Use whatever stuff the recommend for cleaning brushes to remove as much of the finish before you start sanding.Quote:
Originally Posted by UpperCaseH
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Use whatever stuff the recommend for cleaning brushes to remove as much of the finish before you start sanding.Quote:
Originally Posted by UpperCaseH
....am I just doing the weird perfectionist thing that I always do when I feel like I know a bit more about whatever I'm working on? All I see is flaw here, flaw there, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by wazkelly
You are the only one who can answer that question. If it bothers you now, most likely it will in the future and therefore best to deal with it now and do what you feel you want.
That said, need to take the least amount of damage path back out of all that burst colour and hopefully some thinners (if oil based) will help to remove a lot of the colour with the remainder residual being faint enough that any sanding back is significantly reduced.
An hour with rags and Good Off
http://i.imgur.com/G3uLXmj.jpg
Of course, some ran onto the back so I need to re-do that again too. But even so, I'm not at all unhappy with the way the ink came off. I'm gonna give it a light sand and try to remove the patchiness a bit, and if that happens while keeping the little bit of colour in the grain I'm gonna go with a very dilute black FW stain over the top or maybe even just straight TO.
If that doesn't work, it's gonna be blaaaaaaaack like the back and sides.
you've done well, i like it
Thanks Stan, and thanks Waz for the advice.
I wasn't so much disappointed in the execution of the ink burst as I was in the final way the colours interacted. I could have lived with the minor streaking/swirling, but the yellow/red/black ended up looking too much like a cheap knockoff with a wood/burst vinyl graphic on top.
Well, that's what it looked like to me, anyway. I think the ink was a bit thick and that made the colours a bit bright, which made the whole think look kinda false.
That is a rather cool weathered sort of effect going on there H. As you say if all else fails, go Johnny Cash on it.
Good save H.
So you used inks? I thought you had used Feast Watson stains. If inks, just give it another wipe with a fairly damp cloth around the neck end to see if that takes a bit more of the black off.
Here is a left field idea.....if you were gonna go translucent black, just ink pad black the whole face, and as it is drying use a dry cloth and rub all over the top trying to soak up as much as possible. 12 - 24 hours later do the same with a 'just damp' but not wringing wet cloth to soak up whatever ink that has not penetrated.
This should help pop the grain and also produce a greyish black wash effect, and if it is somewhere near what you want simply TO top coats and job is done. As always, test on a scrap bit of timber, preferably something with a bit of open grain. Alternatively you could do the same with diluted down Japan Black but I tend to feel that will come out darker than the crazy idea above. That Ash top is too pretty to hide under a very dark colour and a lighter wash might be all you need to accentuate things.
Yeah, the colours were india ink and the black was calligraphy/artists ink.
After 24 hours, they were not coming off with water. Goof Off took them off nicely, but not with the "dampen the rag, rub" that I used for glue spots. I had to kind of flow it onto the surface using the rag as a dam, let it sit for 10-20 seconds, and then rub.
I've done a test of the dilute FW on some pine and also inside the control cavity, and it looked OK wet. I'll see how it comes up tomorrow when it's dry and then decide what to do next.
I'm still tempted to do the "piano black" thing over the whole guitar. It looks pretty good on the back when the light hits it, and I reckon it'll be better still with that tru-oil semi gloss look, but I'll definitely try another lighter stain or ink first and see how it goes.
Piano black would look good but the grain would only be visible at various angles unless of course you end up with the typical Ash grain wave effect. With the top being a veneer that might just work too.
I couldn't get anything else to look good, so it's ended up as black as I could make it. It's actually a very dark brown, and the ash grain effect comes up really nicely in all but the dimmest light. In anything other than sunlight, the brown doesn't show much and it just looks like a textured black.
Only thing I'm disappointed with is the final coat of stain getting into cracks in the binding, which I'd avoided up to this point. Scraped and scraped without result, so I'm just going to live with them (and am thinking about relic-ing the rest to match).
Tru oil's going on nicely, I think I've got as much on the neck as I want, the body's got maybe a week more of twice-daily applications and then curing. I reckon it'll look good with the black hardware, although I'm now kinda wishing I'd gone with gold.
http://i.imgur.com/Lkd7w2I.jpg
Nice save, and it's looking good to me.
With the ink, you probably could have tried using an airbrush to apply the darker burst colours and got a more evenly graduated result. It's something else to buy if you don't have one, but if you carry on using ink and plan to build more guitars, it's worth thinking about. Anything more viscous than ink and you might need more than an airbrush, and a mini spray-gun will give you more even solid coats if using paint or lacquer, but sticking with ink and cloth-staining the base colour would remove that requirement.
Nice work H
Thanks guys.
Yeah, an airbrush is definitely on the list of stuff that I want. The wife wants one too, so it's something that might actually happen in the future :)
wow, cool result, you can make out the brown in your pic.
i have a 335 on the go with stain in the binding cracks as well, will just have to live with the ye olde effect
Looking Good H.
Not too late to switch to Gold hardware, just depends on how far your budget will stretch.
I did the black burst on my ES-5 with an air brush and auto acrylic( for the black, the green is ink). They are cheap on Ebay and handy lil buggers
Yes, I think I got my current air-brush + compressor recently on eBay for around £90 (A$145). Fine for general small-scale spraying duties. If you go for one, get a compressor that has an attached air storage tank (receiver) and a pressure regulator/gauge on the compressor output. The receiver means that the compressor doesn't run continuously and also smooths out the airflow. My first airbrush's compressor (both bought a long time ago and long gone) didn't have a receiver so ran continuously and the air came in pulses, which didn't help the spraying.
Thanks everyone!
Gonna stick with black hardware and see how it goes. Can always change later (after christmas when I'll have more spare money) if I want.
The ash veneer on this build has many small "holes" that the timbermate didn't fill and the tru oil didn't fix after ~10 coats. So I've tried the technique of applying the tru-oil with a bit of wet/dry sandpaper (2000 grit), leaving the resulting slurry on the wood for 10 minutes, then vigorously "polishing" it off with a cloth. After 3 goes at that, it's looking much smoother. I can see my (distorted, wavy) reflection in it now, but I can't seem to get a photo that shows how it differs from the previous pic. It feels much nicer though.
Tasty H, looks like it will come up nicely!Quote:
Originally Posted by UpperCaseH
Sounds good.
Haha, yeah, looks like it's gonna come up OK in the end. I got pretty disilusioned there for a bit, but it seems like just about everything is fixable with a lot of reading, learning, and effort.
I can now confirm that the 2000 grit with tru oil works well to smooth out a rough-ish body that's been stained and already has many coats of TO. I was worried that I'd rub through the stain, but it doesn't look like it's an issue. There's a small piece on the back where I tested with 1200 grit and that definitely looked like it'd go straight through, so I don't think I'd want to try it with anything coarser than 2000.
I've got about 6 TO coats on the neck, and I think I'll leave it at that. It's got that satin-ish feel at this point and I don't want it to go any glossier.
Anyone know where's a good place to get lemon oil for the fretboard? I can pick it up at a local music shop, but it seems... uh... somewhat over priced for the size of the bottle.
It's never cheap. I normally use the Dunlop 65 lemon oil. I've got a small spray bottle (expensive for what you get) which I keep topped up from one of their larger felt-pad topped bottles (much better value for money) and just look on eBay for the cheapest price.
G'day H, I bought some from an Aussie supplier on eBay a while back as that seems to be where you find better prices but unfortunately it doesn't help our local economies.
My bottle of lemon oil only cost about $10 from my local music shop, but I can tell it is going to last me a life time. You barely use any for a fretboard.
...though it may depend on the state of the fretboard. On used guitars, which may never have seen any fretboard oil or cleaning in their lifetime, you can tell by how quickly it gets absorbed as to how dry the board is. I have sometimes used three of even four applications to get it 're-oildrated'. You can also use lemon oil for cleaning fretboards, and you can get through a fair bit on a really dirty board with loads of crud build-up. I must admit that I tend to use the Dunlop spray bottle, which is quicker than applying with a rag but more wasteful, so some of the high usage is my own fault.
I've always been of the more frugal applicator. Hit the cloth with the oil spray and then work in vigorously, tends to re-oil and clean in one operation.
That's fine for regular maintenance work, but sometimes neglected guitars need a lot more attention.
And some rosewood fret boards are thirstier than others thus requiring multiple applications over several days or weeks.
Yeah true enough, though I don't usually only work my own and none of mine are neglected.Quote:
Originally Posted by Simon Barden
Picked up the lemon oil. $18 for 118ml of the Dunlop 65 stuff, but yeah, this is gonna last practically forever. Put 2 coats on the fretboard and the level in the bottle hardly moved. Doesn't look like this is a particularly thirsty fretboard, because it already looks pretty good to me. I'll wait a week or so while I work on the body and see if I want to do another coat.
http://i.imgur.com/D84nBxJ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/59PW1O9.jpg
Sanded the body at 2000 grit today after 4 repetitions of sanding the Tru Oil on (and about 10 coats before that). It's nice and smooth and although it's still a bit wavy (not going away on ash, I guess) it's coming along. Gonna do 2 TO coats, sand again, 2 coats, sand, etc now. I'll repeat that until I'm happy with it.
I have to make an observation about ragging TO on. I've been using rags cut from a really old, threadbare Bonds undershirt and have had some problems with it leaving a tiny amount of lint on the finish, streaking, etc. Today I cut up an equally old but significantly less threadbare pure cotton T-shirt (not an undershirt, much thicker), and it doesn't leave any lint, doesn't streak nearly as much, and is generally much easier to use. Not something I would have thought would make a difference, but there you go.
A lint-free cloth is normally recommended for all types of application and polishing work. Now you can see why!
G'day H, Same lemon oil that I have and it works pretty good. On a couple of my rosewood fret boarded guitars I did find they dried out after a few weeks and used Dingo Wax on both Explorers but just this on the Tele which has hardly been touched or played for past 6 months. Mind you I was playing it earlier tonight and it feels great so there must be enough oil soaked into that one. And yes, the bottle should last for ages.
Had a similar experience with lint coming off from the PBG supplied luthier kit and switched to cutting up an old cotton T-shirt and that did the trick as it had been washed about 1000 times and the only potential lint or threads was the edges where it was cut into smaller pieces.
With the Ash, don't know if you will ever get it completely flat as I tried so hard to do that on my Red J Bass and in the end decided the grain waves looked better left as they were than to keep on trying and cover them up.
Yeah, what I found with the lint was that the thin/light material of the old bonds tshirt would kinda start to wear/fray as I rubbed oil on, and occasionally leave bits of itself on the finish. The thicker old t-shirt I just cut up doesn't do that at all.
I never thought that there would be a wrong kind of old cotton t-shirt to use for this, so I mentioned it in case anyone else is having the same issue.
Is anyone collecting these little pearls of wisdom? They really need to be put into one sticky with Admin-only posting access to avoid other people's comments from diluting the information.
Using 0000 steel wool has a nasty habit of finding it's way into the finish too and found that out the hard way on builds 1 & 2 and never use the stuff on guitars any more.
That's so true, I've also discontinued use of steel wool for that reason. I've had much better results wit light wet sand rub backsQuote:
Originally Posted by wazkelly
Yeah Frankie, wet sanding is much better and easier to control, particularly if using DT as it is not as forgiving as some other finishes in that it tends to stay green much longer and steel wool was just too rough for it.
Ey Guys! I'm a newbie at this forum, I just want to say that I agree with Simon about the pearls of wisdom. I've been reading carefully all the comments at this post because I'm going to make an LP kit like this and this information will result very usefull for me.
Life and weather have been interfering a little with this build, but I finished up the tru oil today so now it's just waiting, polishing, and assembly!
Any advice on finishing up a tru-oil surface beyond just polishing up and up with micromesh?