JM-1 First Build

[wokkaboy]

looks great BH, now some sanding !

[Blueshound]

Next bit of filing was crowning the frets. I used a triangular file from StewMac. Quite a bit more difficult than the levelling and hard to tell if I was getting it right. In the end, I erred on leaving too much on, rather than taking too much off. I guess I'll wait and see what it feels like to play.



This is the finished product after going over the frets with 400 grit sandpaper, 0000 steel wool and then metal polish for good measure.



I spent an afternoon/evening sanding the neck. I was really happy with the result and couldn't wait to hit it with the first stain of DT Mission Beach...



It came out quite... yellow. I wasn't really sure what to expect as I didn't find any clear examples on the forum of the mission beach neck colour - there's at least one now.

It doesn't show in the photos, but when viewed up close there's actually a green tinge, so it's more like a thai green curry. It's been curing for a couple of days now. I'll perhaps give it another stain coat on the weekend and see how it looks.

DT was surprisingly easy to work with. Smells good too.

[dingobass]

It is very theraputic rasping and filing the curves into a Guitar body.. It's sculpture really.
Really like the organic quality of the curves, suits this Guitar perfectly.

Great idea re photo of Mission Beach. Consider one of yours stolen

Interesting to see that you reckon it has a greenish tinge.
This would be expected on Basswood, which has a greenish colour but on Maple?
Could be any number of things such as ambient background light colour, )I get this a lot in my Man Cave especially during the late afternoon's Western Sunlight, which can vary from Gold to anywhere in the red/ orange spectrum)
Or maybe your Maple has a natural green tinge to it


Please keep me posted on how it goes, always good to get feedback so I can continue to improve the performance of Dingotone.

[Blueshound]

Taking a break from sanding, I experimented with some Dingotone bursts on scrap pine.

This is Coolangatta Gold, Outback Sunset and Black Stump


This is Bondi Blue and Black Stump. Note that the black is only on the bottom edge, the darker tones on the left edge of the wood are just how the blue took to the grain.


CG and OS blend together effortlessly and really took to the wood. The black and blue didn't seem to want to take. It was tough to get a good fade from the OS to the black.

One other lesson I took from this... don't open stuff near whatever you are working on. When I opened the black stump, the seal literally popped and got sucked into the bottle leaving black spots on everything in the immediate vicinity... including my sunburst stain.

[Blueshound]

@dingobass
Thanks DB. I think you are on to something with the ambient light. It definitely looks different depending on the angle. I can rotate the neck and the colour appears to change. Perhaps some outdoor shots are needed.

[Blueshound]

Babicz trem arrived today. It's the 2 point strat trem. From the measurements on the Babicz site, it appeared like it would just be a drop in replacement. Here it is (on the right) next to the stock JM-1 trem.



For the most part it does just drop right in and everything seems to line up. Except...



It doesn't quite cover the trem cavity thanks to the right angle cut away next to the hole for the arm. To further complicate things, the block is significantly larger than the stock one so there appears to be little margin for error in trying to fill that small space.

[wokkaboy]

nice progress BH, that Babizc bridge looks very nice. Like the CG/OS/BS burst should look very cool

[Blueshound]

Brought in the new year with a burst - Coolangatta Gold, Outback Sunset and Black Stump.



I'm pretty happy with it for a first attempt. As with the pine, the CG and OS blended well but I had trouble blending the black. I suspect it might be because I've been going from lightest to darkest. I didn't go right to the edges with the OS, but when I applied the black it would just sit on top of areas of existing stain and wipe away. I think next time I'll start with the darker colour and see how that goes.

What worked better than expected was the way the DT burst blended with the grain of the wood. In the first post of this thread there's a pic of some black marks on the outer edge of the body. The original idea was to cover these up with Black Stump, however in the end they've blended from the BS into the OS creating a really cool burnt look.

Another observation was that blending colours worked better doing small sections at a time. It seems obvious now, but doing large sections of one colour at a time meant that the stain had a chance to dry and it was harder to get a good transition between colours.

I'll apply another stain coat once it has dried - there's some patchy spots in the black around the edges which I'm guessing is due to sanding (or lack thereof).



I'm wondering if I should hit patchy black areas with OS (as the OS seems to take to everything) to continue the burnt relic look around the edges.

[wokkaboy]

excellent burst BH, and I agree working small areas will work better to blend the stains before they dry.
Next coat I'd start with your black edges and maybe let them dry a bit before you apply OS and CG.
The more different colours are I find are harder to blend, so the CG and OS will be easier to blend than the BS and OS.
Let it cure and look forward to seeing 2nd coat !

[Blueshound]

The first coat of Mission Beach dried to an almost fluorescent yellow. It was a bit too bright for me so for the second coat I mixed in a drop of Outback Sunset to try and take the edge off the yellow.

Here is the mix on pine:



And second coat applied. You can see that the orange really took hold around the heel of the neck the truss rod opening, but it has had the desired effect of subtly toning down the brightness.