3/4 ST-1JR First Build

So my kids had been trying to play with one of my guitars every time I picked one up so I figured I would build something a little closer to their proportions. Order a custom ST-1JR back in Jan then we know the rest. It finally arrived early June and had been hanging around climatising ever since.

I figured it should all be humidity adjusted by now so time to kick in. The kids haven’t agreed on a colour yet, I’m trying to persuade them so go with something close to the EVH rocket red, since that was part of the inspiration for some of the custom changes.

So the kit is the 3/4 size strat, I ordered it without the term route, it’s getting drilled out and ferrules for a string-through funk machine “hitmaker” style. Order a maple fretboard to pop against an iridescence colour scheme.

Headstock and end of the fretboard got some roughing in treatment today, ready for the lightning bolts that need to be incorporated into the finish.

Sounds great! Can't wait to see some pics once things start moving.

So progress yesterday got us here....

A quick side-by-side to the big brother Squire (only mod on that is dropping in a Fender full block trem, thankfully had a full thickness Squire that let me do that)
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Had an ideas session with Master 6 y.o. to understand the "lightning bolts" theme
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Landed on a design we all liked
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Learned that we have some full-size Strat parts in the kit, namely the neck bolt plate and output jack (emailed Adam and co to sort that)
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Measured up scale length for bridge placement (came in around 4mm longer than spec), we drilled in the bridge screws and dropped about 1mm into each of the string-through holes. I need a trip to visit my drill press at my brothers house to get them drilled through the body
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Then we checked our templates for both ends of the neck
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And got ready for the point of no return :eek:
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A bit of sawing and sanding later and headstock shape was roughed in
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Then we took to the other end with a rasp and sandpaper to round off the end of the fretboard to the same shape as the Squire
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I'm taking a build it and they will come approach with this Colin. They started taking an interest around 6 months ago, so they were 3 and 5 at the time. I figure if I've got something closer to their size in the rack that they can pick up I will get them engaged and then look at lessons with them.

Hopefully having them involved in building the instrument will help build that interest too

Still in holding pattern waiting for some 3/4 parts that didn't ship with the kit. Planning on drilling the string-throughs this weekend.

Finally got a moment to get back into the build, so got some good progression.

Activity for the weekend:
1. Drill string-throughs
2. Drill out string-throughs on back side for ferrules
3. Drill in neck ferrules (kindly supplied by Adam instead of backplate) and get neck drilled for mounting
4. Drill in output jack (Lester style on this 3/4 strat body)
5. Level neck
6. Level, crown and polish frets
7. Oil fingerboard (with F-One oil) to give it some protection through the remainder of the build

Tips that I learned for next time...
a) the body doesn't quite fit under the drill press to use that to drill the string-throughs. I ended up using the drill press to drill a drilling guide nice and square, then used the supplied bridge to mark the top-side and drilled starter points to pick up the drill but and then went down about half-way. I followed that by drilling the 2 e strings right through the body, then checking the bridge lined up on the backside which it did! I then played the same game with starter holes, then clamped a straight edge to guid my drill-bit to make sure they're nice and straight... rinse and repeat on the back edge for the wider ferrule counter-sinks

b) basswood is SUPER soft... lots of compression in the neck ferrules. I used the drill press to bore out the existing screw holes, using the depth stop for consistency, but they must have compressed another 3mm into the back of the body at tension! All good, tight neck achieved

c) I probably should have given the frets a bit of a tap and checked that they were seated properly before levelling - not a show stopper, but #10 and #11 sat really low (or the others really high) so I had to take a fair bit of material off some to get them level.

Next steps:

- Round out the top body corners on the neck pocket where they're straight cut to get more in line with Leo's style
- Fill some spots then sanding, sanding, sanding and sanding
- Stop in at Super Cheap for paint. I really wanted to do an iridescent red (EVH 5150 style) but the kids want something more in the blue spectrum, so we will pick a ColorSpec colour and get ourselves some acrylic primer, colour and clear coat for the body and face of the headstock then I'll so a satin rub-on poly for the rest of the neck
- Prime, sand, prime, colour, sand, glitter-spray features, clear coat, sand and polish
- drop in the loaded pickguard, wire up and output, string her up, tune it and hand it over to the new owners.

So far it's fun and rewarding


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And this is what the oil has done to bring out the pattern in the fingerboard

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Looking good. I tend to use those neck screw ferrules as well. It allows for quite a bite of customisation of that join.

Yeah Sonic, it happened by accident. I ordered a custom in the ST-1JR because I wanted to do a hardtail, but they sent a full-size parts kit, so I only had a full-sized neck plate and Adam didn't have any spare 3/4's so he sent the Ferrules instead. Really happy with how it's come together... Just need to get to it with a bit of sandpaper and round over the edges.

A solid day on the sandpaper today to get the primer laid out. More great lessons learned:

a) There's actually a fair amount of time that you need to invest in making some basic tooling on your first build... Today's tool was the painting handle for the body. This is iteration 1 - I'll likely redo it with some 1 inch dowel or something that I can put in a jig down the line, but getting dimensions right to give me a bit of edge-over in the neck pocket for spraying and looking at a minimum impact, full back exposure design... photo's below. Basically a handle onto a block (roughly the size of the neck plate, and some studs that slide into the screw holes, then you can just punch a single screw into the middle of it all)
b) When you're proud as punch of the sanding you've done and you've got a silky glass-like finish with 220 grit sandpaper, you're probably only half way there
c) the first hit of primer will very quickly expose all the sins of the world!

For info, I did a full large can of the Septone primer filler from Supercheap Auto - 1 medium coat sanded back (220), then 3 fine coats ready to just lightly knock back (360 grit) and lay down the undercoat colour.

I thought I'd done a stellar job with the sanding, but the primer quickly disproved that theory. I'd always planned to prime and sand and re-prime, but I was surprised at how much grain stood up and invisible marks jumped out once that primer hit.

Anyways, here's some images:

These are just the rough handle... a bit of tite bond and 2 screws to hold it all together
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Post primer and sand down, still shows some good low spots in the original sanding. Lighting detail on the headstock is masked off now - the face of the headstock will be the same as the guitar, with a natural lightning bolt per the customer's request (that would be my childrren)

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That blue on the handle was a bit of a test spray to see how all the layers come together - that's roughly the final colour. It's a Lamborghini colour called Blu Cepheus which has a metric butt-load of blue pearl over a blue undercoat.

Now I'm all primed up and ready to knock back with 360 grit and lay down the DupiColor Deep Aqua undercoat before I do the Colour Spec (0105) Lambo pearl

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(they are bamboo skewer offcuts keeping paint out of my string-through holes)

This is looking great!

Also made a 3/4 Strat earlier this year trying to get the grandees interested. They love the colour but only one of the four has actually picked it up. Good luck with your project.Attachment 38180

Thanks GreyFloyd, I've been getting them involved with the build along the way to try and build a bit more of a connection. They were proudly showing off the work so far to their cousins last night, so it seems to be heading in the right direction!

So I've just sprayed the back of the neck and headstock with Cabothane clear satin, which has a 2 hour touch dry and 6 hour re-coat, so I have time to burn.

More updates on progress. The colour went on, but not without it's challenges. I've gone for a 3 stage pearl to land at the Lamborghini Huracan Blu Cepheus colour. The stages are Blue Undercoat (Duplicolor Deep Aqua), ColorSpec pearl (PPG 0105) and ColorSpec clear coat.

Anyhoo, second coat with the Duplicolor Deep Aqua can and the nozzle spat its little red spray control and spewed big blobs of blue all over my smooth first coat :(. So I let that set off for a day and cut it all back to start again with a new can.

It did inspire me for another paint job down the line though. It's not really relic, but looks super cool.

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Got all that sanded out and went again the next night. This time I got my undercoat down nicely and I now had a blue guitar and headstock face.

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Lesson for young players at this stage. Preparation, patience and cleanliness are your friends. I decided at this stage I'd drop the pearl over the natural timber lightning bolt too. My experiments showed it should throw the colour back to a birch-like white and pop some blue pearl in the right light. Much excitement to peel back the masking!

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I let the blue undercoat set off for about an hour and came back and hit it with a pot scourer to key up the surface to get the pearl and clear coat on. The scourer (heavy duty) did a great job to dull down the surface nicely.

I've laid down 3 layers of pearl and the white in the pearl coat has pulled back the deep aqua colour to a candy sky blue with a nice pearl hint in it at this stage. It's about 29 degrees in Brisbane at the moment, so I was able to get layers on every 15 minutes.

Onto the clear coat and OMG!!! The clear coat has pulled up the pearl and the white tones even more. It's this crazy light blue with a never ending depth. I see now why people fuss over the Blu Cepheus colour on the Lambos, it's AMAZING! I could stare into it all night!

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Just with the raw clear coat on it's throwing all kinds of sparkle. I managed to get a dusting coat, 3 medium coats and a wet coat out of the big can of ColorSpec Clear Coat.

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And laying the neck over the jig gives me a great look at where it's going to land:

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So now it's a matter of waiting out a week to let the clear coat really set off, then level back and polish, polish, polish!

I'd certainly wait longer than a week as it really won't be that hard. Two weeks minimum, but it won't be anything like near cured within a month. Quite a few build thread posts recently about finishes that mark after polishing and scratchplates pushing up ridges in finishes etc.

You have the contradiction that warmer temperatures aren't best for spraying, even though things seem to dry fast, as the outer layer of the spray hardens so quickly that it traps solvent underneath it, which takes a long time to gas-off. Repeat that several times in a day and you could have quite a lot of trapped solvent under the finish. It may seem dry and hard, but it's probably not and it can mark very easily. It's why spray car shops mainly use 2k poly rather than 1k, as the catalyst (nasty as it is) gets the finish cured in a few hours rather than the months it would take for 1k to achieve the same hardness.

I know I'm certainly going to leave a lot longer between coats in future to allow each coat to dry more thoroughly before the next one is applied.

Thanks Simon I'll heed that advice. Maybe I'll be waiting for the xmas break to cut it back and polish then :D

I had seen the advice to wait until it stops stinking to know it's good to go too.

It's hard, but best to just hang it up out the way so it's not tempting you.

I use nitro and even after hanging several of them for a month after the last coats of clear went on, went on, the last guitar I took down to polish and assemble polished up a lot better than the first one, benefiting from maybe an extra 3 weeks of drying and hardening. Probably worth revisiting in a year's time for one more final go!

Are you suggesting that having it hanging over my desk is not the ideal location?? :D

There may possibly be some slightly less distracting location. :D

All done with the little hardtail Strat! After waiting and waiting and waiting, I finally did the sand, buff and polish and it looks great. It is a bit nerve wracking taking to your masterpiece with sandpaper, but I love how it's turned out.

After assembling everything and having a quick play I very quickly realised that you can't get away without touching the nut. It was horrid! The nut got a few gentle taps from side to side and then I worked a millimetre or two off the bottom with the levelling beam until I was happy with the action (and tuning of fretted notes!)

The kids love it and they're playing rock stars with a little Squier 10A amp. Kit strings aren't my fav, so looking forward to switching them out, but it's nice to play on the short scale with less tension on the strings.

I'm onto my next project tearing down a 2009 MIM tele and rebuilding it, but here's a final pic of the blue lightning guitar.

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