Frost Axe - The 'bargain' SG build

[Zandit75]

Haha, looks like you explain things badly, and I understand them even worse!!
All good, we're on the same page now!

[Simon Barden]

Yes, the neck angle looks fine.

I'd be tempted to round off the front edge of the body a bit more where Zandit's ringed it in red on the photo.

[cade711]

Great idea Simon. After having a quick search on SG's it seems thats the case more often than not? That edge usually tapers in to meet the join rather than being at a right angle from what I see

[Simon Barden]

Anything to reduce the step-like appearance. I'm going to do something similar on my EX-1, which has a similar, if slightly smaller step. Or, as I'm going a solid colour on it, I might fill the gap in with a bit of wood, like I think Frankenwashie did.

[cade711]

A wooden gap filler would be ideal I think though I'm planning a dye stain currently. Solid color is the back up option if I don't like the initial result.

[cade711]

Well, change to Plan B coming up.
Tested some colour dye last week on what I determined was a similar light wood but clearly that was not the case. Testers looked brilliant and soaked up a great deal of colour. The guitar body as pictured, not so much...
Just enough depth soaked in that it's not going to sand back again.
I thought perhaps it was over sanded/polished but I only took this to 320 for that reason. I did note that the wood had a bit of a chemical odour so perhaps before I got it some kind of solution was used to seal it?
I don't know, but onto a solid spray colour it is!
Colour testers and SG coat.

[Simon Barden]

Looks very much like it might have had some sanding sealer applied, as that stain hasn't really taken at all. Solid colour it is!

[wazkelly]

You could most likely still save it if longing for the stained finish, just requires a lot of sanding starting with 80 and then moving on to 120 grits and giving it a wipe down with a damp rag to see if any of the timber doesn't become damp as this can sometimes be a tell tale sign of filler.

You won't be the first or last guitar builder to find this out after applying 1st stain coat as it seems to be quite common for bits of filler to be lurking in the background only to be found when unwanted.

[Simon Barden]

If it's a thinned sanding sealer, then it will have penetrated quite deeply into the wood, so you'd probably need to take at least 1mm off each face to get to unaffected wood. If they've used an oil-based grain filler that contained a varnish (another reason the stain might not have taken), then again, you'd need to sand back until all traces of filler/varnish were gone. Again, this could be 1mm or so, so quite a lot of wood.

Waz, as the stain has only taken significantly in one spot - plus the edges which will have been most affected by any sanding back, I'd say that if it is grain filer or sanding sealer, it's been pretty much applied all over and in-depth, rather than the odd 'bit'.

Found out today that Brazilian Poplar - a light resonant tone wood (often used by the UK's largest electric guitar maker, Gordon Smith), has also been affected by the changes to the CITES endangered woods list and is no longer available. This Poplar guitar might be one the last of the breed!

[cade711]

This picture was after I had sanded back a layer and given it a second coat. The first basically just wiped around on the surface. I was concerned to take any more off as the control panel cut-out has been routed very deep and only left a thin layer of wood seperating the top side of the guitar.
Rare guitar wood? Sounds good to me! Haha I better not screw this up!