Looks good so far, but I would recommend trying to finesse the edges of the inlay so they are a bit smoother. If you are anything like me, if you inlay it as is, it will look good to you for a few minutes, and then you'll notice the slight wiggles and wish you'd taken more time.
Definitely use what you have to practice, but I would suggest doing a few test inlay pieces until you feel you've cracked it, before attempting it on the guitar.
You’re right, zoomed up on a iPad screen you can clearly see the need for more finessing. I cleaned them up this evening but I can get them better I think.Originally Posted by Simon Barden
I also spent some time making a routing base for the Dremel… not quite finished but nearly there - hopefully it’s going to work!
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I've got the StewMac one you're welcome to borrow.
Well, it's been five or six weeks since I finished applying poly to body and it's still not passing the finger nail test.
A week or so ago I decided to wet sand. It went okay but I went through a couple of times and had to touch up with stain and extra poly. The fixes look okay - but once you point them out you can't un-see them. It's more of a problem with the stain not blending properly rather than the poly.
Anyway - now's it at 2000 all over and feels super smooth - but alas, still soft.
I'm not going to polish until I've finished messing about the inlay on the headstock. I've had a bit of practice now but I'm not ready to have a go at the headstock. So the body has plenty of hanging time.
I can see a few rattle cans of nitro in my future.
Well that's a bummer, as well as troubling. I've not experienced poly not curing especially after that amount of time. I'm not sure I would have wet sanded if the finish was still soft though.Well, it's been five or six weeks since I finished applying poly to body and it's still not passing the finger nail test.
A week or so ago I decided to wet sand. It went okay but I went through a couple of times and had to touch up with stain and extra poly. The fixes look okay - but once you point them out you can't un-see them. It's more of a problem with the stain not blending properly rather than the poly.
Anyway - now's it at 2000 all over and feels super smooth - but alas, still soft.
One thing I might have tried is dry sanding with medium grade sandpaper and letting it sit a while longer (even just a few days). I have experienced this with acrylic lacquer that was taking an inordinate amount of time to set. So out of frustration I sanded it a bit, and a few days later, it came good. I thought it may have been coincidence or my imagination until Simon B mentioned it another thread months later.
My theory (I think Simon mentioned this also) is that the last coat cured quicker than the coats underneath and created a "skin" that prevented the solvent gases escaping, thus keeping the sub-layers soft. After sanding/abrading the skin the solvent gassed off and everything hardened up.
As I said, I've only experienced this with lacquer with which the solvents are much hotter than turps, but maybe the same effect can occur. Dunno...
Making the world a better place; one guitar at a time...
Well that’s the thing. It’s hard to the touch. If you sand it, white powder comes off. It’s not like it’s smearing about when sanded.
A few days after the last coat, I did do light dry sand with 800 before leaving it. It was around a month before I started wet sanding.
When I say it’s soft, if I push my finger nail into it, it leaves an indent. (I’m doing these tests where the neck plate is going to be). I sanded it as I remember someone (Simon?) saying that it would increase the surface area and I thought that I might also remove the layers that are preventing the lower layers from hardening. But as I’m burning through in places it seems it’s not even that thick.
The same happened with my PB kit finish. It’s got a load of indents in it from “normal use”. I’m wondering if it’s either the poly / white spirit combo not working well together. Or I’m putting it on too thickly and not letting it dry enough before the next coat…. There’s too many variables to be able to viably experiment with.
Anyway - I’m going to leave it while I finish working on the inlay and then try to make a call on what to do next.
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Well it's been a while and in that time I've given up on the inlay - After many hours and attempts I wasn't able to cut an accurate enough inlay in my test pieces to warrant attempting on the guitar. I think the main problem is that my design was too intricate for my skill level. I'm still going to keep practicing and hopefully an inlay will feature in a future build.
In the meantime I've applied an waterslide decal to the headstock and put around ten coats of TO on the neck. The headstock face is getting many more coats to try to bury the decal and get some kind of gloss.
After my last update I emailed Rustins, the manufacturer of the poly, to try and get some insight about what might be causing the softness in the finish. They suggested that I've put too much on for it to dry hard. But I'm not convinced that I'd be able to sand and polish to a gloss if it were to be any thinner. They also suggested that Rustin's Plastic Coating is a preferable product to their vanilla PU varnish for this type of application.
So I polished the body anyway despite it's softness. And of course managed to burn through again!... So now I'm trying to fix that.
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