JohnH's LP-1S

[JohnH]

A Bunnings selfie thread! Priceless. I'll make sure I remember next time. I almost took a video of my little man zipping up and down the aisles with one of those kids trolleys - he was trying to help me find shelving, and the only number he recognises is the number 4, so everytime he went past a box that looked like shelves and had a number 4 on it he'd come screaming to a halt and start shouting 'dad! dad! I found you a shelf!'

I totally failed to find any good lighting options (or, rather, ran out of cash), but did get some shelving that will double as a workbench. Will get that up tomorrow and try to sort out a dedicated space for my faux-luthiery

[Drummerdude]

Looking great John.. isn't it funny how you start with one kit kit and say to yourself that you won't need much to finish one and next thing you know you are building a luthier workshop.. my wife wants to kill me... ah but so much fun.. keep up the good work..

[wazkelly]

Hi John, the BGSFOS has some portable flood lights from around $10.

A few years ago I bought a pair for $30 that come on a telescopic stand and find them a bit too bright plus they generate quite a bit of heat but that may not be so bad this time of year in our nations capital. Generally find working directly under a fluro in my garage works good enough.

[JohnH]

Hey Waz,

Yeah those flood lights were what I was looking at. Spent all my money on the benches though, so I'll have to go back next pay.

I'd kill for fluro lights! The previous owners turned the garage into an extra living room, and replaced the fluros with a single bulb. I'm using it as my studio, but my eye-sight isn't great, and even with the brightest bulb I can find I can't see much once the sun sets. I have a few lamps which are ok for the drawings and printing I usually do, but for checking for surface blemishes, or anything that requires real precision, it's sub-optimal.

[wazkelly]

Years ago when we lived in the nations capital my old man was into building sailing boats and bought a portable 2 tube fluro light setup that had a typical 240v plug attached. Amazing how much light a pair of 40w tubes produces and the thing could be placed anywhere or hung from a ceiling.

If anything the floods are too bright and cast large shadows whereas fluro is softer and more evenly spread.

[phrozin]

coming along nicely

[JohnH]

Oh, good suggestion, thanks Waz - I'll look for those instead.

Thanks Phrozin!

[JohnH]

Nearly done with the 1200 on the front. Pretty happy with how it's going so far. Should be done with the front by next weekend, and can start staining. Going to try the back and neck in the Red Mahogany Stewmac Colortone.



I hired a skip this morning and spent the day clearing out the junk we were storing in the sunroom, so now I have somewhere to set up some work space. This may become a very time consuming hobby lol

[Kick]

Nice and already glossy

[JohnH]

Hope everyone's had a great Christmas/festive season!

Man, I've been a complete slacker on these guitar builds. 2017 got hectic, and somehow these side projects got relegated to the bottom of the to-do list. Anyway, I figure I'm on holidays for a few weeks and I should start off 2018 as I mean to go on (which is to say, building a lot of guitars/guitar effect pedals)

So, I got the kit out from storage and had a reassess. Part of the reason I'd halted work was because I just wasn't happy with the logo, and couldn't come up with one I preferred. Still haven't quite resolved that particular issue, but while I was spending hours staring at the headstock I noticed the veneer was sanded through in the bottom right hand corner. I'm guessing this was from the factory, because I'm 99% sure I haven't touched the headstock veneer (I was too terrified). In any case, I decided to do a little more shaping to remove the affected area, and while I was at it I got a bottle of Goof-off and removed a large glue patch which you can't see in the photo, but which was quite large and covered most of the centre of the veneer.



Also spent ages trying to get a red stain I was happy with, and in the end decided to go straight black for the body and neck. The hope is it will make the spalted front really pop. Also I couldn't decide on hardware options that would suit the kind of red I was imagining, but now I'm rolling with the idea of black hardware on the front against the spalted top, and gold hardware on the back against the black. Will post some pics of the stain-in-progress in the next few days.

The staining process has been fun. I stained the body with Colortone black after sanding to 320, and then I've been sanding the body in the same way as I did the front - a couple of thick layers of tru-oil over a few days, then wet sanded with tru-oil and increasingly fine grades of sandpaper. It's coming along well - currently on 600 grit. I added some Colortone black to the tru-oil just in case I accidentally sanded through anywhere, and it seems to be working really well.