From the start I wanted to stain the body but obviously understood that getting a mixed piece basswood body it was never going to be perfect, and that's fine, it's my first kit.
What I got however was a little more disappointing. The majority of the body is fine, a few imperfections and scratches, but the top 'hump' unfortunately is a diagonally grafted on piece of extra wood.
Really not wanting to switch to painting, I figured I'd giving staining a go anyway with the hope that I could at least somewhat cover that ugly join.
And after 3 weeks, almost a full bottle of leather dye, many rolls of sandpaper and countless full sand-backs, I am...frustrated.
At points I've gotten close to making it look "OK" or at least, OK enough to just move on. (Because my god I want to move on)
Before today's frustration induced sand-back, it looked like this (Neck and hardware are not attached)
And at thumbnail size that almost looks invisible. But, looking closer, and especially in person it's not.
Most of the problem seems to be the rather thick line of glue between the two pieces, which doesn't take the stain properly. If it were joined as well as the rest of the body I don't think it would be such an issue but...
So onto the question I suppose. I just want to know what, if anything, I can do to cover or hide this better before I give up and start looking into paint finishing (Or just binning the whole body altogether).
Looking on the forums here I also can't help but feel like I got the short end of the stick. I see a lot of TL-1 builds with stains or transparent finishes and no randomly attached bits of wood. Should I have brought this up with pitbull when I received the kit? or is this a standard, expected from kits in this price range?
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