H's LPA-1. How much more black?

[UpperCaseH]

Picked up the lemon oil. $18 for 118ml of the Dunlop 65 stuff, but yeah, this is gonna last practically forever. Put 2 coats on the fretboard and the level in the bottle hardly moved. Doesn't look like this is a particularly thirsty fretboard, because it already looks pretty good to me. I'll wait a week or so while I work on the body and see if I want to do another coat.





Sanded the body at 2000 grit today after 4 repetitions of sanding the Tru Oil on (and about 10 coats before that). It's nice and smooth and although it's still a bit wavy (not going away on ash, I guess) it's coming along. Gonna do 2 TO coats, sand again, 2 coats, sand, etc now. I'll repeat that until I'm happy with it.

I have to make an observation about ragging TO on. I've been using rags cut from a really old, threadbare Bonds undershirt and have had some problems with it leaving a tiny amount of lint on the finish, streaking, etc. Today I cut up an equally old but significantly less threadbare pure cotton T-shirt (not an undershirt, much thicker), and it doesn't leave any lint, doesn't streak nearly as much, and is generally much easier to use. Not something I would have thought would make a difference, but there you go.

[Simon Barden]

A lint-free cloth is normally recommended for all types of application and polishing work. Now you can see why!

[wazkelly]

G'day H, Same lemon oil that I have and it works pretty good. On a couple of my rosewood fret boarded guitars I did find they dried out after a few weeks and used Dingo Wax on both Explorers but just this on the Tele which has hardly been touched or played for past 6 months. Mind you I was playing it earlier tonight and it feels great so there must be enough oil soaked into that one. And yes, the bottle should last for ages.

Had a similar experience with lint coming off from the PBG supplied luthier kit and switched to cutting up an old cotton T-shirt and that did the trick as it had been washed about 1000 times and the only potential lint or threads was the edges where it was cut into smaller pieces.

With the Ash, don't know if you will ever get it completely flat as I tried so hard to do that on my Red J Bass and in the end decided the grain waves looked better left as they were than to keep on trying and cover them up.

[UpperCaseH]

Yeah, what I found with the lint was that the thin/light material of the old bonds tshirt would kinda start to wear/fray as I rubbed oil on, and occasionally leave bits of itself on the finish. The thicker old t-shirt I just cut up doesn't do that at all.

I never thought that there would be a wrong kind of old cotton t-shirt to use for this, so I mentioned it in case anyone else is having the same issue.

[Simon Barden]

Is anyone collecting these little pearls of wisdom? They really need to be put into one sticky with Admin-only posting access to avoid other people's comments from diluting the information.

[wazkelly]

Using 0000 steel wool has a nasty habit of finding it's way into the finish too and found that out the hard way on builds 1 & 2 and never use the stuff on guitars any more.

[FrankenWashie]

Using 0000 steel wool has a nasty habit of finding it's way into the finish too and found that out the hard way on builds 1 & 2 and never use the stuff on guitars any more.

That's so true, I've also discontinued use of steel wool for that reason. I've had much better results wit light wet sand rub backs

[wazkelly]

Yeah Frankie, wet sanding is much better and easier to control, particularly if using DT as it is not as forgiving as some other finishes in that it tends to stay green much longer and steel wool was just too rough for it.

[Ghaynas]

Ey Guys! I'm a newbie at this forum, I just want to say that I agree with Simon about the pearls of wisdom. I've been reading carefully all the comments at this post because I'm going to make an LP kit like this and this information will result very usefull for me.

[UpperCaseH]

Life and weather have been interfering a little with this build, but I finished up the tru oil today so now it's just waiting, polishing, and assembly!

Any advice on finishing up a tru-oil surface beyond just polishing up and up with micromesh?