Joes Custom IB-1 Kit

[Joe3334]

Hi all

**** has hit the fan. I thought I'd clearcoat the neck before the body, and things were looking good.... I was using rustoleum clear gloss in a can and the guy at my local paint shop assured me it was 'polyurethane'. This so called polyurethane looked nice and shiny straight out of the can onto the guitar neck... I was surprised. After applying 15 coats i decided to wait a while for the polyurethane to cure, it eventually did and I moved on to wet sanding. I used 3000 grit wet & dry and It worked... kinda. As expected the majority of the surface was smooth and dull but there were small shiny spots everywhere and every time I got rid of them more shiny spots would appear...... I ended up burning through the clear all the way down to bare wood in a small area. So again I hung the neck in my garage went over it with clear coat over and over again until hitting 16? Coats. After the final coat I went to bed for the night and woke up the next day to see that the guitar neck had fallen from its contraption down onto the dirty little piece of carpet that laid on the garage floor. At this point I'm incredibly annoyed and have quite honestly lost all motivation to continue this build. I hope i'm not the only one who's gone through this dilemma.

Regards, Joe

[wokkaboy]

hey Joe, sorry to hear about your mishap. Have a break from the neck part of the build and you will come back to it. Can you start work on the body ? I'm surprised you need 15+ coats, should get away with 4 or 5 coats.

Can you please remove the first word as this is a family friendly forum some sons/daughters build with their parents and they may read it. cheers.

[pablopepper]

Hey Joe, dang sounds like you are having a rough time. First of all would you mind sharing your spraying techniques with us? 15 coats sounds like WAY too many, and after that it would take weeks and weeks to cure. And after 15 coats there should be absolutely no chance of burning through with 3000 grit.

My spray process is after final sanding and wiping down with something to remove dust (wax and grease remover/naptha/shellite) hit it with a mist (tack coat) wait 10-15 minutes to flash off then spray up to 3 "wet" coats with flash off time in between each coat. Then I leave it for a month before checking to see if it's cured. It's only cured when it no longer smells of solvents.

[Joe3334]

It was only at roughly 9 coats that the clear was starting to actually create a protective layer, prior to those 9 coats the mahogany was really sucking it up. I have a feeling that this Rustoleum Clear gloss that I used isn't quite built for the job.

[wokkaboy]

Hey Joe if you sanded the neck to about 320/360 grit it should have been smooth enough to clear coat and generally I've never had to grain fill a mahogany neck. I thought the IB-1 has a maple neck or is this a custom order ?
As Pabs says it's important to give it plenty of curing time between coats.
You will have to come up with a safer way to hang the neck and body while curing.

[Joe3334]

It's a custom order, both mahogany body and neck. If you have any recommendations for a product that can give me a clear, hard, and shiny surface after wet sanding and buffing then that would be great, I'd prefer the finish in aerosol form.

Cheers, Joe

[andrewdosborne]

Joe, I cannot speak for spraying but have done something very similar sounding on a Tru Oiled body - I ended up having to sand back and start from scratch. Very frustrating... take a break from it and you'll find the inspiration to get back into it. My current JB-4 build also recently suffered a 'drop on the floor' incident and was severely dinged. After some time away from it I ended up re-engineering the design and cut the dings away! Hang in there..

[Joe3334]

Cheers guys for the support, I'm sure I'll find the motivation again, I have in the past!

[Joe3334]

Hi all

After some contemplating I have decided to paint my IB-1 kit a metallic blue. There were far too many glue spots on the spalted veneer and I didn't want the veneer looking ugly and poorly finished. Anyway I began my painting process a week ago by spraying on multiple coats of primer/sealer, so far 6 coats. The majority of the body has accepted the primer/sealer very well and has left me with a smooth and flat looking surface, however some areas still have little pores that have not been sealed despite 6 coats of primer/sealer. Strangely enough the spalted veneer has the most pores compared to the mahogany which has very small pores. I have added pictures below to show what I'm talking about, and so my question is do I need to seal these small pores with an actual wood filler or would more coats of primer/sealer do this?

The pores are nearly all over the guitar body but I took pictures of the worst ones

[wokkaboy]

Hi Joe, it's usually best to grain fill before the primer goes on. I know about the large pores in the spalted maple veneers. I would press on with more primer/sealer coats until the pores fill, then move onto the colour coats.

EDIT just saw the photo's that will take many more coats to fill those pores. Have a crack at grain filling and you will need to dry sand it off (after overnight curing), wet sanding will moisten the grain filler too much and pull it out of the pores. It may create a few fine scratched on the primer but I think that's the best option.

in hindsight would have been easier to sand off the spalted maple veneer. Note this process needs good ventilation and a proper dust mask as the fungus in the grain can upset your lungs.

Did you attempt to use goof off to remove the glue on the veneer ? I would be crying if I had to sand that off or paint over it