TL-1TB Telebilly

I wanted to continue with Dingotone on the build, but the beta top coat had turned to sludge long ago. The Mk.1 neck top coat, however, amazingly still looked ok after two years. A bit thicker perhaps but possibly still usable. I gave it a test on some scrap and it seemed good so I decided to risk it on both the neck and the body.

The binding had already been scraped so many times I didn't think it (or me) could handle another heavy scraping. So, I went with tape on the side of the binding hoping that I'd just have to clean up the top edge if at all.

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The neck top coat went on thicker than I hoped, but looked pretty good and was surprisingly nice and smooth. I was amazed it still seemed ok after so much time.

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I checked it after 7 days drying and it was looking smooth and surprisingly glossy. I was well pleased. There had been some increased humidity the previous few days so I checked it again on day 8 and it had changed completely. In 24hrs it had gone from looking nice and smooth to an absolute train wreck… it looked like someone had taken a fresh piece of 120 grit and sloughed off huge swathes of the finish.

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It was like the surface tension had broken and the finish had just fallen away. There was a little orange on the edge of the binding but no drips, drops, or runs, it was strange. The finish had gone from being smooth and glossy to a tacky, rough, patchy mess. My own fault for using the old finish.

More to come.

looking good Weirdy, so looks like you are on the home stretch !

Sadly Wokks, things were a bit pear-shaped as of my previous post.

Nice work!!

Interesting sequence of events. Any thoughts on what you'll do? it doesn't look like the finish is ever going to settle down.

It looks like people have used Tru-Oil over DT before. Is it worth trying that over the DT to try and seal it?

Yeah interesting is one way to describe it. Stay tuned Simon, further updates to follow.

After the debacle of the last top coat I left it to dry for another three weeks in the hopes the finish would lose some its tackiness and harden, at least a little. Sadly, neither occurred and it was pretty much just as sticky and nasty as it was on day 8. I love the orange colour and the way it has worked on the grain, so I was determined to try to save the finish if at all possible.

The stickiness of the finish meant the only option was wet sanding, but I couldn't use water as the wood wasn't really sealed. That meant using a solvent to wet sand. I normally use White Spirits when sanding Tru Oil, but with the volatility of the orange I was worried it would either rub off/dissolve too much of the colour or spread it around and stain everything (including the binding). In the end I decided to try wet sanding with metho, as the most benign solvent I had, in the hope that it would minimise the impact on the colour while still lubricating the sanding. The finish, despite its problems, was still pretty thin so to preserve as much of it as possible I stuck with 1200 grit. It would make things slow but I hoped it would be worth it.

Even just using metho for the wet sanding still had the orange flying in all directions. It was basically sand an area with metho, mop it up, repeat. Slow and messy, with lots of orange.

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Eventually I was able to undo most of the fouled top coat damage and get things reasonably smooth. I had to scrape the binding again to get rid of some staining from the orang'ified metho, but only lightly. As much as I wanted to stick with Dingotone on the build, the orange colour was still just too mobile to risk another failed top coat. So, reluctantly, I decided to switch to Tru-Oil to seal it once and for all.

First coats of Tru-Oil.

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After the first couple of coats I took the tape off the binding, as the orange seemed to be stable for now. From then on I was going to apply Tru-Oil over the binding as well, it meant it would yellow it slightly but it seemed like the safest option.

After 8 coats of Tru-Oil on the body and headstock it was starting to look a bit glossy and was ready for its first metho (yes, I kept using metho) wet sanding.

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Fifth coat of TO on the neck.

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In the end I did around 14 full strength Tru-Oil coats on the body and headstock face and then a stack of 50/50 White Spirits mix coats. The neck got around 8 full strength and another 8 50/50 coats.

Even the Tru-Oil coats fought me on the body. For some reason there'd always be some muck or bits showing up when applying it. It never happened on the neck, despite using the same fabric and same Tru-Oil/mix, same time and application method. So, there was something about the body, maybe the cavities or the binding, that was causing it. It didn't matter if I did the body first or neck first but it always seemed to happen.

Left the body and neck for a couple of weeks to harden.

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I gave it all a very light final wet sand with White Spirits and then a bit of a polish. It was probably a little glossier before the sand and polish process, but it needed it to get rid of a few lumps etc.

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