Isn’t there some biblical reference to ‘casting the first stone’? I like the sound of stonecaster. I’d go with it.
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Isn’t there some biblical reference to ‘casting the first stone’? I like the sound of stonecaster. I’d go with it.
"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone", if I remember rightly -- which, considering the multitude of sins that will be covered up with the bridge, is kind of nicely ironic ;-)
Tried using punches to spell out the name on the headstock offcut, then filling the letters with a sharpie and wiping off the excess. I kind of like the effect:
Attachment 34588
...though I should have used a jig to keep the line a bit straighter. But while it's a pretty cool rustic effect, I think it's too rustic for this build. Better to go for a decal, I think.
Does anyone know of a good provider of waterslide decals in the UK? I don't have access to a printer due to the lockdown.
[edit] Aha! These guys look like they should be able to do it: Rothko and Frost.
Hmm, on more investigation it looks like decals are unlikely to work on an oil/wipe-on finish.
What do people tend to use with finishes like that? I know a lot of people use Tru-Oil, which sounds like it would have the same issue with decals.
Now I'm confused, the site I was considering getting the decals from say that they won't work with finishes like Tru-Oil, but the TDPRI forums seem to be keen on it.
Any thoughts from experienced people here would be much appreciated!
They'll work fine. You'll have problems with true 'oiled' finishes that just use an non-polymerising oil that remains greasy, but TruOil sets as hard as any synthetic finish. So once it's been on for 2 to 3 days, you'll be fine. You'll need a few coats on first before you put the decal on, and you're best sanding the finish flat enough to remove any bumps that will be under the decal, then polishing it up before putting the decal on. So you'll need to leave the first few coats for a couple of days to give it enough time to harden enough to polish.
The solvents in the Tru Oil may loosen some of the toner on the decal when applied on top, so you don't want to apply it and keep smoothing it out with a rag, as this can smear the decal a bit. Not a lot, just a bit. So I'd just dab the first couple of coats on and let each of them dry well, not just touch dry. The rest can then be applied normally. Or you could first spray the decal (on its backing sheet) with some clear poly (if you have some) to give it a protective coat, then you shouldn't have to worry at all. Poly and TO go fine together.
You'll need quite a few coats of TO over the headstock to hide the slight bump in the finish caused by the decal.
Really good and thorough advice from Simon there, and I was going to suggest the spray poly trick as well.
I think that's what a lot people do when using Tru Oil with waterslide decals just to eliminate the chance of any smudging.
This is slightly off-topic, but hopefully someone finds it interesting...
First I'll point out that the name Tru-Oil is a little misleading. Whilst one of the ingredients is linseed oil, is not a pure timber oil. As Simon mentioned, is has a polymer in it (some form of polyurethane) and also a solvent component (likely a form of turpentine). Birchwood Casey are very secretive of their recipe.
On a side note, I have read numerous posts about making "homebrew" Tru Oil by mixing equal portions of the three ingredients "known" to be in Tru Oil (boiled linseed oil, polyurethane, mineral turps). I tried this thinking I could save a bundle of cash, but it just did not work well IMO.
It just did not have the the same build quality nor dry in the same time as the real deal stuff.
I tried varying the ratios and multiple coats and the results did not improve (this was over a few days time as I really thought I could crack it). The only thing I succeeded in was something that smelled just like Tru Oil!
In the end I suspect Birchwood Casey have some special drying agent in there because boiled linseed oil is notoriously slow to dry.
After all the experimenting, I decided either genuine Tru Oil or my DIY wipe on poly is the way to go for non-sprayed finish.
Sorry, guys, I was inadvertently misleading -- I'm not using Tru-Oil, I'm using Wudtone's finish. However, it's also a wipe-on -- some kind of oil-based colour coat, and then a clear top coat. For both of them they say to wipe on with a cloth and to soak the cloth afterwards with water to prevent spontaneous ignition, so probably it's got some linseed oil or something similar in there. However, the finish once the base coat has dried for 24 hours or so is not at all greasy to the touch, so it sounds like your advice holds just as well for this as it does for Tru-Oil. Will give it a go. They recommend polishing with steel wool after the colour coat, before the clear, so that should be a good time to smooth the places where the decals will go.
I've bought a "made in..." decal for the back of the headstock and a simple "Stonecaster" for the front -- the one on the back should be a good one to test that it works and that dabbing on the clear coat as per Simon's advice doesn't smear things out. Will report back...
Small bits of rag aren't worth bothering about with soaking. It's large quantities of rags that have been soaked in the stuff and left all bunched up that can be an issue as the heat given off by the curing linseed oil builds up and as the rags are insulating, it gets hot in the centre. Fill a trash can full of the stuff and you can get fire. One small piece of rag on its own won't even feel warm to the touch.
But the clear poly spray is the safest method if you are unsure or can't test on a spare decal beforehand.
And I'd still put the decal on over at least one clear coat, otherwise you will trap some of the 'satin' finish under the decal, and any clear parts of the decal will show the finish below as a slightly different shade.
Thanks! I didn't realise that, and had been being super-careful with tiny rags, rinsing them out and leaving them outside to dry.Quote:
Originally Posted by Simon Barden
Many thanks, that sounds like a very wise plan. I'll do that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Simon Barden
Decals acquired:
Attachment 34796
Keeping it simple with them -- "made in" on the back of the headstock, "Stonecaster". I think I'll write some message or other in the neck pocket too.
So anyway, I've now learned why builds go dark at about this stage. Getting a good finish does take quite a while!
Eight coats of the base coat on the body, which took it to the colour I wanted, then six of the clear top coat.
Attachment 34797
Attachment 34798
Looks good, but maybe a little shinier than I wanted; although the bottle says satin, each coat makes it a bit glossier, which is understandable. Maybe a light rub with some sandpaper (1000 grit?) would make it closer to what I want? If so, perhaps a few more coats of top coat would be a good idea for protection, then a final satinisation...
Only six coats of colour on the neck, and so far one of the top coat.
Attachment 34799
Attachment 34800
I think I'll give it another top coat before putting on the decals, then a bunch more to protect it. Here I do want a nice smooth finish, for obvious playability reasons....
There's those freakin' tiles again! :)
But that's a beautiful old desk you have there.
Oh, and nice looking guitar too!
Thanks! The desk is one of my favourite things, and hopefully the guitar will be too soon :-)
Brief pause over the last week or so for work and for the first two coats on the neck to dry so that I can put on the decals. Did a test run of the decals on my heavily-used headstock offcut today to see how it looks -- pretty solid so far:
Attachment 34976
Need to confirm that a coat of clear on top adheres properly before going ahead with the real thing, though.
As the neck and the body are currently dry, I thought I'd try a test dry-fit with the tuners installed. I was thinking that with the nice grain on the body it might actually look good without a pickguard, but because the neck pickup position was factory-routed to humbucker size that probably wouldn't look nice. OTOH I'm not entirely sure of a light-coloured instrument with a white pickguard, so I picked up a decent five-screw black one on Amazon and I think it will look pretty good, once I've filed a bit of material away around the heel of the neck, where it doesn't fit right now. Here's a photo with it roughly in position:
Attachment 34977
The 22 fret neck with the overhang means that you need to take the neck off, in order to take the pickguard off, in order to adjust the height of the neck pickup. So from a practical point of view you might want to drill a couple of holes in the pickguard so you can top-mount the pickup rather than body-mount it. Less vintage looking, but more practical.
Otherwise, best to leave the pickguard off when settting up the guitar and then tuning the pickup heights, so you only need to slacken the strings and remove the neck once, to finally fit the pickguard.
That's a great point, Simon. I'm planning to top-mount it -- as you say, less vintage but more convenient. I'll use the white pickguard that came with the kit as a jig.
I tried putting the clear coat on top of the decal; I wanted to see what the effect of brushing it on would be, so I used the brush on the "Made" of "Made in London" to see, while I dabbed the clear on vertically with the same brush on the rest of the decal. The reason why you need to dab the clear on is pretty obvious:
Attachment 35271
For a second coat, I brushed normally over the now-messed-up "Made" and also over the "in", and then dabbed vertically on the "London" -- you can see that the first coat was sufficient protection, and the brushed "in" looks fine, and the "Made" is no more messed up than it was after the first coat:
Attachment 35272
So, the next step was to put the decals onto the headstock properly, with the tuners loosely attached so that I could check how it looked:
Attachment 35273
Attachment 35274
I'll leave them a couple of days and then carefully dab on a coat (or maybe two) of clear.
Well, it's been a while! Hope everyone's been keeping well.
Over the last few weeks I've been putting on more and more coats of clear on the neck, and it finally reached the state I wanted it in. Although the Wudtone finish isn't meant to be used for a high gloss, the last few coats actually made it quite close to that, which wasn't quite what I wanted. Luckily, a bit of buffing with steel wool left it with a nice satin finish that actually feels smoother to the touch than it was when glossy. My hand slides along it in a way that feels pretty much right.
So here's where we are:
Attachment 36205
Time for some fretwork. First thing was to make sure that the neck was straight using the notched straight edge -- it was a tiny bit concave, so fixed that. Next I masked the fretboard with tape; this took way longer than I expected and was very dull:
Attachment 36206
Used a black felt tip to colour the frets:
Attachment 36207
Masking tape also on the inside of the 12" radiused sanding block, superglue on the tape...
Attachment 36208
...then 400 grit paper on top of that:
Attachment 36209
The first couple of strokes with the block made me realise that the ink gets everywhere, including on the unmasked bit of the first fret, but luckily it wiped off easily with a tissue. More masking tape on:
Attachment 36210
It rapidly became clear that the frets were actually pretty level, but not just in the sense that they were all pretty much at the same height -- they didn't seem to be radiused at all, and the paper was only really touching at the sides:
Attachment 36211
After a number of passes, ink started coming off in the middle too, while the sides were looking pretty flattened; this photo was from when it was almost there:
Attachment 36212
Once that was done, the masking tape came off:
Attachment 36213
And it was time to go at it with the crowning file. This took an hour or so, probably because the sides needed so much reshaping, but I'm pretty happy with the results:
Attachment 36214
Will check that it all looks OK in daylight tomorrow, and then use the fret polishing rubbers I got from Crimson Guitars to finish up if so.
Nice work. But unless you've got one of those stainless steel fret protectors, you'll want to mask the fretboard again when using the fret polishing runners. They will mark the fretboard.
I finnd this stuff very useful for masking the fretboard and binding:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
The different sizes means that it makes it so muck quicker to do as you don't need to cut the taps to fit the gap. Two pieces will do for all the fret positions. It's also nice and low-tack.
I haven't used the polishing rubbers so don't know how rough they go, but I find that most of the fret polishing effort after crowning is with P240 to remove all the cross-wise scratches on the frets. Get a bit of 0.010" E string and hold it between your fingers with a couple of inches poking out and rub it up each fret. If you can feel it catching then it needs more sanding. Only progress to finer grits or polishing rubbers once its no longer 'grabby'. I'd do each fret with the same number of strokes of paper (or polishing erasers in each case) so that you remove (as close as you can) the same amount of material (and so the height) from each fret.
Thanks, Simon! I did have a metal fret protector, so got to work...
Attachment 36559
...but after a few minutes it got annoying holding the protector in place with one hand while using the rubber with the other, so I re-taped the fretboard (faster this time) and did it that way:
Attachment 36560
The results look pretty decent, though of course it remains to be seen how it will play:
Attachment 36561
My plan was to get the nut down to a sensible height next; here's where it is right now:
Attachment 36562
The trick I had seen on a Crimson Guitars video was to use a pencil, split in half, held against the bottom two frets to draw a line that is at the same height as the two of them (if you see what I mean) and to use that as a guide to the lowest that the slots can go. I was planning to use a mechanical pencil lead to get the same effect, then to sand the bottom of the nut to lower it appropriately. Unfortunately there was one small problem with that plan:
Attachment 36563
Too short to reach the nut when lying across the two frets. Some re-thinking required there; I'll also dig through these forums to see what I can see.
Anyway, onwards! Time to fit the tuners. I attached them reasonably tightly -- enough that they could still pivot with a little effort -- and then used a straight-edge to get them, um, straight:
Attachment 36564
They're staggered, so a quick sanity check to make sure that I put them in the right places:
Attachment 36565
The screws to hold them in place are a smidge over 2mm (so probably actually 2mm and the thread was just getting in the way):
Attachment 36567
So a 1.5mm drill bit to give the thread something to hold on to:
Attachment 36568
Then used the pin vice to drill each hole, putting in the screw after each one (with lots of beeswax) and double-checking alignment after each one. Pretty pleased with the result:
Attachment 36569
Next: I'd decided to swap out the stock white 8-hole pickguard with a black 5-hole one:
Attachment 36570
For convenience, I still want to have the pickup mounted to the pickguard as per Simon's earlier suggestion, so removed it from the white one and put it in place:
Attachment 36571
Used the pin vice to drill again, working my way up from 0.5mm to 2mm bits; first pilot hole from the back so that I could drill it through the pickup's mounting hole, then the others from the front so that I didn't get ugly visible tearout. First hole done and screw in place to test:
Attachment 36572
And second done:
Attachment 36573
Much easier than I'd feared it would be.
Next, I want to get the pickguard in place. Attached the bridge, just with the two outside screws (so that I didn't have to fiddle with the centre saddle), and then put it on. Starting to look more like a guitar!
Attachment 36574
Figured that I need the control plate in place too if I'm going to get this right, so dropped it in and discovered a minor problem -- the cutout for the control plate looks like it's the wrong shape slightly:
Attachment 36575
Also looks like the cutout for the neck heel is a little out; bit of an overhang when the pickguard is in what feels like the right place:
Attachment 36576
So it looks like a little time with a sharp knife and/or a file is in order for both of these, unless I'm missing something.
Replacement pickguards will almost always require some adjusting to fit correctly. Sometimes they just drop in, but they are the exception. Even if you bought a Fender p/g for a Fender guitar. It's just the way it is.
I like to use my set of jeweller's files for minor tweaks, and a 1" flat file for areas like the neck joint.
The key is keeping perpendicular to the face while filing.
Alternatively, for the control plate cut-out, a bit of 400 sandpaper wrapped around a 1" wooden dowel works well.
A tip for working with a black p/g, is use masking tape as a guide to mark the edge where you want to stop (like the straight edge of the neck pocket). Black is hard to mark (or at least see) with pencil or texter.
Thanks, McCreed -- I suspected that pickguard fit might not be a completely standardised thing, but it's certainly good to know for sure that I wasn't just missing something and trying to put it on the wrong way. I don't have any dowel to hand, but my e-cigarette is round and about 2cm in diameter, so that should do nicely for the control plate -- and the masking tape thing sounds like an excellent trick.