Looking really good so far.
Printable View
Looking really good so far.
It's just off-the shelf Feast & Watson orange shellac flakes from the "Big B" (the more recent "M" competitor has a different brand but it's probably similar if not the same), no added anything. The ash itself has a brownish/ambery sort of colour when dampened which probably shows through when shellaced too. I'm using a slightly higher than 1.5lb cut (50g in 250ml metho) brushed on. I tried dewaxing it without much luck so settled for just decanting the bulk off the gritty rubbish at the bottom of the jar (filtering through a coffee filter was a disaster...) and mix it thoroughly to ensure any wax is evenly distributed before using.
My crude water test on the shellac seemed to be not a problem (no clouding) so I decided to copy the finish on my Ibanez SoundGear bass and colour the front surface of the headstock only, leaving the pale Maple on the rest of the neck. After an excessive 5 coats (which will need flattening before any more coats as it's a bit "lumpy" - serves me right for trying to make up for lost time and over brushing too much... It'll be OK after a light sand though) the grain has shown up some nice "eyes" which has be tempted to do the rest of the neck too.... :P Although I masked the sides, there was some bleeding, and wasn't helped when I decided to add another coat or too after removing the tape, but a quick sand cleaned off the unwanted shellac easily. :) The photos below are at an oblique angle to show the unfinished vs finished surfaces.
A question please - what do people do about finishing the fretboard? Oil? - I've heard lemon oil mentioned as a conditioner. Or shellac perhaps? (I did the end-grain and it darkened a lot but that makes it look more like ebony?) Or just leave it raw??
I'm thinking of making my own logo decals, so have come across these clear laser-printer water-slide decals which I hope will be suitable.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/320823942673
I'm not sure how thick they are though - ideally I want something akin to those old plastic model decals that can hopefully blend in under a coat or two of finish, and not something thick and plastic-y like a sticker. Has anyone tried these or can recommend a laser printer/copier compatible decal stock? (I would like to include the PitBull logo decal too - perhaps on the back of the headstock - if I can)
http://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-con...Headstock1.JPG
http://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-con...Headstock2.JPG
I bought my decal paper off eBay and they worked fine the second time around when I read the instructions. Apparently laser printers and inkjet need different paper so just make sure you know what sort of printer you will be using.
I made a mistake with the headstock tonight after 3-4 more coats. It felt dry but I discovered later fossilised fingerprints all over the surface from trying to clean up the edges of unwanted shellac (what happens when you skip re-masking believing sanding will solve any problems...) Attempting to clean up the surface made it worse so it's back sanding back to smoothness and redoing again (sigh).
On the positive side - I think I'm almost done with the body shellac-ing - the back will need flattening again to remove some uneven finish, but I think the front and sides areas close to perfect as I'm likely to get so I best leave well enough alone and get ready for the (probably unnecessary) Tru-Oil final coatings. Once I do a quick safety check on my test board to make sure there are no nasty incompatibility surprises in store... One good thing about not grain-filling, the little grain grooves in the glossy finish catch and reflect the light something like a glitter finish :-)
I also need to try some metallic ink pens I have in storage somewhere (moving house is a curse...) to see how they interact with shellaced over-coats and how well they work if I decide to try to mimic the gold or silver trimmed vintage headstock logo text style
Tough break on the headstock John. It was looking so great! Do-overs are not uncommon, even amongst the most experienced guitar finishers, so don't feel bad!
cheers,
Gav.
A quick sand and another few coats and it's almost as good before my stuff up. Next stop come up with a custom headstock decal that can be done without metallic inks on a colour copier as all my pens had clogged up (and a quick text proved that black texta is not compatible with shellac alcohol solvent so I suspect neither will any other felt-tip pens...) A few more coats after that to seal and protect the decal and darken the headstock a little more and it's on to the Tru-Oil to seal the shellac from water and hopefully be a slipperier finish for the back of the neck.
So naturally I've put a bid in for some lipstick pickups in preparation for my next build ;-)
I finally got a logo designed and laser-printed - the water-slide decal paper/printer I used left the background and bit dirty, faint "marbing" but that tends to blend into the wood so it's not a big problem, the second A5 sheet I did was a bit better so I picked the best to apply to the bass. It didn't go quite as smoothly as I hoped as the gloss finish on the bass was more difficult to get the decal to affix too without airbubbles and wrinkling, and the first edges off the paper kept trying to fold over... (The test runs were down on some grain scrap plywood with a few coats of shellac only) One edge I was unable to fix in time (bottom left) the but it appears to be sticking down ok so hopefully won't be noticeable under a few coats of shellac. Lots of careful pressing and gentle wiping with paper towel got rid of the bubbles, etc so tonight I'll carefully shellac it to lock it in and get the color a little darker.
http://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-con...oHeadstock.JPG
Nice job on the logo. That headstock is looking very pretty.
After a couple of coats of shellac I was getting worried - the decal seemed to wrinkle up a lot and I feared I might have to strip it back and try again. I think it's all settling back down though, and despite my adding a couple of fingerprints to my woes (you'd have thought I'd have learnt that lesson from the last time...), I've been able to remove those with some soft cloth polishing. I think the decal has almost flattened out again, although there is a difference in finish from where the decal is/isn't and I won't worry about trying to fix that until tomorrow evening to give coats time to settle and harden properly. Lesson (re)learned - go slow with the finishing, if in doubt leave it for tomorrow.