Bizman62

Fixed cracks save precious wood so it's an ecological choice saving the planet! Good job!

All superlatives already used... What I started thinking is, does it ever happen that a piece falls off of your initials in the volute? Do you reinforce it other than with the finish you're using elsewhere?

In fabric industry the Martindale test is common practice and it sure isn't performed by hand! The testers are built to test several small spots so they're not what you are looking for. Burrow use this simple machine among others, wouldn't you think that would do the trick on guitars? Looks like something @curtisa could build from the leftovers of his strumming machine!

You can use the Danish, for the fretboard a couple of layers should suffice. Apply plenty, apply more where it seems to suck in right away. When all the wood is properly oiled wipe all the excess off and wipe clean again after ten minutes. Whoa! There's lemon/citrus oil that's pressed out of citrus peels. It's used for heavy duty cleaners like GooGone. Used on a guitar it could even dissolve your glue joints!

A lot depends on the grain of the wood. For smooth woods like maple a few coats may well suffice - think about gunstocks for example. Walnut is a bit coarser, with deeper grain. With a few coats only you'd still see the gaps. Remember, when using oils you'll have to wipe most everything off! That leaves only a fraction of a millimeter of buildup per pass. Even though there's some solids (=Poly) in the Danish Oil, it's still an oil finish. That looks like a good choice and most likely better than the lemon oil. Did you know that 'lemon oil' for guitars is basically a drop of mineral oil, lots of mineral spirit or naphta and some lemon scent? There's also 'pure' lemon/citrus oils that are very effective cleaners and not suitable for guitars at all!!! For a new fingerboard I'd rather use pure BLO. The hydrates and lemon oils are more like cleaners that can somewhat maintain the lustre of the surface.

I like it too. As long as we can't change the design of the player, there's certain aspects in the guitar to take into account - balance, weight, contours etc. Your new body looks like like you've thought about all of these. The influences can be seen but you haven't gone where the fence is the lowest.

I'd say that's a good attitude! Every time I see Dan Erlewine take a stone and a hammer to make dents on that freshly repaired and repainted vintage '53 Tele it hurts my soul. Same thing with the scraping he does for faking cracks. Oh come on! Cracks are cracks, scratches are scratches! If he wants the finish have cracks there's ways to crackle the finish naturally if the intention is to make the surface look old. Drawn cracks look drawn, you never can duplicate what 60 years of shrinking does to paint. As you said, EVH gigged with that guitar for 6-7 years and despite cases and stands to keep it playable things happen. Sweat, dirt, sleeves and arms make a mildly abrasive and dissolving cocktail that can't be mimicked by towing behind a car. That subtle wear can be accelerated a lot with sandpapers of various grits but one should take into account that even the finest grits like 2000 are a long way coarser than the arm of EVH, bare or inside a sleeve. Speaking about using a pebble to create a dent: I once laid an unopened ½ litre can of beer aside of my desk. Our house isn't the cleanest but we don't use outdoor shoes inside so the pinewood floor looked dusty at the very worst. Well, for some reason the can tilted and tipped on the side. Our cans are thicker than the American ones so you can imagine my face when I lifted the can: It started squirting beer all over the place from a tiny hole on the side! No way I could ever replicate that no matter how hard I tried! Same thing with relicing, you never can duplicate a once in a lifetime oopsie. But you can speed the aging process by multiplying the wear and tear factors ten- or hundred fold. That's what they do when they test the durability of fabric or other surface materials. Heat, moist, UV light and mechanical wear magnified will speed the aging process of anything.

Outside the (shoe) box thinking...

I very much appreciate that you took the time to show the finished product! Sometimes these just take some more time than expected... HINT: If your guitar is of open pore design and you get wax into pores, simply use a brush (clothes/shoe brush type) to polish the pores. If it works for waxing shoes shiny, why shouldn't it work for other live surfaces? That's what I thought in the same situation and the result was shiny!

Using a jar is a clever idea should you ever have to leave a half full glass for other tasks. Screw the lid on, put it into the refridgerator and enjoy when you're free to continue that tastiful task.

As it says there it's oil with Poly and Turps. If you mix it yourself you can control the amount of "Layer on Top" or rather how fast that layer builds up. That 'Danish Oil' is basically the same stuff I mentioned earlier. And if you want it to dry faster, why not mix the linseed oil containing 'Imported Chemical Dryers' (which can actually mean pine turpentine!) with PU Varnish which should also be easy to get? Anyhow, as a ready mixed single product the Danish Oil is a good choice as it gives both the looks and feel of oiled wood and also some mechanical protection against wear and tear. Depending on how shiny you want it you can apply as many coats as you wish. More coats will fill the pores, a dozen or so may suffice for a level surface which can then be buffed to at least a nice sheen if not glossy.

That really looks nice, I like how you managed to get such large cracks that don't follow any given direction or pattern. I revisited a couple of instructions and actually, if I understood correctly, a thin top coat might work even better as the entire process relies on the top coat drying faster than the base which should not be fully cured. Heating the top coat makes it dry even faster which may explain the partially violent crackling. Well done!

Your workmanship is outstanding and does homage to the pretty woods! That said, what kind of filler, if any, did you use for the bottom? Those dimples are quite visible, if I may say.

Yes. You touch the metal strings which sit on the metal bridge which sits on the top with a ground wire pinced in between. Thus you'll be grounded to the same potential as the electrickery which eliminates hum. Use a thick enough multi-thread wire, spread the end to a fan for maximum contact. Some even put a piece of copper tape on the wood under the bridge to maximize the metal contact area. That might be recommendable if the wood is so soft that the wire would dig into it. In guitars with a tremolo system going through the body (like Strats) the ground wire is usually connected to the spring bracket. And in guitars with the bridge standing on posts like wraparounds and Tune-o-matics the wire goes to one of the post holes.

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@komodo you obviously haven't watched the Rosa String Works videos! Wick some water into the crack and let it suck the Titebond in. Maybe using a tiny drop of water as a thinner for the tightest cracks. A suction cup might also help. But you're right, thin CA will also wick in.

That's a solid plan. You can apply wax on the oiled surface for added strength and shine. I've made my own mix of carnauba, beeswax and pine turpentine, but any wood wax that doesn't contain silicone will do. Also, if you find that the oil finish isn't durable enough, you can apply the poly mix afterwards - it might even blend with wax as the formula is pretty similar but wiping with mineral spirit/turpentine may be recommendable just for sanity and cleaning. The poly mix will still have that woody feel unless you wipe on a hundred coats.

Oil is nice to touch, it has a very "woody" feel. It also adds some protection, the surface is a bit harder than bare wood. And it repels moisture to some extent. But it's not as wear resistant as poly. However, should something happen, it's relatively easy to patch unlike hard finishes and it can be completely redone when needed. I've finished a couple of guitars using Osmocolor oil wax. It's meant for flooring among less abrasive uses but it doesn't build a thick protecting layer you'd see on gym hall floors or bowling tracks. Our kid's room lost most of it during a decade or two, but our bedroom floor is still intact after 25 years. No shoes... I've also used Crimson Guitars Guitar Finishing Oil on at least one full guitar and a couple of necks. They have two versions, penetrative and building. For what I know it's basically a similar blend of oil, poly and turps as I described above. You heard the man! I took a look at Aliexpress and indeed you'd get a 20 cm/8" long radiused block, a full length neck support caul and a set of radius gauges for a few tenners. Hint: Adhesive sandpaper can be difficult to find in suitable grits/lengths/widths. Lay masking tape both on your block and on the back of the sandpaper of your choice and glue them back to back with cyanoacrylate glue. Masking tape is designed to hold without creeping and detach without leaving sticky residues.

No, you can use any tool you think will do the job. Hand planes have been successfully used for creating a radius, a sanding beam should do the same with some more strokes. With a dedicated jig you can even do it with a handheld router! All you need is a tool to remove material and a gauge to tell if your radius is off. There's printable radius gauges all over the internet. That said, a radiused sanding block is much nicer to use especially if you're not familiar with your tools. I've never cleaned the wood with solvents before applying oil but there may be wood species that would like it. I guess that it's for making naturally oily wood absorb the oil more uniformly. Wood will suck as much oil as it can and it varies from spot to spot. Applying poly after the BLO can be problematic if the oil hasn't cured properly. As you know, nothing sticks to a greased surface! Then again, you can even mix poly with BLO and apply some turpentine. 1+1+1 is a common recipe although not stone carved. Basically the result is a Minwax style wipe-on finish which builds up quite fast for a mirror like gloss. More about that: https://thewoodwhisperer.com/articles/make-your-own-oil-varnish-blend/ and https://www.woodmagazine.com/materials-guide/finishes/make-a-home-brew-wipe-on-finish. If you're uncertain about which of your local polys work with BLO, choose one that already contains it. Same with turps, if the poly says it can be thinned with turps, you can't go wrong. When you're oiling wood, always remember to wipe the excess off! Wipe plenty until there's no dry looking spot, keep rubbing until it becomes tacky and wipe everything off with a clean paper towel. Wait for some 15 minutes and wipe any sweating oil off. Let cure for at least several hours between coats. An oil layer on the very surface will never dry, at least not in our lifetime!

Me neither. Do I see right, are there a couple less serious looking cracks as well? If so, it seems like the blank you got was not properly protected a the ends while drying or that a longer bit at that end should have been cut off. One trick for hammering in nails: Blunt the tips with a couple of hits of the hammer! A blunt tip will crush the wood in front of it while a sharp tip will act as a wedge. A short risk analysis might be of help: First of all, all fixes in the heel area will be hidden so you're free to do anything! Wicking glue in might be enough, a Titebond seam is known to be tougher than the surrounding wood A scarf joint after gluing will certainly be strong enough for any use. A set neck will support the glue joint as well. A bolt-on neck can easily be replaced if your repair attempts fail in the future. If you build for yourself that would serve as a test lab to see how good your fix is.

Woodworking came along at school in grade three. It appeared that the fumes whiffing from the open painting room weren't ideal for my allergic asthma so in grade four I sat alone in the classroom equipped with a knife and a piece of pine slat. So I whittled pointy sticks with a handle and called them letter openers. I can't remember having seen any of them at home... Later I learned how to carve a spoon with a knife so that's not the issue. Getting all flat surfaces flat and round surfaces round and all curves curvy instead of a general lumpiness with humps and bumps is another thing.

Or rather, sharpen them afterwards! It shouldn't be too difficult: https://www.highlandwoodworking.com/careandsharpeningofrouterbits.aspx

You succeeded well in directing the sharp ends! Leaving the edge parallel to the centerline to get the drops perpendicular was a clever idea.

Should I ever try something like that, the end result after fine sanding would look pretty much similar to your first two pictures after gouging! So many curves, directions and other tiny details... Well, those who can, do. Those who can't do, sigh.

I tend to hum. Does an earworm count?