Made a start!

[johnnyrotten]

Did my dry run on Sunday and all looked good.
I took a saw to my headstock and also repaired a ding in the bottom of the neck. Spent the rest of the day sanding and am now getting close to adding some stain.

[johnnyrotten]

Spent last weekend sanding & sanding. Turned out it still wasn't enough!
This weekend I started adding some colour, the pics are early on, it's looking better now. I used UBeaut water based stain for the front & back & Feast Watson jarrah for the sides & neck. The water based dye is very forgiving but it does raise the grain a bit. I found it wasn't a good idea to follow the instructions to wet the surface first, it pulled the grain too much. It worked much better to add the dye to a dry surface in sparing amounts & really work it in.
I was a bit disappointed when I first added some colour to the neck, the 2 different types of wood either side of the skarfe joint absorbed dye at wildly differing rates making the joint really obvious. I always intended going really dark so after a few more coats it doesn't look so bad now.

I'll leave the dye to dry for a few days now before glueing the neck to the body. I'm thinking of using tung oil for the final finish, i've used it on some cigar box project & liked it. Has anyone else used it?

[johnnyrotten]

Started with some oil. Decided on Tru Oil in the end. 3 coats so far, several more to go but I think i'll try a light sand with some 1500 wet & dry before the 4th coat.

[Sonic Mountain]

Great contrast. Nice looking all over.

Yeah I have also found it difficult to keep things even doing a stain. Putting a clear on really does change things though and it ends up looking fine.

[johnnyrotten]

i've had this kit a few weeks now and only just realised that the body has a hole for a 3 way switch & a 3 way switch was included in the kit but, as a ES175 copy, the guitar has only a single pickup. Surely the switch shouldn't be there but i'm going to have to include it to fill the hole. Any ideas?

[Simon Barden]

The switch hole obviously shouldn't be there. What pickup do you plan to install? You've got a humbucker-sized mounting hole. To make use of the switch hole, you could install something like a Seymour Duncan P-rails, and fit a suitable selector switch in the hole (not the supplied 3-way switch) for Humbucker, P-90 and single coil sound selection.

https://www.seymourduncan.com/wiring...tions,1-pickup

Alternatively, you could fill in the hole, spray a dark opaque sunburst over the top (similar to the picture) and hide the repaired hole under the finish. You'll need to try and find a spray that is compatible with the Tru-Oil you've already applied, so try out on some test wood first.

[wazkelly]

Maybe add in a push/pull switch to coil split a humbucker or to do series/parallel?

[johnnyrotten]

Hi Simon,

Thanks for the advice, I wasn't aware of the P-Rails. I've had a look at the SDuncan videos & it looks like I would need a 4 way switch for a single PRail so i'm guessing some sort of rotary switch.
It would the guitar an individual. I had planned to go bog standard on my first build but what the heck!

[Simon Barden]

No, it's an on-off-on 3-way. Sorry, I didn't check the link and it didn't show the wiring diagram for a single P-rails. Here it is. https://docs.google.com/gview?embedd...ail_3mt_1V.pdf

[johnnyrotten]

Perfect, thanks.