ihocky2

This is a pretty basic question, but I have not seen it asked yet. Do you have a PRECISION straightedge to check the flatness of the fretboard and to make sure the frets are level with? The majority of rulers are not straight enough along the edge to accurately check for level. You need one that is precisions ground. Also, be carefull when sanding your superglue fills. Make sure you only take them level to the board so you are not creating dips in the fretboard and that you are not changing the radius.

A big help before removing the electronics, take a lot of pictures of where the wires go. Unless you are very familiar with wiring guitars, the pictures will be a tremendous help.

I personally like the vinyl tape instead of the paper tape. It bends and flexes and lot more smoothly.

Look on eBay and Craigslist for tools. There are a ton on there at great prices. Also look for factory refurbished tools.

I would use a maroon scotch-brite pad to scuff it up. I just like them better than sandpaper for scuffing, they don't load up as bad. Steel wool can leave steel fibers in the wood and over time they can rust from moisture in the wood and stain the neck.

I think my favorite myth/voodo is "Wood doesn't matter to play heavy metal, just put in EMG's and turn the gain to 10".

I absolutely love when do build these types of guitars. This one looks awesome. Neuwielers was a really good beer too. I grew up five minutes from their brewery. The building still stands and is pretty cool looking, unfortunately it is sitting vacant for a few decades.

With an HVLP gun you are not as worried about the air pressure going into the gun as much as you are the pressure at the air cap. Without getting a gauge to test pressure at the air cap it is all guessing. But for my mini HVLP gun I have the regulator mounted directly before the quick connect to the gun. When I have the trigger pulled the pressure drops from the 80PSI coming out of the tank to about 5 to 10 PSI running through the gun. The pressure you want to watch is the pressure with the gun operating. That is your working pressure and what breaks up the paint. HVLP moves a TON of air, so your pressures will be really low with the trigger pulled and really high with the trigger closed. If my tank pressure is below 70 psi I get crap atomization because I don't have enough air coming out at the air cap to break up the fluid. I hope this helps.

Generally the first things to try with orange peal are reducing air pressure and/or increasing gun to work distance. A larger tip will only get you more fluid, good for dry spray issues, but orange peal is typically an air pressure issue. Those are the first to things to try, after that you can move onto other factors. The smaller tip provides better atomization, so you don't need as much air pressure to break up the fluid. When setting up for new products I usually start at the bottom of the recommended air pressure and increase until I get good atomization and stop there. I used to start at the high end, but learned quickly it took too long to get a good setup until I got rid of orange peal.

Scuff and paint is all you need to do.

Not all brands, but a lot of them contain some sort of filler in the sanding sealer as well. A lot of times it's soap. This is simply to aid in sanding the base level, it is generally not recomendded to build thickness with sanding sealer because it does not cure as hard as the lacquer does. It is basically only meant to do as the name implies, seal the wood and is easier to sand than straight lacquer.

Did you sand by hand or use power tools? The scratches are more like swirl marks you would see from a machine, not the straight scratches of hand sanding. Either way, polishing by hand with swirl remover is not going to be very effective against 2500 grit scratches. Until recently I would sand up to 2500 grit and then use rubbing compound with a small random orbit buffer and a wool bonnet to completely remove the scratches. Even with rubbing compound and a wool bonnet, I had to sand to 2500 grit they would not remove 2000 grit scratches. So doing it all by hand, you are starting polishing at too fine of a compound.

Please give some details as to your polishing stages. What grit papers did you use, hand sand, orbital sander? What compounds did you use? How were the compounds applied, buffer, random orbit buffer, hand rubbed? We can guess at the problems but more information lets people know where your issues happened.

I'm glad this topic came up because it is one I just ran into a little trouble with. I had a bound neck that is painted, heavily. Primer was not a big deal and I feather that out easily. Then I did a marble paint job with candy over it. Between the sealer, the black base, the marbelizer, and 5 coats of candy that left a pretty thick tape line. I couldn't scrape it back because to feather that heavy of a line down I would get back down into the light colored sealer coat and it would show through. I can bury some of the line in the clear coat and feather it, but the tape line is still visible if I don't feather it out. Any tips? The other one that is even worse was the binding on the headstock. Once painted I couldn't see it so scraping back doesn't work so well, and I still had a pretty heavy thickness of paint. Taping works, but I still had a heavy tape line. The main problem comes from the heavy build of the candy coats.

Looks killer. How will you do the binding like that. I'm sure you want to spray the color once the binding is attached, but I always have trouble taping off along the top curve, and it's never that thin.

I also like the back of the neck. As for the blotchiness, it looks like uneven coverage. Candy colors are tought to spray in the first place because they show dark and light spots from uneven coverage. Spraying candys from a rattle can is even tougher because you do not get as even of a flow from the nozzle. Nor do you get as nice of a spray pattern or as much material for more even passes. I only did my first guitar with candys from a rattle can and it look about the same as yours. That was the last time I did candys from a spray can.

I saw something on TV showing them making a Gibson or an Epiphone guitar and it went straight from lacquer to buffing once dry. But there are several things to consider. These are professional painters with a set mixture that does not change. The guns are tuned to run that paint and that paint only. Gibson uses large buffers with bonnets that are easly 24 or 36 inch diameters and 6 inches wide. Few people have buffers of this type without being serious into building. A buffer of this type makes it easier to polish without sanding. They also have people whose only job is to run the buffer, so they have a slight idea about what they are doing. Gibson is not concerned with the best finish possible. They are concerned with profit. Level sanding, even if only using 1200 grit before polishing (the red compound will easily remove 1000 grit, usually it can do even coarser) takes time. Time is money. If people will pay $1200 for a guitar that was not level sanded, why spend 2 hours level sanding each guitar. Gibson is not a great example either since they are known for having tool marks on their guitars still. Take a look at any factory guitar in a raking light and you'll be surprised at what you see. Almost none of them level sand, in a raking light you can see the surface is not perfectly flat or smooth. But in 95% of the lights you'll never notice it. Next time you're in Guitar Center or Sam Ash or whoever pick up any guitar and hold is so you get a raking light and you'll be amazed at what you see. $1000+ guitars that do not have as smooth a finish as it appears, buffing marks, visible glue lines. But all of that is made up for with great advertising.

I'm not trying to make an arguement, and I appologize if it came off arguementative. More so that I don't want people misreading information in the future and just haphazardly using wood filler and having major problems with it. You have seen as well as I have the amount of times that it has been explained on this board the difference of grain filler and wood filler, and I want to make sure that this information does not create it's own blanket statement that you can just use any wood filler on the shelf. I have used the Elmers wood filler and have not noticed a difference in it versus the Minwax stuff other than it is not stainable. Maybe I used a different product by Elmers, but I am only speaking from my experience. If you are having great results with the stuff, than more power to you.

Another question is how heavy of a cut were you taking? You don't really want to remove more than 1/16" at a time. You can get away with 1/8" some times but on end grain and transitions thinner cuts are a lot safer.

My concern is not so much the method of thinning but the resulting product. Thinning wood filler to make it easier to cover a corner joint or a nail hole is one thing. Using it as grain filler is another. The finishes that are acceptable on wood products and an acceptable finish on gutiars are on two different levels. Guitars are finished to the standards of custom painted cars, even a factory car finish has more orange peal than would be acceptable on a guitar. Having grain filler shrink back and reveal the grain down the road would be a big dissapointment on what could be a favorite guitar.

I would stay away from thinning out any wood puty/wood filler to make it thinner to spread. It is still wood filler and still has the same draws backs, possibly more with thinning it out. Wood filler is known to have adhesion problems over time. Wood filler is also known to shrink back within a few years. I would spend the little bit of extra money and get grain filler or else use epoxy or super glue.

It will build extremely fast compared to lacquer, so it takes far less coats. For polyurethane I usually spray 3 coats, let it dry, level sand and then 1 or two flow coats. Then final sand and polish. Be aware that polyester sprays are EXTREMELY HAZARDOUS to your lungs.

Overall you did a nice job with this build. Personally I liked the color of the natural walnut better and would have skipped the stain. I do like the aged look to the hardware though. I like that you used walnut as well, I think it is one of the most underated tone woods around. Now we just have to keep it a secret among the community here so Fender or Gibson don't jump on the bandwagon. It could be just the pictures, but the third and fourth picture look like this has either a lot of minor orange peal, or else when you sprayed the nitro it raised the grain and made the finish fuzzy.

Very nice build. I like the concept of the 9 strings. I also love the color of the front.

You might have better luck checking on the Kustom Kulture Lounge.