Bizman62

If you've applied glue all over the joining surface and get squeeze out all along the seam there's enough glue for an invisible joint. A quarter inch wide flexible glue joint is a totally different animal that has no use in luthiery. A huge amount of squeeze out can tell about several problems: The extra glue can fill the join and act as a stripe where no dye will stick A good tight glue joint can be stronger than the wood, plain dryed glue filling a gap is brittle and can crack There's quite some work to scrape the dried squeeze out by hand - dry glue can wear planer blades and similar expensive power tools prematurely! Wiping the excess off with a rag while still wet is also messy Glue isn't free, so using double the amount needed will double your glue costs!

Let's see... Yesterday was May 1st so I had other things to do. The workshop is open six days a week but after a day at work I don't feel like being in the right mood. There's quite some runs to deal with, also I think I'd better check the hardware fitting before applying the final layer. I fear for having to reroute the control cavity a bit!

My wooden ears could hear no difference! At times I thought there might be something but then that something disappeared. If there's any difference it might be in the attack. Even so it feels more about imagining a difference when the ears can't hear any. I wonder if the difference could be heard better with an overdriven pickup. Would extra gain accent such very subtle differences? Or would it hide any nuances into buzz?

That was the plan, already did it with the previous layer. Thanks anyway, someone reading this thread may find the tip useful.

After having read his comment I did the same with denaturated alcohol on my latest one. Worked pretty well especially in blending the burst with the bare wood.

Looks similar to the one I have but like @curtisa I don't have the jaw swivel system. Same brand, though, and cheap enough for me to have bought it as new - guess it must have been in the €20 range.

Hey, we're all here to learn things, either by asking questions or trying to find answers to questions posed by others.

I liked the sound but the tune wasn't too catchy. In fact it was so boring I stopped halfways in the A part... Nice calm tempo, though, maybe I'll add this to my go-to-sleep playlist. Just out of curiosity, I came to thinking that on the first picture the pick was deep in the holder but later it was just barely pinched by the edge. Was that to prevent grabbing, allowing the pick to flex enough to release the string?

The German half of me agrees and the Finnish half doesn't disagree. I prefer the golden pup covers as a) they match the hardware and b) there's not too much happening on the body so the decoration can be a bit shinier. Black would be another option as it matches with the fretboard. Maybe it's just me, but the cream looks like cheap 70's kitchenware.

Right. Note that we're also talking about applying a base colour directly on wood as an option, applying a clearcoat in between and doing the burst and other effects with tinted finish. Let's just think that you'd apply yellow on wood and after it's dry, apply blue. Obviously they'd blend into a dirty green. But if you apply a clear finish over the yellow and then apply a transparent blue tinted finish the colours will stay separated and look like you'd have a blue glass over yellow wood. Looking at your test spots, see how some colours accentuate the dark grain better than others. I guess that's because there already is the same colour which just gets amplified or a contrasting colour which blends with the dye for a darker shade. I wonder how the brown would look when sanded back, or the yellow and orange. As the red and blue don't seem to enhance the grain as much, I suppose yellow is the key element combined with another colour - even the green looks livelier than the black or red or blue.

No. There's 2k and there's 2k. The ones we're using are intended for industrial use, a proper spray cabin being a must. Professional luthiers in Finland seem to use the IL500 by Akzo Nobel, the local car paint shop sold the other brand after hearing we have a professional grade spray cabin and a teacher knowing the health regulations. Both are glass clear. As you said, 2k doesn't melt to the previous layers. The trick is to first apply a thin layer and sand it matte for a level surface - that serves as pore filler as well. The final layer is shot as wet on wet, allowing the 2k to harden for about half an hour between coats to prevent runoffs. As you know, unlike lacquer 2k doesn't dry starting on the surface, it hardens chemically instead. Thus you can let it solidify a bit before applying more for a uniform single thick layer which can be sanded and polished to the level shown in my photo.

"For dinner" like in "what do we have for dinner?"???

This one has automotive 2k (the type suitable to use with metal flakes) sprayed with a €15 spray gun. It's basically hand sanded up to 6000 grit (I may have used a random orbital sander for some grits, moist but not wet) and polished with a swirl remover fluid (the finest of a three bottle system) and finally waxed with Simoniz Classic "car and furniture" wax. I could almost read this page on it, the photo is not that great.

There should not be much glue in a good joint. If you get a little squeezeout all around when clamping, there's enough glue. In theory it's possible to apply too much pressure to push all of the glue out. That would be difficult on the sides, though, as there's no clamps. I took a look at several mahoganies at the Wood Database and found out that the volumetric shrinkage can be up to 17.4% depending on the species. As you haven't told we don't know how the wood was sawn which makes it impossible to tell if it's more about radial or tangential shrinkage in your case, anyhow if the wood hasn't been thoroughly dry when glued, be it because of poor preparation or extremely moist conditions, shrinkage may be part of the issue. You also didn't tell what glue you used. A Titebond join is basically stronger than the wood, but urethane glue can pop cleanly off because of a shock or in your case the string pull.

I fully agree. That's why I told you not bother.

I took a look at the weather conditions in your whereabouts and it said it's pretty wet all year long, the winter being short and cold and the summer long and hot. As no-one can tell how well the woods of the kit had been dried before cutting to shape, we can only look at the conditions after you bought it. If the wood was still green(ish) or the storage conditions humid it may have swollen to a tight fit in the wintery conditions when you glued it. The four months hanging on the wall with the weather becoming warmer has then dried the wood, widening the neck pocket and narrowing the heel - wood lives sideways more than length vise - and snap, crackle, pop you go.

“Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration,” said Thomas Edison. That's a nice approach! One could argue, though, that the resistor doesn't transfer sound equally to a <brand name> volume pot on 10. That one is not me! I dont' know if it would matter or not, but the wooden plectrum holder doesn't mimic the flex of the flesh of the fingers holding it. A wider slot padded with semi-soft rubber, maybe? Then again, we're after consistency so don't bother!

In the picture the colour looks pretty solid for one single layer. If you're after something similar to the greenish tele on Drak's post, you'd need much less dye.

Poplar can be a pita to sand level as such. I had my current build in a pretty nice shape after sanding and wiping with a wet rag to raise the fibres and resanding and rewiping and resanding. But applying the alcohol based dye apparently raised some grain so the bottom side now is wavy as the Atlantic Ocean!

Braille dots... That's basically interesting but other than looks it wouldn't make any difference with the classic playing style where the thumb is behind the neck. There's certain playing styles, though, where you run your thumb along the bass side of the neck and use it to fret a string or even two. My thumbs are so short and stiff that I can barely bend one to mute the low E string. Putting the dimples on the treble side of the neck would hit the hand more often. Then again, if your playing involves rapid movements along the neck you'll soon get a numb palm. We don't like to play on extruding fret ends, dimples would do basically the same. Your mileage may vary.

But did you have a clear layer under the dyed version, that's the question! It may make a big difference. Several layers with a low dye content should make the finish look like blue glass instead of clear glass over blue wood, also the dye shouldn't blend with the wood colour that way.

Have you thought about a blue burst? The way the greenish tele upper on this thread was made should work with blue as well, the problem being that it was done by spraying dye on wet lacquer and you're doing a wipe-on finish. This lead me to think that you should be able to mix some dye into the wipe on as well! The procedure would then be: a layer of properly dried clear wipe-on, or maybe even two for depth sand lightly between every layer a layer of very lightly tinted wipe-on, let dry properly more layers of lightly tinted wipe-on, even over the entire body or just on the edges for a somewhat stepped burst. For a burst I'd start with the outermost ring, increasing the width of the burst with every layer as I imagine that would add depth lastly a couple of coats of clear wipe-on to seal your artwork Note that when you're applying over a dried layer you can easily wipe any splashes away, or scrape and sand them after they've dried. For a burst you can also try sweeping towards the center to feather the inner edge. TEST ON SCRAP FIRST!!! I've not tried the above, nor have I seen it done. Logically it should work, though.

That's frightening! Always take my posts with a grain of salt, they're often based on something I've seen in the Internet which isn't the most reliable source. Then again, even professionals can change their opinions when they find out their knowledge is based on tradition rather than science.

Without the tiny notch where the end of the boards don't quite match it's almost impossible to find the seam! At first I thought it's a one-piece blank.

I'd say 1.4 cm doesn't make that big of a difference. When strummed, the strings move in 8 patterns and within every loop there's another 8 pattern. Basically, on open strings, there's a node (the crossing of one or several eights) right under the 24th fret which just happens to be the place where the neck pickup normally would sit. That node will mute a certain harmonic which affects the tone in a pleasant way. BUT: If you play mostly in the key of, say, G, the node will move towards the bridge!