PB-30 w/Tonerider upgrade - First PBG Kit Build!

[wazkelly]

Hi Buddy, just caught up with this thread and you are doing well.

End grain on all timber bodies soaks up more than flat faces and can provide some interesting detailed grain patterns in the overall finish. Basswood typically has fairly shiny looking aspects to the faces which tend to repel stain and personally I stop sanding around 120 to 180 on the stuff to give it a better chance of soaking up some colour. Your choice of selective sanding back and re-applying stain seems to have worked in providing a more even looking colour all over.

In relation to DT, patience needs to be your best friend as it is very fickle stuff to use in hot and humid conditions. If in doubt, best to leave things to cure twice the time you would normally consider as it is so easy to lay a thicker coat than what you may have thought at the time.

Whatever you do, Never use 0000 steel wool to lightly sand back. Andy's advice of a light wet sand with 1500 W & D paper is spot on.

Cheers, Waz

[Route 58]

Thanks to everyone for the input.

Two questions - one intelligent, and one complete n00b effort.

First the n00b question: How do we know when a coat is dry? It might sound strange, but never having really done much woodwork in the past, I’ve also not done much finishing work. At this point it seems to us that our 2nd coat of intensifier is wet, but that’s because it’s still a bit tacky to the touch. Happy to give it more time (remembering that we accidentally put a little thicker coat than we should have), but there’s no point waiting for it to dry if it’s already dry and we’re assuming that tackiness means it’s still curing.

Second, more intelligent question: which instructions and advice do we listen to? I’d be interested to get the feedback from some other new builders, but our experience watching the videos, reading the forums and reading the recently made instruction book has been enlightening and confusing at the same time. For instance, I could point to about three or four conflicting sets of instructions on grits for sanding bodies. Sanding bodies is by no means the only example where there’s numerous instructions on what to do, even sometimes by the same people (it would seem possibly because of a few years between posts or videos, and maybe because kits changed, stains changed, or other valid reasons).

I bring this up because the the instructions that come with DT Intensifier specifically says to lightly rub with 0000 steel wool, but then above we have this advice:

Whatever you do, Never use 0000 steel wool to lightly sand back. Andy's advice of a light wet sand with 1500 W & D paper is spot on.

Now, given that this is written in bold I’m inclined to believe it, but it’s hard to know which bits of info to take on board and which bits to reject.