RC-4 "The Cole"...

Great scratchplates, Arzi

Hi

Thanks guys. I was wondering if they do justice on the RIC:s shape. I'll have to try to vision the colouring. I think I'll keep the black as a dominant color on the front and sand out areas for the red to mainly highlight the flaming and some of the center area. The area around the bridge will be darker because the bridge itself is not massive and therefore needs some edges. The black will be dark only on the edges and sanding should give some darker shades of grey towards the red. This could blend better with the perloid. I might start with a lighter shade of black stain to keep the wanted areas more grey-ish. So far hard to vision the outcome because it's my first time staining. The workname "cole" is the image I'm after - a bit of hot red remaining on a piece of burned wood. If possible the same on the bits of flaming on the back.

After this weekend I'll take the neck to sanding and fretwork job. Trying to get to staining by the end of week.

Nice weekend to everyone. Arzi checking out and will be back after the hangover has faded....

Edit on the last post after reading it myself: will be doing the sanding and fretwork myself... It's 7:30 in the morning here and I need some more coffee...words just don't come out in the right order this early.

There are some very coal like black/red and yellow/red pickguards which may work better with the scheme. Have to see how it works (not actually trying to be negative here).

Hi
So I got the neck sanded today and decided to leave the fretwork for later. Now I thpught I would start applying the stain next.

What do people think about the order on how to do it?

I was wondering if I did the top first and then the neck. Leaving the sides and back for later. This way I could propably match the colors on top and neck and do them side by side. I'm still wondering if I wanna use the red on the back - on the flaming I mean. The black could be a bit different shade on maple and basswood if applied on same time?

Also I thought it might be best to glue the neck before starting on the Tru Oil - or am I totally wrong? If I clamp the neck for the glue I could damage the TO even if I used a piece of plank with a cloth?

Arzi

Hi Arzi,
sounds fair stain the top first to see what colour you end up with.
Up to you if you glue the neck now you will be dealing with a bulky object all the time. THe tru oil will cure and harden enough to clamp the neck when you glue it. Just use a thick cloth between the clamp and the body. Also give the tru oil a couple of weeks to fully cure

Hi Wokka

Thanks for the opinion and info. i think I'll stain first and decide then what to do next. Hopefully I'll get some color on this week.

Arzi

Hi,

a bit of an update at last. So I stained the body and neck with Keda Dye Black Cole. These are pics of 1, 2 and 3 coats of stain and sanding with 180 to 240 grit in between coats.

After the black was ok, I sanded the flaming and applied one coat of Fire Engine Red on the sanded part. After it had dried, the red had left visible edges on where it was applied - so I sanded the edges and faded it with a piece of cloth just dampened with the black and wiped from edges to center until I was satisfied with the results.

The dye is very powerful - I only needed to make less than 2dl of stain for the whole body and neck. Using about 1/4 of the powder.

As you can see - the red mixed a bit with the black creating a bit pinkish/purplish color. Maybe I didn´t let it dry enough...

More to come...

Hi

abit after TO...

So, applied with a cloth - 2-3 layers a day with 4 hours in between and seems that the garage I´m working in is very dusty and this is problematic. Also the TO layers are so thin that this will take a lot of time and layers... If I try to get an even surface and maybe polish it some day. On the good side - the TO is very easy to apply and user friendly in terms of unwanted vapours.

On the top it looks quite nice and the neck has some nice grains on it. Different but I like it. But as you might see - from another angle the top is full of small dust- and other particles.

I have buffed it gently with 00 steel wool about 4 times now and even tried to make one slurry TO layer (after 6 layers) to even it up but didn´t work too well. So now i just put very thin layers upon layers and hope that it will come more even at some point - steel wooling between 3 layers.

Did not use any grain filler on the wood so this is probably the main reason for the TO not becoming even more quickly. The grain fillers that are available here would have caused problems with the staining so I skipped the part.

Any tips and opinions on these?

Arzi

Could not upload bigger pictures by the way - had to downsize to about 95 kb