Maddog's STA-1

yeah, that's the plan, just ran out of time. Also as I'm finishing it with Black stump the lines are guaranteed to darken :P

The lines might actually disappear comepletely with the black Maddog! Maybe add a touch of water to dilute it a smidge? Like im talking just a few drops out of a third of the bottle

keep sanding Maddog as Pest says, but should look good when it's cleaned up

So I'm getting there on the sanding, but the cracks on the joins seem to be getting worse:

Attachment 8345Attachment 8346

It could be because it's been left in the hot shed but I'm not sure

Do I have a go at applying some more timbermate slurry into the cracks or is there something else I should try?

Hi Maddog, those cracks do look worse, in a hot shed the wood will expand and compress and cause this.
I'd get some thin superglue with one of the thin nozzles and get as much glue in the cracks, let it dry, then get as much timebermate in as you can

It looks like there's no glue at those parts of the joints. The heat may be taking the moisture out of the timber, causing it to shrink back like that.

Would getting some moisture into the cracks close them up, maybe? But you'd have to get some glue in there to slowly dry once it's expanded... just thinking out loud for you...

I do have some titebond, need to work out a way to get it in the gap though

PVA glue can watered down a bit. The theory I've heard is that slower drying wood glues create a stronger bond because they have longer to penetrate the fibres further. Perhaps moistening the crack, and applying PVA will make the timber swell as the glue dries. DB probably has experience in these things!


I've never tried Titebond, so I don't know how to use it... I have to get to that large blue shop and get some before they go belly up!

titebond has about the same workability as pva so sawnny's suggestion should work fine

So after taking ages on the sanding I'm almost ready to go on the Dingotone

While waiting for stuff to arrive I've decided to start on the electronics, after getting a set of toneriders a while back I've decided to upgrade all the electronics, one reason being I'll be able leave the original wiring harness intact in case (when?) I screw something up.

A couple of questions that have come up, On all the wiring diagrams I've seen for standard Strat have a single .047 cap, the harness that came preinstalled had 2 caps (one on each tone pot iirc). is the 2nd cap necessary? Also linear vs Audio pots for tone, is there a better option or doesn't it really matter?

I'm sure I found a good post that covered most of this in a random thread a few days ago but cant find it again for the life of me.

Maddog