BC-1

[kt101]

Hello to everybody. I've been reading the forum here for some time, and I recently bought a BC-1 kit.

I'm not the greatest fan of the BC-1 body shape, and really went with it as it was a steal on eBay. I'm guessing PBG loses money on eBay sales by the price I paid...

Anyway, I wanted to document the build for this one. I think there is only one other BC-1 build thread at this point.

The kit took a while to arrive, perhaps a little over a week. To be expected, even StarTrack and others take four days to deliver "overnight" from Brisbane to Townsville, so from Perth by Australia Post is pretty good considering.

The kit was packed well, and I did a dry run assembly of neck & body, and pickups. One of the pickup routes looked like it hadn't quite been routed to the right depth, but a dry run shows it's fine. The neck is tight, and the scale looks good (although I didn't measure it). I did not do a dry run fit of the bridge hardware.
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[kt101]

So for this build I thought a bright gloss red would work well. The basswood grain is pretty non-distinct, and I don't think the general style suits a Wudtone finish. I'm painting the body, and the front of the headstock. The back of the neck will be finished with oil, Tru-Oil, Linseed Oil, or similar.

In trying to keep this really simple, and something that others can replicate easily, I tried to source everything from Super Cheap Auto, because they are ubiquitous.

Grain Filling: Septone Blade Putty. Not at all traditional, but it was on the shelf and it's compatible with the SCA primer & paint products.

Primer: Septone Acrylic Primer Filler. This is not quite a high build filler primer, but it does a pretty good job. In hindsight I would probably have bought a 1 litre can of the same Septone Acrylic Primer Filler and painted it on. Using the spray packs is expensive.

Paint: PowerPlus Touch Up Paint. Also a SCA product, with a huge range of colours. Acrylic, should be perfectly compatible with the primer. I got a small can to test, but will likely need a few of the large cans.

Top Coat: Septone Acrylic Topcoat Clear. General acrylic clear paint, should be compatible with the colour. I may have gone with the PowerPlus brand clear coat, but the SCA store did not have it in stock.
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[kt101]

So, I've already filled the grain & shot a couple of primer coats. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures during the grain filling & painting, so I've only got the pictures of the primed body.

To fill the grain I simply used a plastic scraper to wipe the putty on in as thin of a layer as possible. This is difficult, as the putty seems to dry super fast in thin layers. Once dry the putty sands down very well. I sanded until it was gone from the surface except for the relief of the grain - there is almost no putty, except for a few spots where there were minor dings. In hindsight, I would use timbermate even though I'm painting over as it is much easier to work with. In fact, colour me dirty that I found an unused container of timbermate after I'd used the putty.

Nevertheless, the spray primer goes on over the sanded & filled body quite well. The first coat soaked in a huge amount, and the next coat almost as much. The "furry" parts of the basswood really show after the first primer coat. I sanded down both coats with 240 grit wet and dry. This got rid of those "furry" bits, and gave a really smooth finish. The next coat of primer went on even better and is very smooth. You can no longer see the grain on the edges or faces of the body. I'll probably do one more coat before I move to colour coats.
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[kt101]

On a related note, if you intend to spray your guitar, consider purchasing one of these plastic handle type doo-hickey-ma-jigs. About 3 bucks at Bunnings, and they eliminate sore & painted fingers and help you to control how you spray.
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[gavinturner]

Hi KT, Welcome to the forum!
The BC-1 is a great kit - i just finished one with my 9 year old son. Looks great (well, he thinks so ;) ) and more importantly it sounds really awesome. Have fun and keep us updated!

cheers,
Gavin.

[stan]

looks pretty slick so far kt

[gavinturner]

Great job with the undercoat KT. Looks great already! Just noticed that you are using Power Plus spray from Super Cheap Auto. This is exactly the same spray we used for our BC-1. It went on nice and smooth - I was very pleased with it! I'm very interested to see how the clear coat goes. On my first build i used power plus paint and nitro. The nitro was super expensive to buy in cans, so it would be great to find an alternative that looks good and brings the gloss.

cheers,
Gavin.

[goatis 1]

looking good dude :D

[Brendan]

Welcome along - sounding like a cracker of a build. Dunno - red just seems to be the colour for a hot guitar... Love it... Keen to see the results.

[GlennGP]

I'm liking the amount of detail you're putting in here - for a numpty like me, who might just do a solid gloss colour one day, this is really useful. Keep it up!

[kt101]

Finished up a final coat of primer on the body today. I'm not sure how many that is in total, but it's the better part of three large cans, although a lot has been sanded off. I'd say perhaps 7 to 10 coats of primer. Also sprayed three coats of primer onto the headstock only. I masked the sides & back of the neck, as well as the fretboard and nut slot. The headstock got a lot less coats of primer than the body, as it's simply a flat surface. There were no complex curves or points waiting to be sanded through.

I gave it a quick sand with 400 grit, taking care not to spend too much time on the edges. I really just neatened up the finish. The Septone Acrylic Primer spray seems to leave some small amounts of dusting on the surface. They could probably be brushed away by hand but a quick sand is useful.

After sanding I gave it a quick dust down with a brush, and a wipe over with a barely damp cloth. I used a Chux type cloth to wipe excess sanding dust off between all coats of primer. It worked quite well, but just before I shot the colour coat it started to shed. This wasn't a big problem, I just used the dry dustpan type brush to brush any bits off.

I don't have a lot of room, and certainly don't have a lot of equipment to put together a spray booth to do this. I simply rig up a rope in the back yard and hang the items from it. While obviously far from ideal, this has been very successful so far. As far as I can see there is no dust or particles in the finish, although it seems that flies do like the freshly painted surface. Very light coats dry quite quickly, so I think this has a lot to do with it.

Some pictures of the setup attached.
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[kt101]

Today I got three colour coats on the body, and two on the headstock. That used up the small can of Monza Red Power Plus from Super Cheap Auto. I've happy with the colour.

I tried to keep the coats very light, and you can see the striping type of pattern that the nozzle of the can leaves. It took me a little while to figure out a comfortable distance to get good coverage but not risk runs. I don't think there are any runs at this point, and it doesn't look like there are any defects I missed. The headstock coverage looks better, as there are no difficult curves to look into. One tip - keep the nozzle fully depressed. It's either off or on, anything in between causes spitting, and I narrowly avoided what could have been big messy drops. Once I got the hang of that it was not too difficult to get some coverage on most areas.

You can see from the pictures how the first coat went on horizontally, and the second vertically. I alternate, as it helps make sure everything gets a pretty even coverage after a few coats. It was getting dark, so I didn't get any pictures of the third coat. Hopeful that I might get a few more coats on tomorrow afternoon.
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[stan]

looking very red! Very Devilish.

[kt101]

I finished shooting the colour coats. I didn't quite use all of the large can. You may be able to get by with one large can only to shoot a solid colour body. The first picture is the body with 6 or 7 colour coats. I was worried about bugs, insects, dust etc. in my large painting booth (ie. the backyard), but this wasn't really a problem. Occasionally a spider would build a small web I didn't see before shooting another coat. The solution is easy - light coats, and remove any contamination when dry after each coat.

After shooting the colour coats I noticed a "granule" type contamination on the surface. I thought this may be dust, but it looks like it's actually overspray on the front/rear from painting the sides. I tried overspraying with clear, but it didn't hide the texture. I gave it a very brief once over with 800 grit wet sanding and this cleared it up. Finish the clear coats up later this week.
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[57strummers]

Man that is a serious axe....not something I can see our Blues bass player using... I do like it though!!! Looking forward to seeing the end results. I am using Repco All Surface Primer for my undercoat just going to finish drilling the holes and will be ready do go...

[AJ]

Lookin good there,
** always pays to wet sand to get smooth sface before the clear goes on :)

[Brendan]

Looking good...

[kt101]

The photos again, as the ones above are broken from the move. These are of the rope & fence spray booth.
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[kt101]

The progress of spraying
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[kt101]

And some of the stippling effect caused by overspray. Fixed with 800 grit wet sand.

Finished the clear coat the other day, and will hopefully start polishing this week. Will submit some photos of that when I get there.
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