Feeling a bit stuck, Bad wood and glue.

[Boymcgee]

I bought a pitbull Tl-1 kit about a month ago.

From the start I wanted to stain the body but obviously understood that getting a mixed piece basswood body it was never going to be perfect, and that's fine, it's my first kit.

What I got however was a little more disappointing. The majority of the body is fine, a few imperfections and scratches, but the top 'hump' unfortunately is a diagonally grafted on piece of extra wood.




Really not wanting to switch to painting, I figured I'd giving staining a go anyway with the hope that I could at least somewhat cover that ugly join.

And after 3 weeks, almost a full bottle of leather dye, many rolls of sandpaper and countless full sand-backs, I am...frustrated.

At points I've gotten close to making it look "OK" or at least, OK enough to just move on. (Because my god I want to move on)

Before today's frustration induced sand-back, it looked like this (Neck and hardware are not attached)



And at thumbnail size that almost looks invisible. But, looking closer, and especially in person it's not.

Most of the problem seems to be the rather thick line of glue between the two pieces, which doesn't take the stain properly. If it were joined as well as the rest of the body I don't think it would be such an issue but...



So onto the question I suppose. I just want to know what, if anything, I can do to cover or hide this better before I give up and start looking into paint finishing (Or just binning the whole body altogether).

Looking on the forums here I also can't help but feel like I got the short end of the stick. I see a lot of TL-1 builds with stains or transparent finishes and no randomly attached bits of wood. Should I have brought this up with pitbull when I received the kit? or is this a standard, expected from kits in this price range?

[Trevor Davies]

Hi Boymcgee,

I can't recall seeing anything like this before! So I would not call that the standard! I would contact Adam from Pitbull to see what can be done for you.

No matter what the result from PB do not bin it.

[Kburns]

If you had access to clamps and router id be tempted to glue a one piece veneer on top.

I had slightly different issues with my basswood rd kit. The wood pieces that were glued together to form body were very different, almost like different types of wood. They took stain and oil very differently. Basswood is a nightmare to stain at the best of times. Wood conditioner helped a bit but still tough. In the end i resorted to fallback of solid nitro finish

Sent from my SM-A125F using Tapatalk

[Simon Barden]

Sorry to hear of your problems.

That angled bit of wood on the upper bout really is a shocker. It shouldn't be there at all and was probably a factory effort to repair a mistake as there's no other reason that top section should not have been one piece of wood. At best it should have been sold as a lower-priced second and people made aware of it.

Whilst these are very low-priced kits, one should still expect a certain standard from them and 95% of them do have reasonable bodies.

But with a kit guitar where you don't have an idea about what you're being sent, I think it's best if you don't have any firm ideas about how you plan to finish it until you've seen it, and be prepared to go with a solid colour if necessary unless you really want to send the kit back. Being in the UK, its not quite so easy for me to send a kit back as if I were in Australia.

Your guitar would be fine if finished in a solid colour, but I know the main Pit Bull site talks about painting or staining the kits, so if a kit wasn't generally suitable for staining they really should say so.

So where are we?

Sanding. What grade of grit did you sand to? Despite using a leather dye (normally spirit/alcohol based with good penetrating properties) the dye take up seems to very very patchy, with minimal take-up in several areas. Often this is a result of sanding with too fine a grit. P180 is probably the finest I'd go to if staining. Certainly using P400 and above can result in too flat a surface with a semi-burnished, compacted finish which resists stain take-up. I assume you'll be putting some form of clear-coat finish over the top, either a spray or a wipe-on product like TruOil. That's where you use the finer sanding grits. Sanding prior to staining should be about getting a flat surface, free from bumps and dips, rather than a surface that feels super-smooth to the touch but may still have those bumps and dips.

So it would be informative to know as to how fine a grit you sanded it to before staining.

Stain. Which brand of leather dye did you use? Angelus seems to be a popular one which has been successfully used by many people on the forum in the past. I've no experience with these so don't know if some are better than others for wood/in general.

Options.

If you did use more than P240 on the surface before staining, sand again with P180 maximum and re-stain. I don't know how many coats of stain you applies, but unless you are going for a washed-out look, you should be able to apply several coats to get a darker colour.

Before re-staining it may be worth going over the glue lines with some Goof-Off glue remover (not Goo-Gone which is much milder) or acetone to remove the worst of any glue that still remains in the wood around the edges of the join.

If you can get the stain darker, then you could try either running a green Sharpie along the join line or even mixing up some artists' acrylic paints to get a better colour match and carefully paint along the line.

One option for hiding the angled wood section is to do a dark sunburst round the edge. This is probably best in black and with a very solid finish. This could be stained or it could be sprayed. If stained, then there are plenty of YouTube videos on the subject. Pick the ones with the best end results as it is all too easy to get a solid line rather than a faded edge.

It's not the cheapest option, but getting a green-tinted lacquer to spray over the stain can be very effective. It would probably have to be a nitrocellulose spray, as getting tinted clear sprays in acrylic or poly isn't easy and you'd probably need to get a custom mix made up.

Here's a Strat I finished in emerald green tint nitro lacquer.



And an SG Jr kit that I used a wine red tint lacquer on to help even out the colour as the wood had a lot of dark/light striping.



It helps a lot, but it won't get it a totally even finish unless you apply enough so it's almost opaque

Otherwise, a solid paint colour would do the trick.

[Boymcgee]

Thanks Trevor, I shall draft up an email to Adam this weekend and see if they can offer me any help.
Good to hear this is an outlier. As for binning it, I'm just being dramatic, but I have had the thought some days, that or take the jigsaw to it and make some kind of teardrop telecaster.

I had considered a veneer, but I have neither the tools or experience I think to pull it off.

As for the overall quality of the stain, the body has been sanded with 180 and then 240 the whole way through and then stained with diluted Angelus dye. The patchiness and lack of coverage is just because after the first 2 or 3 full top stains (and sand-backs), I stopped caring about everything else for the moment, and moved to just testing what worked to cover the top corner itself (including doing a 'black-burst' along the edge, which I haven't yet bothered sanding out completely.)

I'm not sure Goof-off or acetone will offer any help, I have clean sanded at least a couple mm off the top of that join, I even gouged it out with a file and used wood filler in it at one point, which while that did take the stain, the results were less than desirable so I sanded it back to flat. It isn't a glue on the surface, It's glue or filler all the way through the join.

[Simon Barden]

If you've sanded that much off, then no, glue remover won't help. But hopefully it does have glue all the way through the join from a structural point of view.

OK, it's not been sanded with too fine a grit, so it's not that.

As a last gasp I'd try again with a less thinned dye, or even some unthinned dye to see if you can get a strong consistent colour.

Veneering the top is relatively easy and you don't really need much in the way of tools to do it apart from a sharp knife and some sandpaper.

The biggest issue is that there will be a line around the top where the veneer meets the body, which is normally where a solid colour sunburst around the edge comes in handy. Otherwise you'll almost certainly have a thin line glue around the edge.

To make it easy you need a want a single piece of veneer that's a bit bigger than the body. (Two pieces of bookmatched veneer could give you a nice sunburst finish, but two pieces are a lot harder to get right than a single piece). It's just a question of having a flat surface to lay the veneer on (prettiest side down), spreading glue on the veneer and the body, putting the body in the correct place on the veneer so the grain's going along the body, and then putting a lot of heavy objects on the body to clamp it down. Ideally you'd have about 20 G-clamps of various depths to squash the bits together, but a flat surface and some heavy weights should be enough.

Then once it's been clamped for 24 hours or so, it's a question of trimming off the excess veneer with a very sharp knife (keep it face down on a flat surface to do that) and then sanding back the final edges of the veneer.

It's a good idea to make a paper template of the top before the veneer goes on so you can lay it over so you know just where the holes and routs are. You can then cut away the veneer from those areas and again, sand back the edges.

You want to be careful of getting any glue on the visible surface of the veneer, as that's one of the big issues that the veneered tops on the Pit Bull kits have, and the glue marks not taking up stain. but with a single piece of veneer that's bigger than the body and a flat surface, there shouldn't be much risk of that. But do wipe away any excess glue that squeezes out and wipe off any glue that gets on the body with a damp cloth, and wash your hands before picking up the guitar.

You could get an ash veneer for a classic Tele look, or maybe quilted maple for something more exotic. Veneer prices seem to vary quite a bit, so it pays to look around the web.

[Trevor Davies]

I had considered a veneer, but I have neither the tools or experience I think to pull it off.

Knowing this, I think the easiest thing would be to paint the body with a solid colour, and then add clear coats. This would cover the mismatched wood and the glue join. Rattle can paints are quite easy to use and should give you a great result.

[Simon Barden]

I’ve been having second thoughts about my veneering suggestion as you may get trapped air pockets by just laying the top on the veneer. It would probably be best to first lay the veneer on the top of the body, pressing the veneer down with a wallpaper roller and rolling up and down, progressively moving from one side to the other. Once done, then turn it over and weigh it down.

I have a feeling that contact adhesive is a common glue used when veneering, so that may be a better option than wood glue. I suggest looking for YT videos on applying veneer. I’ve used wood glue when putting veneer in headstocks, but contact glue may be better for larger areas and it’s less likely to squeeze out the sides when clamped/weighted as the glue will be almost dry when the faces are mated. But it will be harder to remove any excess glue from the body, so I’d mask off the sides as best you can.

[Simon Barden]

But I agree with Trevor that painting is really the best option and the one I’d take.

[fender3x]

One last ditch effort to try is to use a commercial stain like General Finishes Water Based Stain, or Gel Stain. While I have not used them (yet), but I have done something similar with their dye stain and a water based gel stain from another mfg (which doesn't have your color). Unlike dye stains, these are designed to go on over other stains and finishes. It might be worth a try if you really want a stain finish. Otherwise, I'll add my voice to the chorus. I have *one* good stain result using the approach above. My other stain attempts ended up in solid colors. Sometimes quite nice solid colors, so I am not complaining.

Elsewhere I have mentioned this... I have a fender guitar from the 1960s with an Antigua finish, which is sort of a bizarre solid-color sunburst. This finish was developed, to make a long story short, to cover up a botched stain job on a bunch of guitars where the binding glue reacted with the finish. This has often lead me to wonder... If you take the finish off some of the cool Fender Daphne blue, SeaFoam green or Fiesta red bodies would you find a botched stain job? I bet you would on some of them...