Sand Paper

I'm pretty sure you can rent spray equipment. Most contractor grade finishes are designed to be applied in numerous ways, including airless spray. The best thing to do is to just ask someone in a paint store about what you're trying to do and they will set you in the right direction.

Yeah, and standing in front of the amp...whait a minute..thats feedback Ssshhhhhh...

If you want to simply stain the alder black (ebonize) then I would grain fill everything, then simply mask the alder. Start finishing on the rest and get it sealed. Then I would remove mask and start staining alder part and seal that in. The sealer shouldn't allow stain into the maple parts and if you get it on your sealer you can simply wipe it away. If you want to paint the stripe solid black, like a black lacquer or something, i would do the exact oppisite. Grain fill everything, then mask everything except the alder, paint it, maybe seal it, then do the rest of the guitar.

At work we attack most painted finishes with a heat gun first and then run them through the chemical overflow to totaly clean them off. Be careful when using paint stripper.

I find that turning the amp up increases sustain.

Personally i'd play that guitar at any show anywhere as long as it was either black or white. Then again my hair is really long and i flip the crowd off and drink a lot on stage, so i guess i could play a pink guitar. I'll buy pink strings and see what happens. Oh, and as for that guitar, you could always literally beat it up (chains, sledge hammers, sawsall, etc). Broken down destroyed stuff is metal.

Someone should do a White Castle guitar!!! That would get you in the Cravers hall of fame for sure.

I'm a Kahler .

2 dates, one cleveland, one here in columbus. The Columbus one was better but i had injured my wrist in the pit in cleveland and was drunk the whole time to ease the pain and to be able to play. So anyways, we play, get off stage, Full Blown Chaos plays, and then Exodus comes on. I'm really drunk by then and we're using our all access passes to stand in front of the barrier and be right up on the stage. Lee and Jack were handing us Heinekens and the show was rocking. After their last song Lee comes up to us and says something but we cant hear, about 2 seconds later a crew member comes up and leads my bass player and I on stage. Before i know it i get Gary's V put in my hands and i'm out on stage not having a clue what to do here. Bostaph jumps off the kit and starts throwing sticks and picks at people, and Gary gets on the drums and just starts double bass and blast beats. I start shredding, Bostaph approves, it goes on like that for a minute or two and then i give the guitar back. After the show Exodus has one of their crew bring us a 12 pack of Heineken and then they came down and hung out and drank with us for about an hour and a half. That's about all there is to it.

I got to play Gary's V on stage with Exodus when we played with them here in Columbus. I'd never played a scalloped neck before and I found it really wasn't anything too different from what i was used too. That guitar was really neck heavy and unbalanced though, the strap buttons could have been located in a better place maybe. All in all it was a badass guitar though.

We run a Mr. Heater in the door jam of our spray room and exhaust to the outside when the fumes get bad mid-spray, no explosions yet. I'm sure you all are probably 100 times safer than we are and our building shouldnt be standing according to safety sheets and such but we're still going strong. I wouldn't worry about blowing up.

I'd think that adding more material might compound the problem. It won't be level either so you'd have to do some sanding anyway. I've never actualy tried this but it might work, some of you may have done this and know the result, i'm just speculating here. You could try spraying 100% thinner onto it in multiple coats and see if it doesnt soften up enough to flow back togeather and seal that crack. This would also open up the top layer and possibly aid in curing up the undercoats. I may be onto something, i'm probably wrong though, i've never experienced a cracking finish. Edit: I didnt read the post with the picture in it, i just looked at the picture. So maybe i'll try my method out if i ever run into a cracking finish.

Me being the semi-idiot that i am, i may have found some really fine carving knives and thought they were for inlay work. Regardless, these things are all different shapes: some hook shapes, exacto looking ones, chisel shapes, etc. They're all razor sharp which leads me to believe that they're for inlay work. They dont look like they're made to remove much material but rather to cut away sections of wood with extreme prescision. I'm not sure what they're for but they would sure make inlays a lot easier.

Find 1" stock of the wood you want and glue it up or buy a regualr body blank and plane it down.

So i found a set of inlay knives at work that we bought a long time ago and i forgot we had. Do any of you guys use inlay knives or mostly just the dremel bits? I'm rather excited because i've always been better using blades to carve small detail rather than the dremel.

If you leave wood to soak in methyline chloride stripper for a while the stripper starts to break down the wood fibers. Woods like mahogany and maple start to turn fuzzy in areas where the wood was softer. You can then lightly sand this and then stain the wood for some blotchy muddy looking crap. Sorry, that's all i know.

Did you radius the board before you put the frets in? I may be wrong but it looks a little flat in the pics and was wondering if you did that after they were taken?

Thats funny, almost all of the work we do is with nitro. Granted it's on furniture, but it's nitro none the less.

At work if a coat blushes we just sand it out with fine sanding sponges during the normal sanding between coats. With that being said, if it was your last coat you might be able to actualy polish out the blush using fine grit sand paper. Just a thought, might work, might not.

Use a brush on self leveling acrylic or something and then buff it out to remove any stroke marks. Thin it down if you get brush marks in it. Paint is fun.

You know, I was actualy thinking about a floyd nut, don't know why I posted the undecided part. It would make everything a lot easier.

Oh yeah, just so all of you super creative people can know what I have in mind.... Explorer body - 1 1/4" honduran mahogany with 1/2" black walnut top (uncarved/unbeveled) 25.5" scale 24 fret maple neck w/ gaboon ebony fretboard and stainless frets, ??"-16" compound radius. Schaller tuners Set neck construction, probably a deep tenon. 80's vintage Kahler 2300 series, brass cam brass rollers. Undecided on nut material Switchcraft jack and switch Hum - Hum pickup configuration, probably going with a Bare Knucle Pickup for the bridge if not both positions. 2 volume, 1 tone. Undecided on inlays, I'm leaning towards no inlays and just side markers.

The biggest problem I will have is a compound radius fretboard. The easiest part will be the finishing because that's what we do all day at work. Everything in between isn't a walk in the park but it could be worse, i could be doing metal working which i have no skill at what so ever.

I don't even remember when I decided to build a guitar, but I know why I did. I can't simply go buy the guitar I want, and if it were custom made for me, I could sell my car and still not be able to afford it. So I found this site and I've been reading all your posts about everything and using google to look up various things. I still come back to the same questions every time. Can I build a really good guitar the FIRST time? Is it worth doing time and money wise in the end? Do I even know how to build a guitar? One thing on my side is that if I get into trouble i know a very skilled luthier that is willing to help me. So here I am with enough honduran mahogany to make 2 explorer bodies, a load of black walnut, and a Kahler trem. It's all just sitting there and every day I think over in my head how to turn these things into my dream. I've worked with wood since I was 14, and I work with it every day now. I'm not a stranger to power tools, hand tools, sand paper, finishing, etc. I'm more than comforatable creating things from wood. I have zero drawings, no sketches, no plans. I'm copying a body of a guitar I own and copying a neck from another guitar that I own and "throwing" them togeather. I'll probably make plans eventually. I know the tools and materials I need to buy and I'm saving to buy them. Sometimes I think "Building a guitar isn't all that hard..." other times I think it could be the hardest thing I could have chosen to build. The answer is probably somewhere in the middle. There's no guitar I'm piecing togeather, or any practice "fixer-uppers" because that's a waste to me and I can't afford it. I've invested some money but nothing's happened yet, so I'm safe. You all make this look easy, and then again, I probably make what I do look easy as well, and most of the things I do I'm good at. I can be good at building guitars too... I hope. I've rushed none of this, I'm still chosing materials after 4 months!!!! So, as a guitar building newbie who wants his first guitar to be the perfect guitar (I already read a post where you all agreed it won't be) : Should I be doing this?

Nice choice on the conversion varnish, you should be very happy with that.