unfunk's EX-5 build diary: Beauty Omega

[Simon Barden]

Any chance of simply adding some more inlay to cover up the gouge?

[unfnknblvbl]

Unfortunately not, as the inlay is made from copper.

Here's my first attempt. As you can see, the stain didn't take very well to the heavy superglue usage.



My followup attempt is much better, but still crappy upon close inspection.



and a wider angle:



Shaping up nicely, IMO. Unfortunately, I'm still waiting for the finishing oils to arrive, so I'm kinda stuck at the moment. I rewired the pickups according to WirdBits' instructions, and now the don't sound like a hot mess. Just a cold one. They're damn quiet (quieter than when they were wired incorrectly!), and even though I've angled them heavily toward the bass strings, they still pick up way more of the upper three than the lower two.

I think I'll push forward with my own design anyway, since I have nothing better to do...

[Simon Barden]

You could try filling in the gaps round the inlay with black superglue.

[unfnknblvbl]

That's what I'm planning on doing. I'm not done treating the inlay yet though; I need to get my hands on some ammonia...

[unfnknblvbl]

...still waiting on the oils...

So in the meantime, I've been playing with finishes to the copper inlays.

At first, I just took to it with the blowtorch and got some interesting effects:



Then, after not being able to get any 30% ammonia solution, I just got some cloudy ammonia from the supermarket to see how that went with various tarnishing agents:



Interesting, but not very nice. I then soaked it in bleach for a few hours, sanded it back with 600 grit wet/dry paper and torched it again:



Now we're getting somewhere! I'm seeing a lot of interesting colourations show up, but it's still not quite what I'm after.
I sanded it back again, this time using 1200-grit after an initial 600 round. I also torched it while holding it in my (insulated) hands and a tap running nearby. So, as soon as the colour changed to what I wanted in one spot, I immediately quenched the metal and moved to another spot.



Bam. That's so close to perfect, that I'm going to leave it there. And here it is in context:





You'll notice that the cavity for the inlay hasn't been carved terribly precisely, so there's a bunch of gaps around some of the edges. My plan to combat that is by flooding the cavity with a super heavy shellac mix. I've made up a small batch of that to be so saturated that it simply won't dissolve any more dried flakes. Should work a treat, in theory.

Good thing this is only the practice build!

[Simon Barden]

Great work on the copper inlay! Looks superb.

[JohnH]

Yeah, that copper inlay looks great!

[churchie]

At first, I just took to it with the blowtorch and got some interesting effects:

haha that's the spirit!

looking good man