Ducklet's STF-1

So, went looking for paint ideas, and found some dark green glittery stuff. Bought that, some undercoat, and clear. Current plan is a dragon theme, with a head carving on the end of neck. I have some tung oil left over from my fiddle build. that will go on the neck and fingerboard.
Plan:
1 Test paint, how it interacts with the tung oil. How to get the best smooth finish over the textured glitter finish.
2. basic shaping of head. sanding
3. tung oil on neck, mask that.
4. base coat on body, head
5. Black paint in trem cavity of body, under pickguard.
6. masking. including pick-guard area. Anticipating moderately thick clear coat because of textured paint.
7. color paint.
8. clear coats to basic smooth finish
9. detail carving.
10. detail painting.
11. clear finish.
12. unmask.
13. shielding.
14. Assembly.
thinking of putting the decal on the pick-guard. will mean disassembly, and clear finish on the guard.

Received Kit quickly, it's nice. But I have a volume knob on one of the Tone pots. other than that, it seems great.

Welcome Ducklets.

Current price for that kit is extremely good value. Interesting plans and hope it all comes together just fine for you.

Cheers, Waz

Welcome to the forum Ducklets. Any chance of a piccy of the kit?

Attachment 22652
Kit partial assembly

Attachment 22653
Controls. Two volume knobs. The middle knob is on a pot with a capacitor, so it definately is supposed to be a Tone knob

Attachment 22654
Test of oil. will finish this, then test Primer and paint over it.

On the Controls image, you can see the edge of the jack cutout thru the screw hole. I'll see if i can adjust the jack position, and do some undercut carving, to give the screw more purchase. Also, the tuner holes seem over-large, 10.3mm diameter, and the pegs are 9.6mm dia. they rattle around a bit.

Spent today madly doing Canadian thanksgiving... but finished rounding the fret ends, and started the test paints

Undercut the jack cutout with my dremel. The wood separating the spring compartment from the bridge pickup is only about 3mm thick, and they've tried drilling a 12mm hole for the ground wire. Understandably, it's a mess. perhaps a 3-4mm hole would be more sensible?
Started sanding the body.

Did a lot of sanding, body and neck (minus fingerboard) did some test painting, discovered (after 7 layers) that the glitter paint requires a coloured undercoat. So off to Bunnings. Currently the paint is looking like 2 white undercoats, 2 coats of forest green, 7 or so layers of glitter, multiple layers of clear (till gloss)

Ok, it seems my blade switch is faulty, both neck and mid pickups responding in the 1st switch position (just the neck tone tho).

Getting my test carving and paint runs near right, learning what works as I go.
Attachment 22730Attachment 22731
Put in some silver circles roughly where the tuner posts will be. I'm going to cut the notches deeper on the final design of the head. Was working on some scale patterns for the body, obviously the silver doesn't work. Was considering writing the idea off, but tried using the template with glitter, and it looks good. Going to have to make a much better template, and give some serious thought to what happens near the edges of the body.
The photos don't do the glitter justice, and was pretty happy with how the masking came out. The final design will have a iris painted on.

Looks cool. Looking forward to seeing how the glitter paint works out on the guitar itself. Only thing that might give me a little concern is the eye and nose carves being so close to the tuner holes. Not sure how deep you're going with them, but I'd be worried about those little ridges between the tuner hole and the carve breaking down.

Don't forget that the washer around each tuner post (plus the locking nut) is bigger than the tuner hole, so will probably cover up some of your carving (if the dots for the tuner positions don't take that into consideration). You are looking at around a 14mm diameter washer for a 10mm diameter tuner hole.

can you post a photo of the electrics, im surprised that the switch doesn't work properly.

Also...ready for a suggestion for your green dragon build.

one of the guys on the forum did a "poison ivy" LP build and cut fret dots out of green celluloid picks replaced the plastic white ones with them. looked cool

I can understand why people stain their guitars, I'm becoming invested with the grain on this, so much sanding.

Keeping a border around the tuner washers and housings is part of my design process. The carving near the washers is either only ~2mm deep or angled away.

Ok, Finally finished the test phase, and started doing some serious work. Paused to check carving around tuners. Still to do: eyelids, teeth, cleanup. Attachment 23117Attachment 23118

Haha, very cool man! :)

Poor dragon has no teeth....

http://homestarrunner.com/sbemail58.html

Great start, very cool

waaaaaaay cool head stock :D

Final masking, and went to spray glitter, but the test paints seem to have left glitter in the can's seal, and I got a lovely splatter effect on the headstock... a quick trip to bunnings for a new can, and I've finished the glitter layer.
Attachment 23138Attachment 23139Attachment 23140
Next, wait for that to dry, remove some of the masking and start applying clear coats.

Oh, before the clear coats, must remember to do the dragon's eye. (copper with a black iris)

Just caught up with this thread, looking great, the dragon slayer

Eye. just a few touchups required where i caught the eyelid
Attachment 23141

cool build and theme Ducklets, can't wait for this to be bolted together !

went to start the clear coats... air coming out of the can, but nothing else. Took the three cans back to bunnings, the empty white primer (to compare weights) and the mostly full but dodgy clear and glitter. Got a store credit for those two. Nice. The new glitter worked flawlessly, much better than when I originally bought it, and the clear seemed to work O.K. I'll see how well tomorrow, when it dries. I stuck with the same brand because the cans seem to work ok when new.
In case people are wondering, I decided against the scale pattern, the glitter sticks up, and doing a few coats of patterned texture would leave pretty big voids to fill with clear coat. I'm going for a polished finish, and that's going to take a lot of clear. I've put down a few layers of spray clear, when that dries I'll pull out the tin of clear polyurethane and brush, and put a few serious layers down. Then the wet & dry, buff etc

By glitter sticking up, I mean it's almost like a non-slip finish, green glitter flakes in a clear medium. You definitely need a coloured undercoat, because even with 7 layers of glitter, you can see that undercoat when the light's not reflecting in your eyes. I want to get a lot of clear on top, or I'll be sanding the tips off those glitter flakes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ducklets

Attachment 22653
Controls. Two volume knobs. The middle knob is on a pot with a capacitor, so it definately is supposed to be a Tone knob

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i just finished the same kit last week mine had 1 vol and 2 tone someone buggered up

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ducklets

By glitter sticking up, I mean it's almost like a non-slip finish, green glitter flakes in a clear medium. You definitely need a coloured undercoat, because even with 7 layers of glitter, you can see that undercoat when the light's not reflecting in your eyes. I want to get a lot of clear on top, or I'll be sanding the tips off those glitter flakes.

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i was checking this stuff a week ago at bunnings i thought it was clear over base which you had to do a colour coat followed by glitter then clear but didn't think it would be very good on a guitar as the finish wouldn't look that great simply because of the type of paint it is, would be better to get 100gm pack of super flake and mix your own from DNA or spray chief be interested how this one will go

Hey Phrozin, nice builds. I'm pretty new to the whole spray paint thing, so I'm taking the "Easy Option" of store bought, haha. My test coats came up ok, crossing fingers. I like the end of the fingerboard on your candy apple strat, hadn't even thought of shaping that.

Looking good. Can't wait to see the finished product.

Not looking so pretty atm.
Ok, the clear coats are a minefield. put a couple of coats down from the spraycan, then 3 coats (8 hours dry between) with brush of polyurethane... yes, it did end up quite streaky and uneven. started sanding it flat and hit a major problem... those 5 coats were not enough to submerge all the glitter. Ended up with two small patches (on the front) where the glitter is now silver instead of green, because I've sanded the tops off there. I stopped as soon as i realised. Decided to use the clear from the can, and hit problem #2. The can of clear seems to have two options. If i spray the recommended distance, all the clear seems to dry before it hits the surface. If I spray close enough to wet the surface, the top of the clearcoat puckers up into ridges. I tried sanding those ridges off (on the back), and they seem to tear off, leaving holes in that layer of clearcoat... If i sand those holes flat, I'll be back to taking the top off the glitter... I stopped instead, going to let the ridges dry more, sand as flat as possible, hit it with the brush, put 2 more layers down and try sanding again and see how good I can get it. I'm starting to consider taking the glitter off completely and starting over. At this stage, I'm continuing because it's a learning experience, better to figure out the mistakes now, so i don't have to start over more than once (if I decide I can't live with the finished product)

Ok, it seems the clearcoat from the spraycan has lifted the polyurethane, so the lifted areas have exposed the glitter. So, anything more enthusiastic than rubbing with my thumb damages the glitter finish. I've taken about quarter of the surface off with my thumb... that's the easy bits. Obviously, the correct thing to do now is to sand it back and start over. I can probably mask off the voids and just do the surface. At least I didn't use the spraycan on the headstock.

Unfortunately, your analysis seems correct. Starting over is probably the way to go.

Now, I'm gonna say, most likely, the spray and the brushed on poly are incompatible. Next time stick with one or the other, personally I would choose spray. Also, sanding through and removing colour is a very common problem with glitter finishes. That clear coat needs to be thick enough to bury the uneven surface of the glitter and survive a leveling. Err on the side of caution and build it up slowly with lots of coats.

Persistence is the key. You will get there in the end.

Spent the last couple of days removing paint from the body. back to scratch. (Mostly, going to re-mask the voids)