That’s so sad Simon, after you had it looking so good. I was expecting to see a brilliant, finished product in your next post. So sorry mate. Hope all goes well this time. We are all cheering for you.
Wayno.
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That’s so sad Simon, after you had it looking so good. I was expecting to see a brilliant, finished product in your next post. So sorry mate. Hope all goes well this time. We are all cheering for you.
Wayno.
That's very disappointing Simon I'm sorry to see this has happened to you after all the hard work you have put into this build. I can sympathize with you due to having to start over on my last build as well it can drain the motivation really fast.
I was wondering why we haven't seen you online much recently.
I'm sure you will get on top of it though and produce something brilliant.
Best of luck with it mate.
Oh Simon that would have peeved me off no end as well was a lovely shad of red mate, at least you can pull out the sander and go again at least it wasn't on a veneer top really feel for you mateQuote:
Originally Posted by Simon Barden
It is on a veneer top!
What's really annoying is that on the rest of the body, including the same area on the bottom horn, the Tru-Oil's thick and taking ages to sand off!
Done the back and sides, now doing the top, but my Amazon prime order of sandpaper still hasn't turned up yet and I've exhausted all my good sandpaper, and the cheap stuff is going in the bin as it's useless.
Well I've been carrying on sanding as the new sandpaper eventually turned up.
Back and most of the sides done here:
Attachment 26343
Attachment 26344
Then I started on the top and have gone as far as I dare go on one side without sanding through the veneer:
Attachment 26345
So I will be carrying on sanding tomorrow.
And then I'll have to start on sanding the neck back. The stain won't be the same otherwise, plus I tried some nitro lacquer on top of the Tru-Oil and it bubbled up, so I can't leave it as it is and just spray clear nitro over the top. I need to re-do the headstock face anyway, as my gold-pen backed 'Three-Thirty' decal got damaged when I was sanding the Tru-Oil finish over it level, so I'll use some pearl veneer with a decal over it in a similar way to the main logo.
Onwards and upwards.
That's one huge setback Simon...
Do you have any thoughts as to why it happened? Not a happy mix between your stain and the Tru-oil, or something going on in the wood?
Not really. That area got the same treatment as the rest of the body, but the TO simply must have been thinner there. I vaguely remember having one run around that location which I had to sand back, but was trying only to sand the run and certainly not that whole area. Of course it is the most pronounced curved raised area on the guitar, so more easily over-sanded (and maybe the TO coats wiped thinner), but the corresponding lower bout didin't show similar symptoms and has already undergone some rigorous sanding with coarse sandpaper without getting anywhere near to the wood.
Man, what a bummer.
Just discovering the lumpy bits on the ES-1 picked up from Tony yesterday and found it very easy to sand through veneer on both horns. Doesn't take much effort at all as they are the steepest part at that end of the body.
Well, I finished sanding the top:
Attachment 26370
So it was time for the staining. Shots taken after the initial applications.
Top:
Attachment 26371
Back:
Attachment 26372
Spirit-based stain seems more forgiving than water-based. It doesn't leave a tide mark at the edges and it dries more quickly, so there's less likelihood of runs.
The sharp-eyed amongst you will have spotted the elephant in the room; the small area on the top horn where I've sanded through the veneer. So now I've got to try and patch it up somehow. It might be out with the acrylic paints and paint that area. But I'll need to match the colour to how the rest of the guitar looks with clear coat on (which will be a brighter red).
Attachment 26373
Such a bummer about that. Is it worth trying to 'paint in' a bit of grain?
I've scraped and sanded and it's looking a bit better, but I do think I'll have to get the paints out. I might give it all a spray with some tinted clearcoat first, otherwise it's going to be difficult to match the colour properly. I did spray some on in a patch and it made it a lot redder and brighter.
Now stripped the neck down and stained that as well. . I'm grateful for the good weather we're having at the moment, but it's hot work sanding in the sun. About 26°C in our back garden in the shade, so not bad for early May.
And the smell of BBQ is coming from all directions, and with me on a diet. It's very distracting.
you could always put a small logo over it. I'm thinking more of a character than a brand.
You could always put your logo or signature over it, I have seen initials in gold in that area on a couple of guitars over the years.
Wayno.
Well, the binding is all scraped back, but the consequences of using coarse sandpaper to get the worst of the Tru-Oil off have come back to bite me on the binding. It's made deep scratch marks that have absorbed the stain. Maybe the spirit-based stain is more penetrating than the water based-stain.
Attachment 26384
Attachment 26385
It's either that or I've discovered a secret message in Chinese from the builder hidden under the outer layer of the plastic.
Some of the marks I've been able to scrape away. I've tried using metho on them and it's helped a little but not a huge amount. And it was getting too hot to do much or think clearly. We've had three days in a row of cloudless skies and temperatures in the upper 20s - over 28°C today. Which is a lot, especially when you're out sitting in the sun trying to make some vitamin D (and a week ago it was down to 1°C at night).
So I'm not sure what to do with it at the moment. I'm tempted to try masking around the binding and painting it, though I'll probably try some other solvents first. You may have noticed in the top picture that I've managed to scrape away at the glue layer in the sand-through patch and the ply beneath had absorbed the stain, so it's looking better than it was, though it's far from perfect.
Tomorrow I'm off to the Great Western Railway centre at Didcot (a few miles south of Oxford), assisting my friend, Jim Champ who's just had this book published:
Attachment 26386
He wants to take some photos of locomotive parts as he's had an idea for another book, and I'll be taking some publicity photos of him holding his book with some steam engines in the background. Well, that's the idea anyway.
Then Wednesday, it will be back to the guitars and a bit cooler weather, so the brain should start working again.
There is something slightly horror-movie-esque about those stains on the binding. You sure your string of curse words hasn't summoned any demons into the guitar?
I may have to find an elf, a dwarf, a roaming uncrowned king, an old man with a big white beard plus three hobbits, and journey into Mordor to destroy it in Mount Doom.
I'm told it translates as:
One string to rule them all, one string to find them. One string to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them. And another three strings to play an open D on, man.
Attachment 26387
:cool:
Beware Saruman! He has fallen to evil.
You guys crack me up.
In a flurry of activity brought on by good warm weather and my two SG builds, I've also been working on this ES-1 build again. What I did haven't shown here that I did last year was paint the binding white, then spray on a coat of vintage amber lacquer and couple of coats of clear on top of that for the body.
At the beginning of the year, JimC took the neck away and treated the engineered rosewood fingerboard with a thin stabilising epoxy compound. Lockdown then occurred before I could get it back, but we were finally allowed to meet up (whilst still keeping 2m apart) last week, and I got the neck back.
The headstock got the fibreboards and new abalone inlay treatment that the SGs got, the neck has just got its binding scraped and a coat of vintage amber on it to tint the binding, and I've just glued the neck on.
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/8...923/NDO8b9.jpg
You can see that the binding is certainly now not the brilliant white it started out as. It is a bit yellower than I wished, but I was at the mercy of the lacquer tint. But some Gibson 330 vintage reissue models have binding just as yellow, so I can live with it.
The white curved line running from the neck pickup rout is just a reflection.
The body has picked up a couple of small dings whilst sitting around since last year, but nothing some more coats of clear lacquer won't cover up. I have tested the neck dog-ear pickup with the neck in place, and the cover butts up to the end of the neck nicely.
So once the GSJ and GSM have had their heritage red coats applied, it will be out with the clear lacquer and onwards!
I've had that happen simon its crap binding its sort of porous I mixed up a bit of White paint mixed in a bit of brown stain till I got the color close to what the binding is and masked up and air brushed the binding turned out really good you can't tell the difference pretty easy to do
This is a pretty epic save. I just went through the last three pages of diary. When you consider what you've been through with that finish the first amazing thing was that you saved the veneer rather than just putting down a solid color. Then you painted all that binding, and it really looks good. I had a small stain in the binding, and thought I was clever for covering it with a bit of my daughter's nail polish. This is pretty amazing. You appear to have fixed the sand through on the horn too.
I had a friend from Yorkshire who's father was a marble forger. If that line of work is still open you may want to check it out ;-)
I see you are quite the artisan yourself kind sir! That is such a nice build. Lovely finish - it pops.
This build is nearing completion.
I've missed out a lot of what has gone on in the past 4 months, as everything was small steps, not really enough to mention in a post, yet when I look back at my last post here, I've done a fair amount.
I wasn't happy with the way the painted binding looked very yellow, and the join line in the veneer looked quite noticeable in some lights. Work on the SG kits with the heritage red spray showed how well that covered up small imperfections. So a few coats of heritage red lacquer got sprayed on, then I masked up the binding and sprayed that a very light cream, then after numerous touches-up of binding and body colour to get the best edge to the binding I could get, it was more clear lacquer time.
This kit was a custom order (for the P-90 routs and dot inlays) and I had also asked for thin edge binding, but it came with the standard thick multi-ply. So, as the heritage cherry spray had done a pretty good jib of covering up the binding on the top so that you couldn't see it until you got really close, I masked it up so that only just the outer part of the multi-ply was painted, giving a more authentic three-thirty look. I thought about leaving the f-hole binding unsprayed and red and so again, more authentic, but I liked the extra highlighting the binding gave, so that got re-done as well.
It was also headstock makeover time with the same fibreboard facing and silver vinyl + black decal treatment for the logo as on the GSJ-1 and GSM-1.
So the guitar has been hanging in the garage, and then more recently indoors (since the weather turned colder and I feared what a possible overnight frost might to to the finish) for the best part of a month. So all nice and ready to be sanded back and polished.
Which is what I did yesterday. It's ended up a bit darker compared to the last pictures but not too dark and a bit lighter than the GSJ-1. You can still see the flame highlighting, though it's a bit less obvious than it was:
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...922/uCFiNm.jpg
I also fitted a new bone nut after sanding it down to size, which was left glued and clamped overnight.
So today I'll start fitting the hardware.
I'll need to cut down the end of a reamer, as the holes need widening for the output jack and the CTS pots. There isn't enough body depth to ream out the lower holes before the end of the reamer hits the rear of the guitar. And I much prefer a reamer to using a drill for this, even when running one backwards.
That's so shiny I can almost make out the model of your phone in the reflection!
Looks very nice! Like the surface! And the lighter binding works great with the red shades!
Wow! What a recovery job!
The colour is perfect - almost a cross between cherry and mahogany. Stunning finish as well.
I agree that the binding now looks much better and in keeping with the original.
Looking forward to the finished result!
Well done, Sir.
Cheers
Ricky
Agree, that's come up really well.
First class work as always Mr. B.👏🏾👏🏾
I forgot to mention that I also levelled and re-profiled the frets two days ago as well (before fitting the nut).
I only got round to fitting the tuner bushings yesterday before my post-viral feeling became so bad that I had to stop and just do nothing.
Feeling better today so I've done a fair bit, though am now waiting on a new reamer to arrive and try and open the last few holes up. I tried cutting the end off a reamer, but my hacksaw wouldn't touch it and I don't have a grinder. I've done some final widening of the selector switch and jack socket holes with a rounded needle-file, but it's a lot of work doing that for widening 6mm holes up to 8mm, and a lot harder to keep them round whilst doing so. I could drill them, but there's a lot of risk of chipping the finish. Something I should ahve done right at the star.
No point in doing the wiring harness yet until I've got those holes done just to make sure that I get the hole positions spot-on (my excuse for not feeling like doing it ATM anyway).
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...924/MtHcLd.jpg
I've just ordered some bare nickel pickup covers that I'll spray black, as I over-tightened a mounting screw on the neck pickup and caused some grey stress markings in the black plastic (hidden with black Sharpie ATM). The neck pickup has narrower pole spacings at 47.5mm to the standard 50mm spacing, and low-profile dog-ear covers in that spacing are just about impossible to find. So I've gone for the nickel ones because a) they're available and b) they'll give some extra noise screening for the P90s, which aren't the most hum-free pickups in the world.
The veneer join line is a couple of mm off the neck centre-line, but isn't out far enough to worry about.
I made a little sponge-on-a-stick to get rid of the white wet-sanding residue that had fallen inside the body. That worked well.
The bridge (a TonePros Nashville-style bridge) is sitting right on the body. I hope it's going to be low enough, otherwise I'll have to cut deeper notches in the saddles. Running a straight edge along the neck indicates it could be touch and go in order to get my normal low action. If necessary I've found some post inserts with no rim at the top, so fitting those would give me an extra 1mm of movement (the rim is 1.3mm but I don't want the bridge right against the lacquer). I can also move to an ABR-1 style bridge, which in theory is about 2mm lower than the Nashville type. I'll get there somehow.
I stuck some thin self-adhesive velvet on the underside of the trapeze tailpiece so that it doesn't mark the top of the guitar whilst remaining hidden from view.
And yes, I did remember to fit the bridge grounding wire. ;)
New reamer arrived and it did the job. So all ready to do the wiring harness and finish it all up tomorrow.
...Well the day after tomorrow. And it's not finished. Assembled, but not finished.
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...924/4LA1fk.jpg
There's a short on the bridge pickup wiring so that's silent, probably a braided neck pickup wiring touching something. I just knew I should have put heat shrink on them just after I'd soldered it all up. And I've wired the selector switch back-to-front (I decided to rotate the switch 180° at the last minute before soldering and forgot to flip the contact connections). So that will come out tomorrow and be fixed.
The bridge pickup wire is also slightly too short to be run round the outside of the F-hole, So I'll probably lengthen that so it can (as well as cover it in heatshrink).
As I feared, the bridge is far too high at its lowest setting, so I'll be waiting for an ABR style one to arrive on probably Tuesday. The nut's a mile high as well at the moment but that's easy to take down once I've got the new, hopefully lower, bridge. At least the strings run nicely down the neck, even if the neck angle could have done with being a bit greater
I also totally forgot about the knobs, so I've just fitted some out of the knob box and will be getting either some slightly darker ones or possibly black. I have lots of both in my spares box, but in 18-spline versions, not the 24-spline I need.
Plus the nickel dog-ear covers should hopefully arrive on Tuesday and then they'll need to be sprayed black, so it's likely to be Thursday at the earliest before it's all finally re-assembled.
But at least I think it looks nice.
It looks gorgeous, but definitely needs different colour knobs
Probably black with silver inserts like the SG Jr. Though a lot did have gold knobs - but not as light a gold as those currently fitted.
Looks great!!! Well done!!!
Would compliment the headstock logo.Quote:
Originally Posted by Simon Barden
Another excellent example. You are shelling them out like peas lately.
So would have allowed the bridge to sit within adjustment.Quote:
Originally Posted by Simon Barden
FWIW Every guitar I have required a small shim in the neck heel to bring the bridge up slightly.
Being a non-pick player allows me to place palm on the bridge without the adjustment screws digging in.
cheers, Mark.
Hi Simon
I have just found this build and have missed out on all the drams of the last couple of years. Maybe you would have scared me off.
I am currently working on an ES-1F and recently posted details of my problems which also resulted in a sand off. Had to sand off my cap because I slipped twice in two seconds with my craft knife while scrapping the last F-hole. I put two one inch scratches in the finish and couldn't repair the cap well enough so I had to take the finish off. I used a Bosch Ventaro,- saved a lot of elbow grease. I constantly had the numerous warnings from the forum about sanding through the cap in my ears I could not believe how hard the Tru-Oil was.
We have had similar issues but I had a lot of trouble with what looked like glue in the grain. I have had a close look at your ES photos and cannot see a similar issue. I posted a photo in my last report a couple of days ago. You may be interested. The link is below.
Good Luck
Greg
PS I forgot to mention how fantastic your ES looks
Hi Greg. The only glue issue I had with mine was quite a visible line down the veneer join, which is why I went with a few coats of the Vintage Cherry lacquer, which hid it nicely. It obviously darkened the overall colour, but in a nice way, so I'm not displeased.
As you will have read, I too had to sand off the original Tru-Oil, after doing a sand-through. And yes, when it's fully hardened, it is very hard. I just wondered how I ever managed to sand-through in the first place!
Tinted lacquer seems to be a good remedy for mitigating glue spots that can't be removed, as it doesn't rely on being absorbed by the wood, it just sits on top. So I think if I did any more builds with veneer tops, I probably wouldn't stain, I'd just go with lacquer, though I might stain just to pop the grain and then do the main colour through lacquer.
I'm certainly not immune to slipping with tools on finishes (failing to mask off for protection is a recurring crime for me) and the binding has been painted twice. I'd much have preferred not to have done that, but that spirit-based stain forced me to.
Yes, I mixed colour tone black with the truoil which successfully covered the glue in the grain but of course it also covered the flame. I was in fact lucky I had to sand off as I have a much better finish with more flame showing.
I am still happy with TruOil but I have learnt not to use 1200 ( too many scratches), sharpie black covers glue, I now only use microfibre to flatten (no scratches).