cazaron LP-1M Build Diary

[cazaron]

I've never felt more like I'm in the deep end.

Everything's starting this week.
I'm so excited.

This thread's going up early as a placeholder, but I will be checking in as often as I can throughout the build.

I have literally no experience building guitars... or woodworking... or soldering... or with care and delicate touch...
This is going to be so much fun.


First questions:

I've got the Tarkine Green Dingotone coming for the top, what do you think I should do to the back and sides? I'm thinking something darker to go with the green.

Cheers everyone and wish me luck.
I'm excited to have this experience and get to know the guitar that I love so much a little bit more.

[Kick]

Welcome Cazaron! Succes with your build

I think a dark color would be nice. I'm doing it myself as well on my LP-1MQ kit.

[cazaron]

It's here.

http://imgur.com/a/JdbkZ - Imgur gallery of the build.

It only has a few quick shots of the guitar fresh out of the box, but I'll keep adding to that gallery as we go.

I'm so excited.

Question:

For the back and sides, if I'm looking for a dark brown kind of finish, what should I get? Grain filler, a specific dingotone? I don't know too much about this kind of thing, so any advice is appreciated.
For reference, Tarkine Green is going to be the finish for the top.

Cheers, and I'm excited.
Cazaron.

[Kick]

It's up to you. For my build I will use Rustin's Porefiller and I'll try to give it a darkred color by adding waterbased inks. And after this has been dried and sanded I'll be using Tungoil for the coatings.

[Simon Barden]

Hi. First thing to do is to check the body and neck for glue spots. If you want to get a good finish with stains, then you must do a thorough check. You won't see them all by eye, you'll need to wet the body with metho or turps. You can use water, but you want to avoid getting the veneer too damp as it is only thin and the PVA glue holding it on can dissolve in moisture, and leave blisters. I'm emphasising this because Kick thought he'd spotted the spots by eye, so didn't wet the body and had some nasty surprises. Now you may be OK, but quite a few kits with veneer tops seem to suffer from this problem. The centre line between the veneer pieces often has a filling of glue. The glue acts as a barrier and stops the wood absorbing stain, so you end up with obvious lighter marks on the finish.

Using an adhesive remover like Goof Off, in conjunction with a light sand (careful here as the veneer is only 0.6mm thick), should get rid of the glue. If this leaves a visible gap in the veneer join, then fill it with a water-based grain filler like Timbermate.

[Kick]

I've learned my lesson Simon In my defense; I never had seen a gluespot in my life so when I saw some things (without wetting teh body) I thought these must be the gluespots. Anyway, very good advice for Cazaron!

[Simon Barden]

I've learnt from reading other people's build diaries that the wetting check is mandatory rather than optional. Hopefully when Adam meets up with the factory reps in Frankfurt he can get them to improve their quality and train their employees to not get glue on the tops.

[cazaron]

Thanks everyone for the advice. I will look into it when I start everything up this weekend.

Very much appreciate the advice.

[Simon Barden]

It may be that they apply too much glue and that with the thin veneer, it just soaks though from underneath. Certainly the glue pattern round the edge on Kick's LP doesn't look like it's a handling accident.

[stan]

Kit looks nice, go slowly and carefully and you should be fine. Once you have sorted the glue spots check neck fit as this is usually the next biggest potential issue. Yours drops in from the top, not push in from the front. Have fun