Hello World! My first guitar project

[ross.pearson]

..I always recommend buying a small tin (250ml) of "regular" oil based poly and thinning it with turps to use as a wipe-on. It's way cheaper than buying the stuff labelled specifically as wipe-on poly. What you pay for is basically pre-thinned poly...

Ah, that would have saved me some money on refinishing the dining table. Don't know why it didn't occur to me to do that.

Sounds like what I have will be perfect then, I'll definitely be using it!

If you're talking about staining the fretboard

Ah, no, I've mentally jumped ahead to future build ideas. Thinking of using Jarrah wood for a fretboard. I'm sure it's fine and loads of people do it, I've just never actually seen it done.

That said, that's some great advice for if/when I work with another maple fretboard, thanks!

[dozymuppet]

If you're talking about using jarrah timber, I'm looking at making a single-piece jarrah neck, as well as a jarrah neck with a maple fretboard. It seems to be hard enough for the job.

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[ross.pearson]

If you're talking about using jarrah timber, I'm looking at making a single-piece jarrah neck, as well as a jarrah neck with a maple fretboard. It seems to be hard enough for the job.

Thanks! Single piece jarrah neck would be interesting, and I imagine fairly hefty.

[McCreed]

Strongly considering sanding the whole thing back and starting over with a proper finish in mind.

If you decide to do that, I would recommend giving it a good scrub with a brush (maybe brass bristle?) and naptha (shellite) after sanding.
Being a very open-pored timber, you want be sure you get all the wax out of the grain as it may not play nice with whatever new finish you choose.

Of course if you're going to do a solid colour, you could do coats of shellac first like mentioned before to be safe.

[ross.pearson]

If you decide to do that, I would recommend giving it a good scrub with a brush (maybe brass bristle?) and naptha (shellite) after sanding.
Being a very open-pored timber, you want be sure you get all the wax out of the grain as it may not play nice with whatever new finish you choose.

Of course if you're going to do a solid colour, you could do coats of shellac first like mentioned before to be safe.

I've decided I'll try and take everything back to bare wood and have another crack at it. Nylon brush and mineral spirits to dissolve and remove as much wax as I can. I'll still go for the same effect, but with a black wash. I might even try for a burst effect.

In the meantime I had a lazy afternoon turning a cheap craftright engineers rule into a poor man's notched straight edge. Seems to work fine. I filed by hand because I didn't want to risk warping the ruler by putting too much heat into it with a grinder.

Chainsaw blade sharpening file ate through the steel in seconds.

Labrador foot warmer/chewer optional.





Also cut a 450mm section off a cheap craftright spirit level and flat sanded it using a plate of float glass. Should do for a poor man's fret leveling beam, but the fret rocker and setup will tell the tale. I've got some garbage cash converters guitars to test on.





The good news is it has an inbuilt handle!

[dozymuppet]

Nice MacGyvering.

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[McCreed]

I love home-made tools, and nothing wrong with them in my book. Good on ya!

The footwarmer is pretty good too!

[ross.pearson]

Cheers guys! I was considering making my own tri-corner fret files from regular triangle files, but decided to buy some cheap Amazon "luthier" files instead. I ended up buying "Homyl Fret Crowning File Custom Ground Triangular File for Guitar Luthier Tool, 4/5inch" which is a set of 2 custom ground files.

They turned up today, and despite being obviously slightly bent in transit one of them is massively rusted. And neither have a safe edge ground, so I'm not sure what "custom ground" means. I ended up getting a refund but yeah, pay crap money get crap tools I guess.



Seeing as I got a refund and they don't want their literal garbage back, I'm going to try and straighten them and grind safe edges in. Wire wheel on the bench grinder should take care of the rust.

[McCreed]

Yeah, sometimes ya gets lucky with "budget" purchases, other times ya gets what ya pays for...

As for "grinding" safe edges, I recommend doing it by hand and not on a grinding wheel. It's very easy to overheat the file and lose its temper.

When I've done safe edges, I do them on a carborundum stone followed by 600 through 1200 wet/dry sandpaper (dry) then polish with a just drop or two of machine oil on 2000.

I know I've seen YT vids of people using surface grinders and other power tools, but I was advised against it some years ago and just stuck to doing it by hand. It's not like it's a job I do a lot of or often, so the elbow grease doesn't worry me and it doesn't take that long really.

I've only done 3-4 jeweller's files, and all my other files are purpose-made for fretwork.

[ross.pearson]

I had to google Carborundum stone, only ever known them as whetstones! That's exactly the plan, I've got an older carborundum stone around here that I use for odds and ends so I don't ruin my good waterstones. I'll hand grind with the teeth of the file so I flatten them before sanding away, so they don't bite in too much. That will work on the single-cut, I'll just have to go easy on the bastard file at first and see how it goes. Cheers for the tips about finishing to a polish, I probably would have left things too rough.

One day I'll likely purchase a good set of purpose made tools.

In other news my super cheap fret erasers from Amazon turned up, and they appear to be the real deal and no issues, so that will make life easier.