Sixty Six Body

[JimC]

Finally felt brave enough to try sanding the tru oil back for the first time. I thought I'd give it a couple of weeks to really cure, but may have been longer than that. It's the first coloured finish I've done so very wary about sand through. It's about half way back which is how I feel comfortable part way through. Now just need some warm enough days to put a few more coats on.
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[fender3x]

Looking good!

[McCreed]

Now just need some warm enough days to put a few more coats on.

Looking good Jim. How many coats you got on there already?

[JimC]

I don't really count, about a dozen I think. Not enough for me to feel brave enough to sand flat. I seem to have got a distressing number of little scratches and things during the protracted dying process, so it's going to take a fair bit to get it level. For some reason I seem to be scratching and scuffing the two solid Ash bodies I'm working on now a great deal more than I did the hollow bodied instruments I've done previously.

[McCreed]

I don't really count, about a dozen I think.

I might sound a bit pedantic, but when I do hand applied finishes, I keep a little notepad on the bench and mark down each coat as I go.

It's really easy to lose count (especially if you're over 50 y/o ) and it's hard to tell by eye if you've got 15 or 50 coats... until you sand... and then it may be too late.

With Tru Oil, I do a minimum of 24 coats. I know others that go 50, but I fall short on the patience scale there. However, I have not had a sand-through using my minimum 24. TBH, I've probably gone up to 28 because, even writing it down, I get confused and just go more.

Also IME with Tru Oil, when I start wet sanding, I'm pretty comfortable starting with a pretty fine grit like 1000-1200. Hand finishes just don't get the depth of dimples like orange peel you get from spraying things like lacquer, so there's no reason to go hard at the start.

[JimC]

I wish I knew how much I could sand after how many coats! I don't know how thick a coat of tru oil is, or how much thickness I remove with any given grade of paper, and it's all so up in the air that it defeats me to know where to go with much more than crossed fingers. Completely agree with you about fine grades. I also scrape gently with a sharp blade to knock off dust particles rather than sand them.

[JimC]

Today's been a 66 day. The tru oil still leaves a lot to be desired, but I needed to progress *something* (we are in full lockdown again in the UK). So I fitted the neck, which was a lot more work than it should have been, since it appears that the builders of the donor Squier routed the neck pocket crookedly and then hand fitted the neck to match (and well too). Reluctant to try to custom fit the neck pocket for the neck I spent some time making a shim that tapers both front to back and side to side and seems OK so far.
So, I thought, I'll just print off a print of my scratch plate design to check it's OK, then get on with cutting it out. **at least 8 iterations later** that is definitely the ultimate perfect and wonderful scratch plate design for a HH 66 body, and anyone who disagrees can go and restore early 60s eastern European guitars... Thanks, (I think) to Simon, who suggested that my original plan to have a single straight line in front of the bridge was flawed.

[fender3x]

I think it is looking pretty cool. It has a part Strat, part Epiphone Wilshire vibe to it. Part The color is especially like those USA made Epi's of the 1960s. Having tried to get that color, I know how difficult it is to pull off. The offset does remind me of Japaneze/Czech/German electrics before they decided to just make copies and were coming up with pretty cool shapes of their own. the pickguard, bridge and pup placemen make me think of the old Peavey T-60s. The coolest bit is that it's not *exactly* like anything else.

[JimC]

Getting there. I need to get the control plate fabricated and all the electrics installed. A set of strings would be good too, but between new year and Covid strings and other stuff for both current projects have been in the mail for ten days. The top string I've used thus far for alignment is two broken mandolin tops wired together!

[Trevor Davies]

Looking really nice and the colour scheme is great.