TimC's ES-1G build

Got up three hours early today, the postman was at the door with my new baby.

Very excited.

Unpacked with mutch trepidation. Woohoo, it's all here, upgrades & all. Looks good at first glance.

The Grover tuners fit perfectly, nice & tight, zero lateral movement even done up just finger tight. Impressive. The neck to body mortise & tenon joint is a nice tight fit, the strength of this joint will be from the wood, not the glue, as it should be.

Two tiny cracks at the top of the ears, but once filled, they'll be invisible.

The state of the finish on the body at the neck body will need sone fill & work, but no biggy. The route for the bridge pickup is to small to allow the pickup to fit... Have Dremel, will fix!

The colour of the gold on the Grover machine heads doesn't match the bridge & tail pieces, but they're at the other ends of the guitar so probably no problem there... Can always get then re-plated if it bugs me after final build.

Fret work is pretty good 1 or 2 are standing a bit proud but a couple of strokes with the 12' radius beam will have that sorted in a jiffy. Then on to a re crown & over all polish.

Not much glue seepage, that's a relief.

On the whole great kit with everything there that should be there.

I'm particularly pleased with the the neck to body fit, the angle is a perfect 4 degrees, perpendicular & is really tight fit.

I'm really very impressed!

First job is to fix the bridge pickup route.

Second, fill the imperfections.

Then I've got find those dam scrapers, burnish them, & give the top, sides & back a god going over to get them flat, level, and ready for a final sand.

Can't wait.

Thanks Adam & people at Pitbull. This is a real quality guitar. Very impressive.it would have taken me 6 months or more to get to this stage if I was building from scratch.

More to follow once I've taken some pictures.

your kit sounds great Tim, look forward to watching this build diary and seeing pics

Thanks Wokkaboy, got some photos, now just got figure out how to get them posted. I'm not much with these forums.

Hi Tim,
you may have to resize photos to upload them. Maximum image size is under 1MB and no higher resolution of 1500 x 1500.

Click on 'Go Advanced' button and click on 'manage attachments'

Ears are very minor, body to neck will need a bit of a tidy up, but no biggy! A bit of blond wood tone and no one will even know that they were there.

Tim the neck pocket will be covered so don't worry about that. Other cracks just need a bit of filler

What i do is try and get some sawdust from sanding, mix it with a little wood glue then fill the gap and sand off, if thats not your thing, then some maple filler made into a slurry, left to dry out and sanded off. If you make a slurry it will penetrate the crack better.

I also sometimes wet the area to expand it, and the fine cracks will join up, then a touch up with some sanding, this often works.

Thanks Tonyw, filler slurry is the method I favour. Got to get out there and make some money.

More tomorrow, hopefully.

Hi guys & gals,

Sorry it's been a while to get moving, but after a huge effort sorting out my garage, I've finally made a start.

Tools SHARP, scrapers burnished, & hooked, ready to go.

First thing, get rid of the ugly glue spill overs on the ears & centre seam... Read a lot about his problem, decided to do it the way I was taught at school.

1. Damped down the whole body so nothing was bone dry/damp.
2. Kept damping over the glue smears, they go soft/cloudy when damp enough.
3. Scraped them off with a SHARP Burnished scraper. If you practise & get your scraper really sharp with a burnished hook you can
take a shaving about a quarter of the thickness of a human hair. It's a bit fiddely, but I got a great result... No more glue!

While I let the body rest for a couple of hours, I scraped the head stock to get sharp edges & tidied up the heel of the neck (mine still had sone minor faceting showing). Then on to sanding, 180, 220, 320 & 400. Smooth as a baby's bum, & ready to have the of the finishes applied.

Next scraped the sides of the body, some of the binding & some of the sides were a bit proud, now they're perfectly flat. Then on to the back. Same process, take out the lumps & bumps & make sure the edges of the back were flush with the perfing.

Same process of the front, being Super careful around all the cutouts, f-holes, holes etc.

Sanded the body through the the same grades of paper as the neck & I'm happy with the result. (kit seems to have a nice thick Venere on top, so I'm nowhere near sanding through).

After you've scraped something properly, all you need to do is remove any whoops marks, & give it a light sand until it's smooth. Going through the grades of abrasive is just to remove any marks left by the coarser abrasives.

Too many folks over do the sanding, your not shaping at this stage just tidying up in preparation for finish coats, sure you have to be thorough & make sure you get all the surface, but IMHO if your spending hours with one grade of abrasive your going to far.

Will get some pickies up in just a mo.

TimC

A few more picies, note scraper & burnishing tool... Get one, Best finishing tool in the world, IMHO ;->