willliam_q

Ah ok. Didn't realise that. Could the dye be reacting to the solvents in your top coat?

I agree I like the aggressive look of your guitars and would love to have one myself (if I wasn't building). In terms of finish, if you are constantly buffing or sanding through your finish maybe you need to spray more layers, maybe 4 or 5 coats. That way by the time you have tidied up the finish it will be nice and thin. It does mean you will need a longer cure time however. I'm about to go up now to start polishing up my new build, I've put a lot thinner coats of finish on the neck and am a bit anxious myself about sanding through.

I think a bathtub type route would be too severe. No reason why you couldn't route individual cavities and then recess a cover to cover all as if it was a bath tub style route you were covering...if that makes sense

Yep, endorsees are so powerful. When I was younger I always wanted a richie sambora strat to get the bonjovi sound . I never had the money but I'm glad I didn't buy now. When I seen bon jovi live they rarely used strats! I also have a prs tremonti se, I bought it because I liked the look of it and also because if tremonti was willing to put his name on it, the it must be good. It's actually not a bad guitar but I never did get around to setting it up properly. That is just 2 personal examples of how endorsees have affected what I buy. My current fav guitar is a tobacco burst strat which I love cause stevie Ray had one, except his was much better and more beat up!

Sorry to hear about messing up the finish, it looked great, what happened?

Thanks. I'm not sure it's possible to screw it up. It my first pearl paint job and I use a cheap suction fed gun. I'm very happy with it, it's just like shooting lacquer. The only thing I spray painted before this was a motorbike and that was a couple of years ago. That should be an indication of how easy it is.

I repaired the ding and painted the base coat. I then sprayed the lacquer: In the below pic you can kind of see the blue pearl effect I was after: To get the pearl effect I bought some blue pearl powder on ebay and mixed it in to the 2k lacquer. The effect is very subtle but nice and didn't come out as well in the pics as it is in person. My next steps will be to use 800-1000 grit paper to remove any dust that was in the lacquer. I will then spray the whole guitar and neck with a final top coat of clear lacquer as I don't want the pearl effect on the unpainted part of the neck.

I think the reason I go into a rage is more to do with the people around me not leaving things as They found them. If no one had been in the garage I may still have damaged my guitar but I wouldn't have gone into the rage that I got into. I have a lot of arguments with my dad for leaving a trail of destruction behind him in anything he does. Even though it is his shed :-)

In addition to what Swedish has said I would suggest watching loads of YouTube videos and also purchase Melvyn Hiscock's Make Your Own Electric Guitar. I would say that the majority of people on this forum that build guitars on a regular basis own this book. It's got great information for building your first guitar. As far as tips go I would say the most important aspect is to keep your workbench tidy and free of clutter. A lesson I learnt well this week when I dinged my guitar during the finishing stages due to having an untidy workbench.

Sorry Tim! Sarcasm doesn't always shine through on forums lol

Tim, I thought Ansil had done the same but looking closer I now think it is an optical illusion due to the angle of the humbucker recesses.

Does anyone else get into a wild rage when things go wrong? My bro had used the garage yesterday to work on his car. When he was leaving I asked him if he had tidied the work bench to which he replied that he had. Well today I grabbed the guitar from the house and walked to the garage. He hadn't tidied the work bench and I had nowhere safe to place the guitar. I held it with one hand and tidied the workbench with the other. When I was complete I grabbed my old towel and placed it on the workbench. As I raised the guitar to put it on the bench I caught it on the band saw table!!! I took a small gouge out of the corner of the guitar, I had had it perfect and ready for base coat and now this! I flew into an awful rage and started kicking everything in sight including the workbench. This in turn caused the guitar to fly into the air and come down on a screwdriver!! Thankfully the guitar body had landed back on the bench but I could have cried, I lifted the sledge hammer and was about to beat the walls of my tin shed when I caught myself on! So I took a few deep breaths and decided how best to repair the guitar. I sanded down the bad spots and filled with body filler. I then sanded smooth and applied another coat of primer. I have to say the repair is seamless and I am in a much better mood now. I just got so frustrated at having been put back another evening due to someone else using my garage (I know it was mostly my fault but if he hadn't have used the garage I wouldn't be in this mess ) Anyway rant over and tomorrow evening I hope to get my first coat of base colour! I just can't wait now till I'm strumming the life out of this guitar!

Excellent, I prefer science over voodoo any day! I was the kid at school who alway had useless facts about nearly anything (except sport) pitty I didn't actually learn anything useful when I was at school!

I haven't posted in a while because I didn't get any work done over Christmas as I originally had planned to do. I've now sprayed primer. In these pictures it's had it's second coat applied. Unfortunately I got a small run which you can't see in the pic so I will have to sand it back a bit but I don't mind too much. It's amazing the difference between first and second coat. I applied the first coat over the wood which had been sanded to 320 grit. Then today I sanded back the first coat with 600 grit and sprayed the second coat. The second coat looked like glass it was beautiful, until I got the run that is :-(. This primer is so white it could nearly do as the base coat, but I'll spray a separate base coat anyway. Has anyone ever used the primer as a base coat and just lacquer over the top? Excuse the mess in the garage. It's my dad's garage and he has a pile of junk in it. My bro serviced his car on Saturday which is why all the tools etc are a mess and there's a load of oil on the floor! I didn't bother to tidy up as he will be working again on Wednesday evening.

I use a hand plane. As long as it's sharp it will do a great job. It gives loads of control and you can see exactly what you are taking off. That will give you a nice flat bevel, if you want to curve it I would use a rasp.

That's actually a good tip when I cut myself I always forget about the superglue when in reality that's what it was originally designed for.

I did similar to my hand just before Christmas. I was lucky it was a chunk of my hand I took out, not a chunk of finger so it didn't affect my mobility. I didn't get stiches although I probably should have. Hope it heals well. Inlays sound good, are they for fretboard or as a body inlay?

Looks good! It will be nice to have it as a Christmas pressie to yourself, good timing!

It's a great way to repurpose wood and make some money for yourself at the same time. I like authentic relic look guitars so this is right up my street. Looks great!