Astracaster First Build FS-1

[Simon Barden]

You certainly want to sand back to the wood, leaving a flat surface, so that you've still got timbermate filling the pores but not so much that you sand off the layer of wood with the filled pores and expose more pores beneath it. It's a fine balance and often a single grain fill and sand isn't enough and you need to fill and sand two or three times.

However, the basswood itself doesn't need grain filling, so you're sanding down to the wood leaving the small dents and scratches filled. The body will be a basswood ply, with a thin veneer of figured basswood on the top. SO you need to be careful when sanding back not to go too far.

The neck is solid maple, so you're free to sand that as much as you want until you only have the Timbermate filling any dents there may be.

I'm not sure about the white marks. They seem to correspond to places where it looked like there were some glue marks in earlier pictures, so it may be how the Timbermate looks like on top of those patches. Worst case is that you've sanded too far in those areas and hit the glue layer between veneer plys. I've done that myself.

It's very hard to tell without having it in front of you, even with a video.

[Drashkum]

The body of the replacement that i got doesn't seem to be basswood. In above picture the guitar body on right is what I got at first which seemed to be a basswood. But this one with neck glues was sent as a replacement and the back didn't look anywhere like other one. It looked more like ones with open pore like. Mahogany and that's why I chose to grainfill.

As you can from above pic the back of the guitar with neck glued looks blotchy. Does that mean I have to sand the darker areas?

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[fender3x]

Basswood can vary quite a bit with the amount of grain...but more subtle like the one on the right looks about like what I would expect, and frankly, like the one I finished with just clear. But basswood is a closed grain wood. If you have an open grain wood then it's not basswood. Could be Okoume, which is a lighter colored sometimes than mahogany. The tree is not related to mahogany but it's sometimes used as a cheaper substitute, particularly in veneers. It's also showing up a lot in guitar bodies. I think it's probably safe to treat it as you would open-grained mahogany.

[Simon Barden]

There were some kits that had ‘mahogany’ ply for a shirt while. This may be one of them. The mahogany guitars I’ve had (two), had less obvious grain than your guitar, but as Fender3x says, there are lots of woods that look similar and so come under the general ‘mahogany’ classification.

Yes, I agree that grain filling was necessary.

[Drashkum]

Finally the day for staining back of the guitar comes. Had 2 options
1. Teak yellow ( Orangish yellow)
2 Walnut ( Brown)

Decided to go with first as brown Is very common.



Finally tried my hand at staining after watching numerous videos on staining. At first it was dark I tried to pull up some colour with Thinner. Now it looks this way.

Does this look blotchy?

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[fender3x]

Maybe a little on the left side where the arch begins. If it's a slight blotch it's not much more than natural variation you'd expect to see in the wood. You might be able to get it a bit lighter with careful use of thinner. I probably would not attempt it, not being very good at staining I'd be nervous about making it worse.

This seems like the sort of thing that my MD friend told me he learned in surgery rotation in med school: "Excellent is the enemy of the very good." It looks very good. I have lost count of the times I have really messed something up when it was already very good ;-)

[Drashkum]

Maybe a little on the left side where the arch begins. If it's a slight blotch it's not much more than natural variation you'd expect to see in the wood. You might be able to get it a bit lighter with careful use of thinner. I probably would not attempt it, not being very good at staining I'd be nervous about making it worse.

This seems like the sort of thing that my MD friend told me he learned in surgery rotation in med school: "Excellent is the enemy of the very good." It looks very good. I have lost count of the times I have really messed something up when it was already very good ;-)

Yeah. Don't tell me. Being an orthopaedic surgeon we do that all time. We aim for acceptable reduction of bones. If in the process reduction becomes 100% it's great... But we never try to make an acceptable reduction into a excellent reduction and fixation as what was 90% will become 60%



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[Simon Barden]

It’s going to come down to whether you are happy with it. There appears to be some colour variation in the photo, but it’s hard to tell what’s in shadow and appears dark that isn’t, and what’s in the light so isn’t as dark as it might be. And the grain pattern can affect the results depending on the viewing angle.

There are three basic paths you can take here. 1. You can leave it as it is, with some slight variation in colour depth and see it as a natural thing. 2. You can try and lighten the darker patches. 3. You can add more stain to darken the lighter patches.

My approach when staining has been the latter one and I’ve added more stain (often a more concentrated stain), on the lighter areas after the initial staining. If that doesn’t work, then it’s definitely the wood itself and there’s not a lot you can do about that.

My method has its drawbacks in that you can end up with a lot darker finish than you intended.

As I have spray equipment, I have the extra option of using tinted lacquers to help even things out. More coats of a tinted lacquer will darken the colour, so you spray a bit more on the lighter areas to get a more uniform colour. But again, this gives a darker finish so may not be what you are looking for.

[Drashkum]

Maybe a little on the left side where the arch begins. If it's a slight blotch it's not much more than natural variation you'd expect to see in the wood. You might be able to get it a bit lighter with careful use of thinner. I probably would not attempt it, not being very good at staining I'd be nervous about making it worse.

It’s going to come down to whether you are happy with it. There appears to be some colour variation in the photo, but it’s hard to tell what’s in shadow and appears dark that isn’t, and what’s in the light so isn’t as dark as it might be. And the grain pattern can affect the results depending on the viewing angle.

There are three basic paths you can take here. 1. You can leave it as it is, with some slight variation in colour depth and see it as a natural thing. 2. You can try and lighten the darker patches. 3. You can add more stain to darken the lighter patches.

My approach when staining has been the latter one and I’ve added more stain (often a more concentrated stain), on the lighter areas after the initial staining. If that doesn’t work, then it’s definitely the wood itself and there’s not a lot you can do about that.

My method has its drawbacks in that you can end up with a lot darker finish than you intended.

As I have spray equipment, I have the extra option of using tinted lacquers to help even things out. More coats of a tinted lacquer will darken the colour, so you spray a bit more on the lighter areas to get a more uniform colour. But again, this gives a darker finish so may not be what you are looking for.

Thank you @fender3x and @Simon Barden for the insights.

I did try to pull out some stains with thinner today. I didn't want to make it darker as the sanding sealer and clearcoat would make it even darker. There are some parts in wood at the back that have taken more stain and look Orangish brown and fewer lighter spots which are yellowish. I think that's the way would would take stain. I think more I do more uneven it would become so i leaving it like this

https://youtube.com/shorts/pTQKOBpRIMQ?feature=share




Now that stain is done for back, should I sand it and then apply a sanding sealer?. I did use a alcohol based stain, so there is no grain raising at all. If i run my hand it feel just smooth as it was before.

I am trying to source a sanding sealer spray which is available here as I fear that regular sanding sealer would pull out the stain more.

https://bannasprays.com/shop/wood-ca...or-polish.html

Or should I use a brush and paint the regular sanding sealer and not use a rag?

After sanding sealer I may start to stain the front veneer. Base coat with light black and the sand and colour stain it

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[Simon Barden]

Looks OK to me.

No need to sand yet. Wait until after you've got some sanding sealer on.

I'd use a spray as you've got stain on the body now.

It would be good to know what exactly is in that sanding sealer, but they don't tell you and there's no product safety sheet for it.

So whilst TruOil does go on top of almost anything without problems, before you put any sanding sealer on the guitar, it would definitely be worth spraying a coat on a scrap bit of wood and when dry, then trying some TruOil on top just to check it doesn't react.