My first build (SV-1)

[Greg Stanley]

I'm getting there. I always knew this would take a while but it really is taking some effort.

Good news - I emailed the Pitbull team and my tuners have arrived in the UK. I also took the plunge or getting custom pickguard, trem and truss rod covers made - with a completely bespoke petal-ish type shape for the truss rod cover. I held off for ages as was concerned about putting the actual guard in the post but it was fine:



I mentioned before that I had a problem with dust - can be seen here:



Well, I decided to sand that back and, for a brief time, thought I'd ruined everything. I referenced this video and worked from 400 to 3000 grit - plus applying some car finishing compound to finish. The result was certainly flatter but also dull and spotted with shiny dots. I couldn't really capture it on camera but it's sort of visible here:



And that was roughly what I was expecting - I just had to apply a final gloss coat of oil.

Unfortunately, that barely improved things - not what I was expecting. Even worse, lots of small scratches from the sanding, that I had not even seen before, were suddenly really obvious. Faced with either restarting or just carrying on I decided to just keep going, and thankfully things started to improve. After the next coat things got significantly better, with a real smooth shine starting to appear. I think I'm up to about six now and I'm really happy with it (although I've still got to deal with the dust).

And at some point I did three coats of the penetrating oil on the neck (this also shows how rough the body was after sanding):



I've done with the oil so the plan is to wet sand that with the polishing paper just to remove the dust. Hopefully that should be good enough to try and buff this time. And then I think I'll actually be ready to start putting it together!