Adopted ES-1 Hollow Body Kit

[wazkelly]

Caught up with Tony late yesterday and was good to finally meet him in the flesh. Impressive guitar collection and an exceptionally neat well laid out work space too.

Gratefully adopted a false start build that Tony was no longer interested in as I have been contemplating a hollow body for quite some time and here is the box of goodies....

[wazkelly]

Found a few spare hours this afternoon to make a start on things....

Not a huge fan of Green guitars and wanted to see if I could save the top by sanding off the stain.


Back has some nice grain as does the sides. Thanks for tip Tony about the stringy nature of this timber as it definitely will need some grain filling.


Hmmm, 5 hours later and still not quite there. Yes, I confess to sanding through the flame maple veneer, if you could call it that. I swear the veneer seemed thinner than a waterslide decal and the level of glue used looks thicker than the timber.

The timber revealed underneath looks like some sort of ply and is quite light compared to the back but has similar grain patterns, just in the vertical plane whereas back is in a horizontal plane.

Hoping it may take a stain, if not it may just end up the solid colour combo that Tony has been sworn to keep secret.

Build # 7 and the missus is blowin' up already.....Let the fun begin.

[Dedman]

any plans laid out yet Waz?

we must have cross posted :P

[wazkelly]

any plans laid out yet Waz?

Hi Deddy, got a few ideas but keeping them to myself until I see how things turn out. Never done a solid colour before and may have to end up using rattle cans on the top.

Stock hardware for now and Tony gave me the PUP's from his Korean PRS Kit which were rated 8.15k for Neck & 8.86k for Bridge and just 2 wire which is fine as not sure how easy to fit push/pulls inside one of these.

[Adam Barnes]

Nice score waz,

[Wayne.Mumford]

Any idea of how thick(or thin) the veneer is Waz? I’m looking to do a re-veneer on my next attempt.
Wayno.

[wazkelly]

Very, very thin. My guess is less than 1mm including the glue.

I have gone at it pretty hard and where fret board end of neck meets the body there is now a small gap of about 1mm to maybe 1.5mm.

Not too fussed as this will be more of a player than a show pony. Might still come up with a way to hide or disguise that gap. Have a few thoughts rattling around inside my head.

Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk

[Simon Barden]

As long as you sand off the glue layer between the veneer and the top of the ply, it should take a stain. So lots of checking with turps or white spirit to make sure you've got it all. A good go all over the top with Goof Off should then remove the awkward bits that didn't make themselves known when the top was wet.

[wazkelly]

Been raining on & off the past couple of days and as I prefer to sand outside no more progress. Have wiped it down with turps a few times and goof off in a few areas near the binding but will have to wait until the final bit of flame top has been sanded off to make sure it is ready for some stain.

Needs a bit of grain filling so I will tint some natural timber mate the same colour as the stain to see how that turns out on scrap timber first as not sure how it will penetrate once fully cured?

[Guvna19]

looking at all your previous builds Waz, having no doubt this will end well and nice to watch how you go about the recovery

regards
guv