Sam’s Goldtop

[samr]

So I haven’t done an update for (checks notes) uh, 16 months. In my defense I’ve had a lot of other projects which unfortunately ranked higher in the Spousal Satisfaction Index, but I have made some minor progress.

One of the distractions I hit, was restoring this bad boy that a relative was throwing out:



It’s an old jarrah workbench complete with...



a 7" Dawn quick-release vise that doesn’t seem to have had a lot of use.

The workbench appears to date back to the mid-60s (based on some writing found underneath) and has been remanufactured at least once already - it looks to originally have had angled legs. This means the angled steel side cabinets look a little odd when mounted vertically, but I 'plumbed them up' with some pegboard. The original colour looks to have been close to the Rust-oleum 'Pastel Peppermint' I resprayed them with.



I replaced the old-school timber bench stop with a flush mount job from Carbatec.



I also replaced all the old brass flathead screws with modern galvanised jobs, which also gave me a bad case of tennis elbow. The bench was missing several of the top pieces and it’s pretty difficult to source 60mm jarrah nowadays. I do have tonnes of 50mm though so managed to lift some up with 10mm floorboard. It’s not super flat but honestly it’s much better than balancing stuff on cheap saw stools.

At any rate, I’m crossing my fingers that the 4" x 4" jarrah frame will be sturdy enough to hold up a guitar

[samr]

Anyhoo, the Goldtop. Main issue I wanted to resolve was fixing the bridge post holes, the positioning for the angled wraparound seems to be inordinately difficult. I ended up synthesizing some measurements from:

1. Random internet dude on the My Les Paul forum who claims to have been taught a specific method by an authorised Gibson repairer
2. StewMac fret position calculator
3. Clamping strings over the bridge & tuning/intonating



The resulting measurements were... all pretty close, actually, well within adjustment range. Photo also shows how far out I drilled the last holes. The main risk again is really the vertical positioning; I think I’m trying to centre the back of the bridge where the strings exit, but I won’t know for sure until everything’s together.



I didn’t have a lot of luck with the FW sanding sealer - it went on very thick, and certainly clogged up the sandpaper like crazy, but after several coats didn’t seem to have done much grain filling. So I ended up doing my tried and true "just spray lots of coats of poly". I’ve probably done about 6 or 7 coats now - I don’t have a recent photo, this was one of the earlier coats:



Perhaps most importantly, I’ve stamped a serial number. This is meant to be an incentive for me to get the thing done within the next few months.

[samr]

Couple of updates from the weekend. A glamour shot of the plugged & redrilled bridge post holes:



And the relocated bridge tone pot



Bridge ground wire is in.



And I drifted in the vintage-spec extra long steel anchors. First bit of hardware attached, I’m unreasonably excited by this.



Some more masking and the first light coat of primer. From my test sprays with the Rustoleum metallic it shows every surface imperfection so there’s a lot of work to do here - eg the mark between the pickup routs where I dropped something on it.

[samr]

So spraying metallic out of a rattle can has knobs on it. I've probably done about 30 coats all up, with substantial rubbing back on several occasions. The best technique I found was basically multiple light mist coats applied a few minutes apart in a single swirly pass as the bugger likes to spatter at inopportune moments.



My $15 jewellers saw finally arrived from China so next step was cutting the MOP inlay. I looked into the logo font option, I think I saw someone selling one online, but ended up designing it myself in Sketch. If anyone would like a copy of the vector file let me know & I'll post it.



This is time-consuming and is very nerve-wracking/concentration-intensive, probably like being an english batsman at the MCG



Finished product, it’s not perfect but I'm pretty happy with it. Next step routing.

[Bakersdozen]

Looking great! And still seemingly on track with your deadline

[dozymuppet]

Nice work. Might have to hunt down a cheap jeweller's saw myself...

Sent from my Pixel 4 using Tapatalk

[samr]

Nice work. Might have to hunt down a cheap jeweller's saw myself...

I bought the saw from 'huanshop2015' on ebay, it's not fancy or well constructed but works fine.

[samr]

BD - here’s hoping I can argue that MOST of it was done in '21

[Simon Barden]

We English are used to disappointment and despair at our cricket team’s results. It’s the occasional slight glimmer of hope we can’t cope with.

30 coats of paint must have meant quite a few tins of paint. Really worth thinking about investing in a small compressor and a mini-spray gun if you ever do something similar. The chances of getting paint blobs with one are very small indeed compared to using rattle cans.

Nice inlay work!

[samr]

Setting up for routing with the Dremel attachment. It was less precarious than it looked.



The depth limiter on the Dremel router is complete rubbish though, best results were routing it in stages and just locking the bit down a little bit further each time. I gave up on any prospect of a neat fit and just hacked out a 1950s-esque large recess that I'll fill.



Removed the plastic nut and found it was glued on harder than it should have been, so I tore a couple of small chunks out of the headstock. I did some repair work/grain-fill with timbermate and stained the mahogany (although I'm going to paint anyway).