ES4-B 1st Build

I haven't been making much progress on my projects lately, including the refinish of this bass. I did decide to lighten the headstock by replacing the Chinese steel tuners with Hipshot Ultralights. I could only get them a la carte. As luck and the supply chain would have it, I got the treble side from one seller and the bass side from another. Decided to take a page from JimC and see if I could get the whole thing a bit narrower as well as lighter.

Attachment 42124

I had a case for another ES style project. Identical body specs but with a Fender-style headstock. It took some doing to find a case for the one with the Fender headstock. Unfortunately the Gibson-style headstock with the wide clover tuners would not fit. Fortunately, the Hipshot Y tuners are both lighter and narrow enough to fit, just barely.

Attachment 42125

OK, will go back to procrastinating on the sanding now...

Taking finish off is a drag. This is the product of about 3 hours work. Not many places on the body where my ROS worked well. Used a scraper and heat gun a bit on the headstock. Otherwise all just hand sanding.... Covered everything in pink dust...

Attachment 42241

The reason the "bare wood" looks a bit red is because I had botched an attempt to stain before deciding on a solid finish. When I finish sanding, Ill put a coat of shellac on to keep any residual stain (or whatever else might be left on the wood) from reacting with whatever goes on next. You can see the layers clearly in some places...red stain, gray primer red paint.

Maybe procrastinate on the sanding for a bit more? ;)

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

Maybe procrastinate on the sanding for a bit more? ;)

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I'm not out of sandpaper, so that must be what I am doing... ;-)

I don't envy you that job at all!

Remind me again why you're doing this???

I thought the finish turned out ok for you on this one.

The finish never hardened properly despite it being put aside for at least 6 months and some had come off on music stands.

Of course in some areas it has obviously hardened properly!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

The finish never hardened properly despite it being put aside for at least 6 months and some had come off on music stands.

Of course in some areas it has obviously hardened properly!

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That's it in a nutshell. Some places it really did not stick, and it felt a bit rubbery almost everywhere. Sometimes the primer did not stick very well, like on the neck. On the body the primer seems to stuck reasonably well, but the paint seems not to have gotten very hard. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to mean it comes off very easily. Seems hardest to get off on the top and on the back.

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Almost all of this was sanded by hand. You can see where I sanded through the veneer in places--although some of that damage was done before it was painted red. There's still a bit of red stain on it, particularly on the front, but all the primer and paint are off. Whew!

Will do a little filling on the back of the headstock where the holes for the old tuners are. I may clean up the binding a bit more to make sure there are no red paint or stain flecks on it. Then a coat of shellac before painting.

Attachment 42401

I figure about 8 hours total in sanding, maybe a bit more, to get the paint off. I used 120 sanding mesh (a product I had not seen before) and 150 paper (US grits) to do the majority of sanding the old finish off. I tried a number of things as a sanding block. In cutaways a 1.5" round piece wood dowel worked reasonably well. for almost all the rest I used a block of hard EPS foam, that provided the right combination of hardness and flexibility. I had purchased a couple of specialty products that did not work nearly as well.

Spent about an hour or so more to sand everything down with 220. The last bit where there is a lot of sanding through the veneer around the neck was the hardest. i probably spent half or two thirds of the time sanding the area within two inches of where the neck and body join.

Gosh, you must be happy with that part out of the way.

What are you planning for the next finish? (and sorry if it was already mentioned)