SSR-1 Build, Oxblood red to black burst with oil finish, backup plan is white nitro

First up quick overview of Kit as it arrived.

Quite happy with maple neck, neck pocket fit is excellent, alignment is good and scale length is on the moment

Basswood body is 4 piece, two outer pieces are very different than inner two with some subtle chip out on edge but nothing that can't be sanded out

The placement of neck screws looks a little off, two of the screws are a bit too close to the end of the neck for comfort and pose a splitting risk, I can see that they tried to use a standard back plate spacing but ran out of space, we will see what the future holds, I may dowel them and redo with a slightly tweaked placement. Again a solvable problem

I had the same issue with my JB A4 neck, the holes are all off angle, looked like the template they used was sitting off and still drilled the holes. I opted use tassy oak dowel rods and external grade PVA glue to filled and set. I haven't drilled the new holes yet but have tape masked up the area and have made a jig with the correct location for the holes. Since I dont have a drill press I opted to use a couple of timber off cuts and made a 90degree level, will be using that to guide the drill bit. Seems to be a common problem.

So finishing plan was the use Crimson water based stains to attempt a black to oxblood red burst. May not be the best idea for basswood but this is intended to be a learning experience to pick up as many skills as possible. Backup plan is to sandback and do a arctic white nitro finish

before staining body I did a little practice on some A4 sized basswood sheets from Amazon. Inital samples were very blotchy (as expected to be honest). Then tried with a preconditioner and got better results. Did some experiments with multiple pre conditioner coats and found 1 coat to be the best. Also found saturation with brush/cloth followed by wipe off, as expected the basswood really did soak up the stain (preconditioner help a bit though)

This is what I was left with, not perfect as I rushed a bit, would have preferred darker edge and for the burst to follow body shape a lot better. It was still a more blotchy then I would like but I hoped oil finish may help to even things out

Attachment 44576

So this is where things started to go sideways, the plan was to use crimson penetrating oil initially followed by high build oil

The penetrating oil went relatively ok, I followed the procedure, it cured ok, went on pretty smoothly. The problems arose with the high build oil, basically it didnt cure even though instructions were followed, maybe it was compatibility with the pre conditioner, more likely the basswood soaked up too much finish. Worried the humidity in shed was too high I tried to bring that down, a day later I noticed two slivers of cracks in the body. Was this due to humidity change or were they there all along and filled with fine wood dust that got pulled out while removing oil , I dont know probably the former. Another issue was fibres of the shop towel sold by crimson remained in the finish, even though I removed oil when just starting to go tacky

Below you can see the areas that remained oily to the touch and failed to cure. Lesson learned, dont use high build oil on basswood, stick to the penetrating oil

Next stop, sanding back and we move to nitro finish

Attachment 44577

Sanding back proved rather painful to get back to bare wood with a touch of stain but got there eventually, I did want to make sure to remove all the oil, I didnt want to risk compatibility issues between oil and nitro lacquer.

I use northwest guitars lacquer (UK based), running with rustins filler to handle slight gaps followed by a sealer, primer, arctic white color with gloss clear coat. In generally went on well, cans had great nozzles which made for a pretty even finish with a fast drying time. I did try to be patient and adhere to the stew mac recommendation of no more that 3 coats a day. It was a bit powdery after first couple of coats of sealer, after a light sand and changing to spraying a little closer to body (due to humidity) problem was solved. Some light sanding with 1200 wet dry after sealer and after primer to level things off. It took a can of sealer and a can of primer to begin to build finish and stop basswood absorbing everything, after that 2 cans of color and a can of clear gloss. whole process took maybe 8 days. Now it is hanging curing for a month

should also mention neck is stained black, with penetrating oil over that. There was no way to sand that back to perfect bare wood and I dont like feel of lacquered neck so that remains black with the front of the headstock being white lacquer. We will see how that looks, I do have a can of black lacquer in reserve

I hate having to sand back...but great color choice!

So this is where we stand, only thing remaining is to make a pickguard and decide to add it or keep as is.

Used the guitar fabric hand polish kit. Couldn't recommend it highly enough. Picked up james hetfield emgs on cheap. Guitar is intended for metal so wanted to try actives, a little extra space needed to be made in control cavity with dremmel, but no big deal. Emg solderless wiring was a dream

Happy enough with the cheap hardware from northwest guitars. Though post holds in bridge were a bit too snug and needed to be widened.

After setup guitar is playing as well as my american strat, i just had one fret that i needed to take down a touch that i missed during fret levellingAttachment 44731Attachment 44732Attachment 44734Attachment 44735

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Looks great!

And the benefit of EMGs is that you don't need to ground the bridge/strings, which is a lot harder to do well with black hardware and its non-conductive paint.

Post holes too small is definitely a lot easier to deal with than when they are too large.

I've used a fair bit of Northwest Guitars hardware and it's been pretty good. Normally Korean rather than Chinese made. The central pins in their locking tuners can have rough ends from machining, which can cut into the thinner strings, so I've taken to taking them out and sanding off the ends to remove the burrs. And the string holes in the tuners can be a bit on the high side for Fender-style guitars with flat, rather than angled headstocks where the height between the back of the headstock and the nut isn't that great, so the string break angle can be too shallow. The holes tend to be a couple of mm higher from the base of the post than a lot of other tuners. Just something to be aware of.

Going to put a logo on the headstock?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

Looks great!

And the benefit of EMGs is that you don't need to ground the bridge/strings, which is a lot harder to do well with black hardware and its non-conductive paint.

Post holes too small is definitely a lot easier to deal with than when they are too large.

I've used a fair bit of Northwest Guitars hardware and it's been pretty good. Normally Korean rather than Chinese made. The central pins in their locking tuners can have rough ends from machining, which can cut into the thinner strings, so I've taken to taking them out and sanding off the ends to remove the burrs. And the string holes in the tuners can be a bit on the high side for Fender-style guitars with flat, rather than angled headstocks where the height between the back of the headstock and the nut isn't that great, so the string break angle can be too shallow. The holes tend to be a couple of mm higher from the base of the post than a lot of other tuners. Just something to be aware of.

Going to put a logo on the headstock?

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Yeah thinking about decal and pickguard now

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