Astracaster First Build FS-1

[fender3x]

Looks great to me! Particularly in the vid.

[Drashkum]

Just got a newbie doubt. I may sound silly. Pls pardon

Normally how.many coats of stain should be done?

I know for the front I cannot sand and Restain the veneer endlessly. For the back?. But is there a specific number if coats that i need to do for it to soak into the wood and not stay very superficial? Or should i go based on the colour I want to achieve?

Even for the front is there a number of coats I need to stain.

Pls pardon my ignorance

Drashkum

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[Simon Barden]

The stain is all for effect. If it's got the depth of colour you want, you've put enough stain on.

When staining there will come a point when you can add more stain but the wood won't get any darker (at least not without moving to a darker stain). But for the back, as you've lightened the stain in places, you haven't reached that stage yet.

Just view the stain as a tool, say like a scalpel. You can make a shallow cut or a deep cut with it, but you only apply enough pressure to achieve the depth of cut you want.

Have you decided on what colour you want to stain the top? You were still trying to decide what colour, quite a few posts back before you switched to posting about the back.

You can do a bit of light sanding on the top, but you only really get one go at it. But you really shouldn't need to sand it apart from a very light run over to remove any loose fibres.

[Drashkum]

The stain is all for effect. If it's got the depth of colour you want, you've put enough stain on.

When staining there will come a point when you can add more stain but the wood won't get any darker (at least not without moving to a darker stain). But for the back, as you've lightened the stain in places, you haven't reached that stage yet.

Just view the stain as a tool, say like a scalpel. You can make a shallow cut or a deep cut with it, but you only apply enough pressure to achieve the depth of cut you want.

Have you decided on what colour you want to stain the top? You were still trying to decide what colour, quite a few posts back before you switched to posting about the back.

You can do a bit of light sanding on the top, but you only really get one go at it. But you really shouldn't need to sand it apart from a very light run over to remove any loose fibres.

Thank you @Simon Barden.

Yes. I switched over to staining the back so that i could get some practice on staining the real body before Staining the veneer. I thought even if it goes wrong it would be only at the back and not at the front.

I have sort of zeroed in on the colour. It's mostly going to be this Purplish pink



Or it could be olive green which i get by staining green and then yellow on it which I had posted earlier

I am going to try to lightly base stain the veneer with very diluted black just 1 pass and then sand very light and then use either of these colour.

Olive green has a few advantages

All black, green and yellow are alcohol based stains so i can get a lighter shade by using a thinner to pull out the stain if I want if the stain is darker. Also it didn't raise the grain as it was all alcohol based.

The purplish pink is all water based stain. It's all fountain pen inks.

To achieve this colour I need to dilute 1 part Violet with 4 parts of water and stain the wood and then stain the pink on top of it

I tried to Dilute them with thinner yesterday but they didn't mix well in thinner and started to precipitate. It gets diluted in water very well.

I am afraid that too much water will cause veneer to bubble up. And if stain is darker I may have to use water to blend them

And also since its waterbased it raised the grain on scrap wood that i stained. If it does the same on veneer again I have a risk of sand through

So i am trying to source The same colour as single stain in toner based stain. There is a leather stain maker here who can do custom alcohol based stain if given a hex colour code. I am in talks with him

https://cratly.com/products/custom-l...e-color-500-ml

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[Simon Barden]

I've used water-based stains on veneered basswood. You aren't soaking the wood enough to loosen any glue when staining, or you certainly shouldn't be. Let the wood dry properly after each application of stain so you can see the final colour.

Better to use too diluted a stain to start with than too concentrated. You can always stain again, or move up to a more concentrated stain if it remains too light.

The water might raise the grain a bit, but it's only loose wood fibres that pop up, and a lot of people will dampen the veneer anyway to get them to pop up so they can be removed. You only need a very light sand over the top. Stewart Macdonald in their guitar finishing book call this a 'drag-sand', as you just hold a piece of sandpaper by the edge and drag it over the surface a few times to pull the loose fibres off. You really aren't taking any depth off the veneer doing this.

[Drashkum]

Finally got the sanding sealer spray today. The ones made in india. These are Nitrocellulose sanding spray. Was skeptical at first when the bottle said wood polish. Then called them up and they asked me to look at the bottom of spray bottle to see what is written.




Sprayed 3 coats of SS on scrap wood stained. Lucky that it doesn't pull out the stain. Will leave it to dry overnight and sand it with 320 and spray coats of 1k clear tomorrow to see if it is compatible. If everything is OK, I shall go ahead to spray the guitar body with sanding sealer and the start staining the top.




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[Drashkum]

3 coats of sanding sealer spray done. The 1st spray rattle can is almost empty. I'm letting it dry and cure a bit.

The sanding sealer has darkened the colour yellowish brown to a more brownish hue. Is this normal? Will it lighten after the clearcoat a bit?. Wish I had stained it much lighter. All a learning experience.

Should i sand it before I stain the front or let it be till I finish the front?

Have to remove the tapes and reapply new ones. Looks Like the The bindings are stained too despite my effort of 2 layers of Fine taping and applying a clearcoat on it. What tools do u use to scrape the binding?

Finally got finer grits If sandpaper from automobile store.


Wish me luck

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[Simon Barden]

I like the colour you have, but I know it's disappointing when you don't get quite the colour you're after.

I'm afraid clear won't lighten it. Clear is rarely 100% clear, and always tends to have a slight tint to it, however faint that tint may be. And clear either leaves things the same, or it can make things look even darker. The relatively rough surface of the sanding sealer is reflecting/dispersing light in many directions so tends to make the finish look a bit lighter. A flat, polished clear coat doesn't reflect light in the same way, so you get the true colour coming through.

There are any number of tools people use to scrape bindings. A selection are shown on this Google search page:

https://www.google.com/search?client...&bih=899&dpr=1

I've used single-sided razor blades and craft-knife/Stanley knife blades clamped in some broom handle, or blades just with several rolls of tape wound round to act as a depth stop. On the thin edge of the binding or in F-holes I've used a scalpel. I've also used a mould line removal tool (for model kits) as this has a nice firm blade with a slight burr on it.

https://www.hobbycraft.co.uk/modelcr...431041000.html

[fender3x]

I have been using one of these cheap box cutting knives.



I am not very expert at binding scraping...and mostly I have used this to touch up where the tape did not adequately do the job.

[Trevor Davies]

I scrape binding using a razor blade bolted in a split wooden dowel (this was suggested by McCreed - thanks McCreed).

Like mentioned at https://www.buildyourownguitar.com.a...l=1#post183917.