Woltz's TLA-1Q

[wazkelly]

Fingers crossed.

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[Woltz]

Well it appears that the veneer wasn't meant to be. Unfortunately even though I was very careful with sanding back the clear coat I sanded through the veneer.

So gone with the veneer altogether to reveal the ash body underneath.



I am disappointed because the quilt looked fantastic but it's my first build and I'll learn from this. Anyway, onward now and need to decide what to do from here. I've also noticed this morning some fine cracks in the nitro clear on the back and near the neck pocket which I wasn't going to worry about but now I might address it depending on the route that I take.

[wazkelly]

Upside is you have some nice ash grain to work with. Looks like a few glues spots still there in a few places.

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[christodav]

....a bit of yellow dye, clear, black guard and done.

[JohnH]

Yeah, that's a bugger, but the grain is nice so at least there's a silver lining?

[Woltz]

Upside is you have some nice ash grain to work with. Looks like a few glues spots still there in a few places.

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Yep the grain is ok. I'm tossing up between dying the front like the back or stripping everything back and doing a solid colour.

Yeh there is a couple spots left because I ran out of time but I'll get the sanding of the front finished off next weekend.

....a bit of yellow dye, clear, black guard and done.

Yellow and blue would be good from the perspective that I'm an Eagles supporter but I've never been a huge fan of yellow on guitars and cars etc.

[christodav]

Not yellow in your face yellow, just enough to enhance the timber.

[Woltz]

Can someone who has done a TL kit confirm whether the front of the guitar has a slight arm cut from the factory? Yesterday when briefly working on it I noticed that it tapers off slightly to the top corner where your arm would sit. I never noticed it before now and wasn't sure whether it was there from factory or whether it happened when I removed the veneer.

[ILRGuitars]

I did the same kit as you and there is no arm cut. However, I didn't remove the veneer.

[Woltz]

So after my previous post where I removed the veneer I thought quite a bit about which way to go from there. In the end I decided that I'd have a go at a solid colour finish.

So more sanding to remove the lacquer and most of the colour from the rest of the body. Then grain filled and now ready to spray some primer.





All primed up.





Then I start block sanding the primer to make sure it's flat before the colour. Then many many swear words when I looked down the body towards the neck pocket.....



Somehow I had managed to concentrate on one area too much while sanding and unintentionally create like a mini arm cut. Pulled out the calipers and measured the difference to check it wasn't my imagination.

Now I'm thinking, what do I do now given I don't have that many tools. I contemplated things like thicknessing the body (assuming I could find somewhere that had a thicknesser) and then gluing on a cap. In the end I pulled out my hand planes first to have a go at getting it close to level and see how things went. After some careful work with the planes and then a little sanding it was looking very close to level again.

I then test fitted the control plate to check the clearance for my switch. As I suspected I no longer had enough clearance. So out with the dremel and increased the depth of the cavity slightly. Neck pocket at this stage I'm hoping won't need any modification.

Time for some primer again and then sanding.

All sanded and ready for colour.





And here's the colour (it is Ford Nitro Mica).





It's been a frustrating couple of weeks and even now, despite putting a lot of work into the body, I have a couple little blemishes on the front but I have decided to accept that. It's my first attempt and I'm doing the best I can with whilst learning along the way.

I'll let it dry and then scrape the bindings before the I spray the clear.

I may have to gently sand the body as well to remove a couple of droplets that have landed on the body. What grit do people usually use at this point?