Maddog's STA-1

[Maddogm]

I've switched back down to the 180 grit as I'm having some trouble getting rid of some of the machining marks on the sides of the body.
For the front and back I've been using a sanding block and it's been working well, but for the sides and especially the cutaways it's not as good/useless. I feel I'm not getting enough leverage/grip holding the sandpaper by hand, does anyone have some tips for sanding the curved surfaces in particular the cutaways?

[WeirdBits]

Bits of broom handle, dowell, stiff rubber hoses and/or tubing, large erasers... whatever works.

I have some round stiff rubber/foam sanding blocks that work well in the curves. I also use pieces of broom handle and lengths of plastic tubing with a piece of dowell inside them. Just make sure you're going with the grain or you'll never get rids of the machine marks and scratches. Stick with one grit until the marks disappear then switch to the next higher grit, repeat.

This may also offer some ideas:

[vh2580]

Hi Maddog,
I actually have found that a beer bottle or similar works ok.

I also find that replacing the bottle regularly during a sanding session also assists the sanding process

[Maddogm]

I'm getting there slowly

Are the scratches in these pics something I should be getting rid of with sanding? or are they the marks from the 180grit and will be attended to by the next level of sandpaper?

also I assume the gap isn't anything to worry about, I'll be using timbermate later on

[stan]

looks like you or the manufacturer have sanded across the endgrain... instead of sanding along the edges and following that around the bottom of the guitar, for each end go up and down so to speak.


sand with the face and edge, go up and down on the end, not along, and yes as you go finer in grade the scratches should go

if it was the suppliers machining and not your sanding, then it's also the way to deal with it

as for the crack, if you can get any titebond glue into it, that will help keep it strong, and timbermate to finish it off would work a treat, like you correctly assumed

[Maddogm]

It will have been me sanding across the endgrain, before I realised not to go back and forth (Gavmeister's sanding video in his baritone diary and the one weirdbits linked above were both very useful)

also decided to upgrade the pickups to a tonerider pure vintage set today

[wokkaboy]

Nice one Maddog the tonerider pups are really good value for money. They will sound great

[andrewdosborne]

+1 for the Toneriders. Keep going with the sanding, your almost there! I sand with 120, 180, 240 then 320 grit. I find starting with 120 removes machine marks quickly

Sent from my GT-I9506 using Tapatalk

[Maddogm]

About a week ago I put on the timbermate, started sanding it off tonight




While it's looking good for most part, you can see some low spots especially around the jack hole where I attacked the glue spot.

You can also see signs around the edges of the ordinary job I did of applying the timbermate

[keloooe]

Keep sanding it all off until the non grain bits of the wood are pretty much back to original colour. The belly carve (and forearm carve too) is pretty much what you want in terms of lines (just give it some more sanding and it will be done in those areas), as you apply the finish the lines will darken up quite a lot more.