Printable View
Hey Hoby I've heard of someone on the forum talking about it but not sure if it works.
I usually carefully mask the binding with good quality painters tape would be a safer option, and then scrape off or steel wool any bits the paint or stain bleeds under the tape
Someone used a latex based product that could be brushed on and then peeled off once staining process was finished. Only done one build with binding and still carefully trying to finish it off.
I used this stuff:
3M Plastic Tape Blue 1/4" X 36 Yards Part No.: 06405
It wasn't cheap, and there were a couple of places where the paint had become brittle by the time I took it off. But just a couple. Mostly it made a very nice line. The problem was more that I couldn't leave well enough alone. First there were some places where I had not taped carefully enough and paint leaked through. I had a hard time scraping to get the edges of the good and bad places to match.... Then I realized that I had not tapped to the very edge of the binding in places...so I thought I'd just scrape the last bit. And that's when I went nuts. Everything I tried to do at that point just made it worse. That includes trying to just treat it as a practice run when I realized that I was going to have to reshoot most of the body.
Attachment 18439
I am tempted to just clear coat it now and pretend that I was going for road worn.
One problem I ran into is that once the opaque paint is on you cant tell where the binding ends and the wood begins. Now that I have the edges sanded back, I will measure to make sure I know exactly where the edge is.
I am also thinking of making a few of these sorts of tools for scraping:
Attachment 18440
Has anybody used one of these? Any tricks or caveats I should know about?
So here is what I have learned so far about finishing a DIY guitar for noobs like me...
First, prepare to be patient.
next, actually be patient.
The rest are in no particular order:
Avoid any guitar with binding. If you think you want binding, think again. Make really sure that's what you want before you start.
If the guitar has veneer, prepare to paint it a solid color. I have seen lots of stuff on sanding lightly, and there are some lovely pics on this board of beautifully finished veneers. How the builder managed to sand without damaging the veneer remains a great mystery to me. I have also read lots about getting rid of glue spots. However, my performance at this has been spotty (pun intended), and most attempts made a further mess of the veneer.
Adding more stain to damaged veneer makes things worse. Adding more anything to damaged finish makes things worse. Suck it up. Wait for things to dry. Sand it off. Start again.
Sand everything really smooth. Particularly once your veneer is hopelessly damaged. Get it nice and smooth.
Seal it with Truoil (which works nicely under car lacquer I have found) or better yet, filler primer from the same company that makes your paint.
If you're guitar has binding, pause occasionally to reflect on why you thought this would be so much better than a strat, tele or p-bass body? Then, make sure the binding is COMPLETELY CLEAN. After that, tape it up with expensive pin striping tape from 3M.
Paint with a solid color from an auto parts store unless you have really good spray equipment. No paint goes on easy in my rapidly growing experience, but lacquer coats melt into each other and that does help some.
Pull the tape off very soon after painting. Don't let the paint get super hard before pulling it off. Optimally the paint should be hard enough so that touching does not leave fingerprints, but not harder.
If there is scraping to do, do it just after pulling off the tape.
Be really careful with the paint before the clear coat goes on. It damages REALLY easily, and touch ups are a pain.
Reconcile yourself to two things: There will be some flaws. There will be some repairs.
Repairs require the patience to wait until the finish is hard enough to sand. Sand it out. Repairs are treated just like other painting. They require just as much patience.
Don't touch wet paint.
Don't touch wet paint with a glove that might leave color in the paint.
Don't touch wet paint.
Dont touch wet clearcoat.
Wait until they have dried. Sand, repaint, patience.
If there is a drip or run, see above.
I don't know where I heard that you should put decals over bare wood and then clear coat over the top of that. In my case the wood under the decal remained lighter than the wood around it. I have just sanded off the clearcoat, on the bare wood part of the headstock, and started clearcoating. Current plan is to put on two or three coats, sand with 800/1000/1500, then put the decal on, then continue clear coating.
A surgeon once told me that in med school they learn that "excellent" is the enemy of "very good." In medicine that means you should try not to let the patient bleed to death while you get the sutures just right. I have taken it to mean that if I want to play this beastie while I am still young enough to do so, I may have to tolerate a few flaws in the finish. The tool mark I did not see. A tiny flaw in the paint on the back of the headstock mostly covered by the tuning machines...eh! At this stage I have lost count of all the absolutely tiny flaws that I have made worse by trying to fix.
My daughter told me that when she makes something the little flaws tell her that she made it...and I am getting used to that idea. I don't know why it's so hard. My favorite guitar is a classical made by a local luthier here in Miami. I am sure it was an experiment. It has the occasional tool mark. The heel has a weird diagonal laminate in it. It's made of poplar and has all the requisite weird streaks in the wood. The finish is super thin, but certainly not perfect. It plays like a dream though, stays in almost perfect tune and has a really sweet voice.
Also, did I mention the part about patience, and not touching wet paint?
I like the part about not touching wet paint.
I have been making slow progress with my refinishing. It's not perfect, but it's definitely red--and I have decided I like it better than I like doing anything about it. Will post some pics when I have put all the parts on it, but before I do that...
I had one more thing to build/test. The wiring harness. Since these I am using Dano pickups, I thought it would make sense to use a Dano Wiring harness. The one that seemed most common was this one:
Common Dano wiring
...but it's really odd...which I started a thread about here:
Dano weirdness
...and it's almost impossible to source mini-pots with these values. To get everything to fit through an f-hole, I had to hot-rod some pots. The thread for how I did that is here:
Modding pots with a reamer
I did a rubbing on the bass and then glued the rubbing to thin piece of wood. I drilled where the rubbing showed me the holes so that I could drill in the right places to get a perfect template for where the controls would go.
Although this is a semi-hollow build, I wanted at least some shielding. Since I can't shield the cavity, I decided to try to use wire mesh tubes. I don't have a pic of how I did this but basically, i clipped the wire mesh to the length I wanted, and put an aluminum knitting needle through it to open it up. Then I tinned the ends with liberal amounts of solder so that the ends would stay open. Since solder does not stick to aluminum this worked pretty well. I then pulled out the knitting needle, and soldered the tube to the pots, which I had mounted in on the template.
I then ran all the wires to the pots through the tubes, and soldered all the wires and caps to the pots. However, this is the first time I have used Dano wiring, and it seemed odd. Also I was not completely confident that I had done it all right (even after checking about 30 times). So I decided I needed to test it before trying to install it through the f-hole.
I built a test bed out of some scrap lumber, an old guitar tuning peg array a small piece of metal for a tail stop and an old bass string. Here's a pic of it:
Attachment 20991
You can see the wiring harness template attached on top of it.
Here's a better pic of the important parts...
Attachment 20992
(The green wire is to ground the string)
Here's a pic of the back of the template:
Attachment 20993
The red tubes on the wire are just to clip the connections for the test. I'll solder and shrinkwrap them before putting them in the bass.
The good news is that everything worked. The better news the circuit was dead quiet. Since I did the test in my garage where there are LED and neon lights and a fridge, this is no small thing. These are single coils and they are NOT wound to buck hum even when running both, so I was very pleasantly surprised at how quiet they were. They are not particularly hot, and I'll need to have them close to the strings, but they sounded good. Especially in the both-on position, which was quite a bit louder and fuller than either of the one-pickup settings. Not a bit harsh, or too much treble. Very glad I sprung for the alnico version.
The tone circuit was a bit of a disappointment. The tone controls did not seem to do much at any setting. In a perfect world I would play with the values a bit to see if I could get them to work better. However, since the circuit is quiet, I have pretty much decided that I don't want to mess with it. Tone can always be adjusted on the amp or with a pedal. But a quiet semi-hollow with single coils...better the leave that be, I think.
Of course this is a just test on scrap lumber with just one open string. But at least it green-lights putting the harness in the bass. Will post some pics when I attach everything. Finish is not going to be perfect, but it should get some points for being unusual ;-)
nice looking harness fender3x, love the 1 string test rig, that's a cracker, might have to build one for testing pups and wiring !
Thanks Wokka. I just could not see going through the trouble of a semi hollow install without some sort of test...
Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk
Good work on the harness. You could use the testing system as a djent instrument!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
that's it Ponch, you could let Seasick Steve or Jack White play the one string test rig axe !