Drew's ES-5V first (ish) build

[Simon Barden]

Small bits of tru-oil rag won't combust. You need a really big bit soaked in tru-oil or linseed oil to get anything like hot enough for it to catch fire. And unless you've spilt a whole large bottle of the stuff and wiped it up with a whole T-shirt, then that isn't going to happen.

Tru-oil and linseed oil dries by oxidising (which creates heat), rather than evaporation of a solvent (which cools the finish down), but you need a lot of it, insulated by being in the middle of a bundle of rag for the temperature to rise much above room temperature. YouTube videos always show a whole bucketful of soaked rag, which is not a real-life scenario for the kit guitar builder.

[DarkMark]

Good, I was a bit worried about the bucket being so close to the guitar.

[blinddrew]

Good to know, thanks Simon.
The guitar abs bucket live on opposite sides of the garage normally but I think we're approaching time for the guitar to move indoors.

[blinddrew]

Maybe not quite yet actually.
Guitar-shaped object:

But there's a fair bit of work to be done filling these gaps before we get any further:

In the meantime it still needs:
A couple more coats of 50/50 on the front and back of the headstock.
A few more coats of 50/50, a 3000 sand and then more coats on the scratch-plate.
Electrics in and placed - 'should' be pretty straightforward, would people advice soldering the ground cable to the tailpiece or just relying on friction?
Steel wool on the fretboard to take the shine off (and hopefully make the buggered up finish a bit less obvious).
Attach tuners.
Put the new nut on and then mark, drill and attach the truss-rod cover. This might be a bit awkward as the new bone nut is not as thick as the plastic one so the shelf on which it sits is going to stick out a bit. I'll have to have a fair old play around with things to get this to work neatly I think.
Finally decide if I want the scratchplate (I think I probably do), and if so, bend and drill the bracket, drill the mounting holes, then try and find a small enough nut and bolt in my tool boxes.

[Simon Barden]

You could look around for another bone nut. You can get them in a variety of sizes if you do a bit of searching.

Not sure about soldering to the tailpiece directly. It could be quite lumpy. Maybe solder it to a thin washer that's big enough for the strap pin screw to go through?

[blinddrew]

Hmmm. Good thinking. Will check aforementioned toolboxes...

[Fretworn]

Shiny! Nice!

[blinddrew]

2 steps forward etc...
At some point this week whilst tidying up the next joint I've managed to spill a drip of oil onto the body and it's trickled all the way down the side.

So this weekend is not going to be about putting the electrics in and starting to look at the nut, it's about sanding and oiling again...

[wazkelly]

Bummer.

I'm absolutely paranoid about those damn runs as you get near the finish line. So time consuming and spot fixing doesn't always work too well.

Hope it doesn't set you back too much.

[blinddrew]

It'll just be a day to two, it just shifts things back a week and, to be frank, I'm getting a bit bored with sanding and oiling now!