ago, RVA said:

A truly beautiful and inspiring build! 

Thank you mate.

Thank you chaps, much appreciated. 

Oh wow I've just seen your fix for the accidental hole on the back, bloody good! 

8 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

Knowing that roasted wood is more brittle than regular dried that doesn't surprise me. Roasting is done in moderate heat to maintain the strength but fretboards are thin so they may get thoroughly roasted pretty quickly. Roasting wood is delicate, it's easy to overdo but if you leave the wood "undercooked" it won't get all the desired properties. For guitar building or furniture making you don't need all the good stuff (like weather resistance) so a light tan may well be good enough in terms of less weight and harder surface. Or just nice looks.

Oh it's brittle alright, the fretboard is pale ebony though, just the neck is roasted maple.

I did my targeted sanding idea after pulling the frets - I made the middle slightly lower to make a much more shallow dip, then sanded down the length to make it an even surface again. It's still got a slight dip between the first fret and the nut but it's flat from the first fret to the 22nd so I think that will do. The dip is only about 0.004" at the nut so I think it will be ok with fret levelling 

41 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

Actually now that I remember it better it was just heat involved.

And it's not about poor contact, it's about stretching one wood and bending the other  like on a curved laminate.

yeah I said steam too, but actually I just meant heat. I removed the problem fretboard with the first neck using a regular iron with the water switched off so there was no steam involved.

That does things to the fretboard wood IMO, it just made it feel a bit more brittle after heating it up so I pulled the truss rod out of the other neck and bandsawed the good fretboard off. I'd have thought the roasted maple of the neck wood would have faired better under heat treatment though.