Simon B's Custom ES-1/ES330 style build

[king casey]

I'll be interested to see how it's finished.
What's the reference to 'Three Thirty'?
Not the time to be walking into the barber's?

cheers, Mark.

[Simon Barden]

It's a wannabe ES-330.

[Wayne.Mumford]

Looking good Simo, I’m glad you got the pick up issue sorted. I hope they sound as good as they look.
Wayno.

[trv]

The logo on the headstock looks great. Had you not mentioned the decal I would have thought it was an inlay for sure!

[Simon Barden]

The reason I have been fairly quiet recently is that I have been taking a rest from the guitar building side of things after a most annoying setback. I should have had the ES-1/330 complete by now, but when I went to do a 1200 grit wet sand sand before polishing the body, this happened on the bulge of the top horn on the front:



I'd hardly touched it. I'm sorry, but my experiment with Tru-Oil is over and I'll never use it again. It's not like there were only a couple of coats; there must have been 30 on all the surfaces and I'd waited about 10 days since the last coat went on. There's no way that I could patch that up and have it look presentable. So it's sand everything back time and see if the body will re-stain. If not, it's solid colour time. The weather's warmed up, so it will be back to the nitro.

So today I started on the back:



The really annoying thing is that the finish on the back is very hard, and it's taken over 3 hours to get the back stripped back, even using power sanders. A heat gun was of no assistance. Never mind, here it is almost finished:



I completed the back (camera battery is currently recharging so no fully sanded pic at the moment) but I've now run out of decent sandpaper (ordered more), so I've stopped for today. The next few days are forecast for sun, so guess what I'll be doing over the weekend! Just hope I can sand the front back without going through the veneer.

[FrankenWashie]

Mmmm many bad words at high volume. Fingers crossed with the front veneer mate.

[rook]

Ah man, so sorry to see that. It was looking beautiful.

No doubt that you will be able to resurrect this baby, but I can imagine how disappointing this is.

Sending good vibes your way.

[Simon Barden]

Cheers, chaps.

[king casey]

Wouldn't be due to 'water based' stain mingling with the Tru-Oil?
I've gone over my Epi Junior recently with (admittedly) finer grade sandpaper with no detrimental effects.
cheers, Mark.

[blinddrew]

Gutted Simon. Hope you can resurrect something out of it.