First Build - GR-1SF

Just took delivery of my GR-1SF kit. Very excited so did a dry build straight away. Looks nice just like that.

As this is my first build I am going to keep it simple and do it in colourless Dingotone. Hopefully I have attached a few images. A bit”cart before the horse”, but I have already designed my logo.

I think I will leave the pick guard off so you can see the f holes.

A few rookie questions straight off the bat -

1. Is the veneer on these hollow bodies able to take much sanding?

2. Do I need to use a filler before staining?

3. There are a few chips in the veneer next to the neck pocket. What is the best way to fill these, considering I am using a colourless stain?

4. Should the binding be masked before sanding, or should the binding actually be sanded also to get a smooth interface between timber and binding?

5. Should binding be masked before staining, again considering I am using clear stain?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

My thoughts.

1. No,. It's 0.5mm to 0.6mm thick at best, so is too thin for much sanding at all. If you want to try and pop the grain, then you have at best one go at using a dark stain, sanding off the surface layer and then staining with a lighter colour. For general sanding, the veneer is smooth enough that it doesn't need sanding. The whole guitar body is ply with a thin veneer of a decent looking wood on the top, so only the neck will need and serious sanding. Water-based stain will raise a few bits of loose fibre, so you can give it a very light wipe after the final stain with say P800 grit, just to remove those fibres, but the surface will otherwise be smooth enough to apply finish to directly.

If you just mean a 'clear finish' , so it's just the natural wood colour, then apart from any small cracks that need filling, you can go straight on to applying the finish.

2. You won't need grain filler on the basswood body or the maple neck. Both are closed-pore woods so have to grain holes or open pores to fill.

3. Some photos of the chips would be good, so we can see how big/deep they are. I have been filling gaps with a fine household interior filler that I've mixed up with some acrylic paints (I bought a cheap set of artist acrylic paint tubes from Amazon) to match the wood colour as best I can. You'll probably have some gaps around the neck join (when the neck is glued on) that may benefit from being filled as well, so if it looks like there might be some small gaps, then it may be worth gluing the neck on, filling and then applying the finish, rather then do the body and neck separately.

4. I never mask the binding for sanding - an you shouldn't need to sand the body anyway. Masking the binding means that and sanding doesn't reach the edges of the wood by the binding. The binding and the body need to be flush if possible.

Some people mask the binding and only clear coat the wood, but I (and the major manufacturers) just clear coat it all .

5. Some slight confusion here about your meaning of 'clear stain' but if you are just using a clear finish like Tru Oil or wipe-on poly or a spray lacquer, then no, no masking required. If it's a see-through stain that will then get clear-coated over the top, then masking the binding is a good idea for water-based stains and almost mandatory for spirit based stains. the binding gets lots of small stress cracks in it, that will take up spirit-based coloured stain and look bad. Water-based stain generally sits on the surface of the binding and may highlight a large crack, but can normally be wiped off with more water or scraped off.

It's generally a good idea to carefully scrape the binding anyway after using a coloured stain, even if it was masked, to remove the small bits of stain that will have crept in under the edge of the masking.

Looks like a nice kit. I have a few answers gleaned from this forum, but bear in mind I have no personal experience with stains or veneers.

Edit: disregard most of what I say. Simon has direct experience in this, I don't (although my partial answers are mostly on the right track).

Sanding: no. Don't do it. Most people find the veneer incredibly easy to sand through.
Binding: I tried masking mine before sanding, but the sanding tore through the tape anyway so I stopped trying to mask. I think that sanding the binding works OK.
Stains and binding: Definitely mask. Water-based stains don't appear to cause too many problems on binding that cant be fixed by scrapping after staining. Spirit-based stains appear able to get deep into fine cracks on the binding, especially on curves, and may be hard to remove. I don't know if masking helps prevent this.

Thanks Simon. Here is photo of chips in ply near beach pocket. Any thoughts on how best to fill? I am using a colourless Dingotone finish from Pitbull. Not sure what type of finish this is, but have assumed it is oil based.

Attachment 35553