Nicco

Thanks Biz. I'll have a crack at it and see how it works out.

I took this week off work to give myself a mental refresh before a role change at work, so got stuck in. I've not quite finished, but it is up on the wall and makes noise through the pickups! Yew!! The pickup rings are made from the same tassie blackwood as the body. Next jobs, the neck is sitting slightly skew, which I'm not quite sure about why. I'll have to tweak the fit to square it up. The slots in the pre slotted nut are no where near deep enough, plus the nut is too tall. I also want to play around with the cavity covers as the magnets I was using aren't strong enough, plus change the screws on the truss rod cover.

Wow, this looks absolutely gorgeous. Fantastic seeing the work going into your jigs and templates too, they look as good as many people's finished pieces! Ha ha

I've got the tape off the sides, got most of the sanding of the sides done, but couldn't resist doing a mock up, so threw some tru oil on the sides and put all the hardware in place

Hey gents, agreed, great to see some more aussies here. Crusader, are you perth based? And thanks re: the design and colour on the guitar. I'm very happy with how it's going and can't wait to play the thing!

I've been working on polishing the front of the guitar body. Really happy with it, the blue really does look iridescent in real life. Just got a bit more polishing to do then I'll get to oiling the sides and back of the body.

Two steps forward, one back! Ha ha. Finished the fret level, crown and polish today, plus threw my first coat of finish on the fretboard, it looks stunning. Very happy with it. Body colour is coming along nicely. I snuck another tint coat in to help blend a few bits, happy with that now, so honing in on the finish line for it. I wasn't happy with the headstock logo though, it just wasn't what I wanted and looked a little rough. I've decided just to sand it out and start again.

Still just tinkering with the finishing. I've been sanding the coating down between layers now, trying to get it completely smooth for the final polish. Also started on fret leveling and crowning, hopefully going to finish that this weekend. Last thing on the go is the headstock logo. I got the white sticker from my work mate kids, but it looked way too stark for my liking. I've gone another east in the end, using aluminium powder mixed into a slurry with super glue. When I originally laser cut the logo, it left a slight depression, so now filling that.

Yeah, thanks mate. Very happy with how it's all coming together. And a massive thanks to all of you guys who gave advice on this as well. I learned a heap through this and there's no way I could have got it looking this good on my own.

I've been busy fitting up the binding over the last week or two. I made the binding from left over qld maple from the neck which I'm hoping will look really good when I've got the neck fitted up and all the timber flows in together. I've unfortunately made life a little hard for myself by routing the binding channels too early in the process, there was still a smidge of sanding left on the body but I hoped it wouldn't make too much difference to the depth of the channel. I was wrong, so I'm having to do quite a bit of fettling to get them flush. Lesson learnt. I'll definitely make sure the sides are finish sanded before I cut binding channels again. Gave everything a quick hit with turps last night to see how it looks and I'm absolutely stoked with it. Photos aren't doing the blue any justice at all; it looks almost iridescent in person!

Awesome, thanks for that. Very cool seeing how you did it. It's a little detail, but makes such a difference to the end look of the back.

Yeah, it's definitely blue! Ha ha

The guitar looks fantastic! To ask the dumb question though, how did you get the ledge for the cover plate to sit on? If you've routed it out from the top then pierced it to remove the cover wouldn't the ledge have been routed out? Did you add it back in later? Am I being a numpty? Ha ha

More progress this week. I ended up laser cutting a logo into the headstock. I wasn't happy with the contrast on the blue so sanded it out and tried again. Looked really good on the test pieces... but still just a bit mheh on the final piece. I've got a mate who's kids make stickers, so they are going to make the logo for me in vinyl. I've also sanded back the dyed surfaces and started with clear coats. The clear on the body mobilised a bit of dye, so it looks a lot more even than the headstock. Both to get coloured tint coat tonight hopefully.

Well, I'm committed to the colour choice now...

Hey guys, I've been busy as over the last couple of months and made good, albeit steady, progress. First up, I set up another test piece with about 6 or 7 different filler, dye, colour and finish combos. I've decided I'm going to stick with the blue like I'd originally planned. The way I've settled on is blue dye directly on the timber to work the grain, sanded back but leaving it heavier around the edges as a subtle burst. A couple of clear coats followed by a blue tint coat, then more clears over the top to be able to sand back and polish up. Very happy with how this looks in person. Thanks again for all the advice, really appreciate all the help with this. I've also completely finished the body now and got my first coat of tru oil on the back and sides, the tassie blackwood came up amazingly. Volute on the neck is now shaped, just got to finish sanding up the neck to get it all smoothed out (pretty lumpy at the transition to the volute), plus I've pilot drilled the holes for the machine heads and glued on a face plate that I've made from the body timber. Next steps are to thickness the face plate (I had to hand rip it, so it's about 4mm thick at the moment), dye and finish the top and face plate, fit and fettle the binding, finish sanding up the neck, then tru oil the bejesus of the rest of the body. Then set up and play! It's been a slow old process, but on the home straight now!

Actually, scratch that, just found the finish online as well. Water is the only clean up recommended. https://www.bunnings.com.au/cabot-s-250ml-clear-water-based-cabothane-interior-varnish-gloss_p1520401?gclid=Cj0KCQjwvr6EBhDOARIsAPpqUPFmStYis12rTjaGSLrg3T4gwpaHehGFaQmLoqgmRoPT4cF-4TS-bPsaAsghEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds&store=2706

Yeah, equal amounts. I'm mixing up 2ml total at a time, so not much. But yes, that's the ones I've got. I'll have to check the finish when I get home to see what it recommends

The dye I'm using reckons it's a concentrate (u-beaut brand, transtint and colortone look ridiculously expensive to get over here), and I'm not adding any extra water, that's all 1:1 with finish only.

Thanks again gents for all the help on this. I've been in and out of the shed all day playing with this and just getting myself frustrated! I tried doing black as a tint coat over 3 clear coats but the water based dye with the water based finish diluted out so much it looked like some horrible, spew green grey. I tried neatening up the blue tint coat test piece with another layer and made a mess of that as well, the finish was all streaky and varied in strength as a result of wiping on. I'm starting to wonder if the combo of water based dye and wipe on is giving me part of the heartache I'm getting at the moment? What sort of dye/pigment/voodoo do you guys use to get the colour in your tint coats? The image in my head is using a dark stain or grain filler to increase the contrast a bit, then, to steal the term bizman, have a blue glass layer over the top. I just lose any clarity I've got when the colour goes on. I also played around with the brown and honey colours, as well as sanded back the brown. It looks really good, but it's so similar to the back of the guitar, it just seems a bit same same to me. I also know why you guys don't want to lead me on colour, and appreciate that, but maybe I'm too close to see the forest for the trees; what colour schemes would you be using in this instance?

So it does, I hadn't picked up on that. Yes, it does look fantastic! So to make sure I'm understanding right, when you guys are talking about shader or tint coat, you specifically mean where the colour is mixed into the finish and not directly on the timber. Yeah? So that last blue test piece I did with the blue mixed into the finish over clear coats, that's in the vein of what you guys are talking about? Just want to make sure I'm not missing anything. I've also pulled out the colours I've got and gave them all a quick test run straight onto the timber (I know that's not what was recommended for final finish, but I just wanted to see the gist of them. I quite like the brown on the oak, but fear it'll make the whole thing too heavy with the blackwood back half of the guitar; not much contrast between the front and back. The honey colour is brown and yellow together and I don't mind that either. I've sanded a new section of scrap and put down a first clear layer to test a black to brown to honey burst. And I'll use the dark grain filler on it too. See how that goes. It'll probably take me a week or two to get all the coats on. Ha ha

Hey gents, thanks again for spending the time to share you knowledge on this stuff, really appreciate it. This is finally sinking in for me, I think I can see what you mean. There is some subtle grain in the wood, but there's definitely no figuring. I spose in my head before I started I thought the grain would react like figuring and the light and dark bits would accentuate, so there's where my first bit has gone awry. And I'm also now starting to get this bit too. My options as I understand it are either to accept the timber as is, or to do like you've said and accentuate the pores in it. I bought a little tub of ebony filler specifically to play around with this idea. This makes a lot of sense to me. With a child in my life in the last 15 months, I've learned a lot about how precious time is - I definitely don't have as much of it as I used to. I do really, really want the finished product to be something I'm really proud of, not just look like something I've whipped together for shits and giggles. With regards to the colour choice, my pallete has always been very much towards the cool colours, greens, blues and turquoises. I probably made a little bit too much light of the colour choice, it is actually a way I have wanted to go for a long time, and I always figured that would be a colour I would use when using a plainer type wood - not something super special to look at just plain. I spose that brings me to the next point, about reading the wood. When I started I thought this wood was going to be fairly ho-hum at the end of the day, and not look anything special and therefore, be a good candidate for just having a nice colour on it and be done with it. But as I've gone on it's started looking better and better to me; plus the colour didn't work how the picture in my head expected. I spose I was essentially picturing a quilted maple type effect, but along the lengthways grain lines of this timber, but that hasn't worked out. I think I can see that it hasn't worked quite how I was originally expecting, but I'm not quite sure which way it's telling me to go (and yes, I'm 100% on board with the concept of listening to the wood!!!). The colour isn't making it pop, it's just steam rolling it. I love the look of a black burst edging and let the timber sing (I'll chuck a photo below), but it doesn't look quite special enough to me to carry that on it's own. I could go something like a tobacco burst type colours, but I've never really clicked with that look. I've got to run, but I'll mull over it all a bit more, maybe try and find myself some more inspiration

Yeah, that was grain fill, 3 layers of clear then one with colour mixed in.

Yeah, definitely aiming to do a burst. Was going to put a dark layer over this, but yes, dark should probably go first in hindsight. As for mixing the dye in with the finish, that's exactly what I've done in that test piece above, it worked pretty well actually.