I bought the cheapest kit I could find on eBay - let's see if this was a good idea

[king casey]

Yeah, these are powerful and dangerous.

The tech school had about a dozen 'hand platens' which involved using one hand to place the card whilst the other was removing the printed one before the platen closed...mind boggles how lax safety was back in the '70's.

The platen I ran was equipped with a foil stamping and I printed millions of these. (the gold part)



cheers, Mark.

[Simon Barden]

Ah, one of the famous Australian fighting wines, as mentioned by Monty Python.

Things have come a long way since then.

[ThatCluelessGerman]

Yes, that's pretty common with treadle presses, they are run by pressing the treadle and the hands feed the press. Rule of the thumb is that the hand must be out before the platen reaches the full open state - you are doomed if you reach for slipped paper.

I love foil stamping! Nowadays, most printing is digital and "safe". While it's nice not to be scared you hair could get caught in a huge machine and rip off your scalp, the digital printing is pretty boring looking.... Just my opinion.

[ThatCluelessGerman]

Man, my guitar looks freaking horrible right now! A million dips and holes in the surface, like during the first few coats

I wonder what I did wrong? Is 1500 grid too coarse to start? Have I just not added enough coats? I thought I was almost done, now I am back to square one.... Geez, I really don't know if I'll ever use tru oil again. Looks like I'm in for the long run now.

[Simon Barden]

Putting more coats on generally doesn't fill the original dips. They just get followed, but at a greater distance from the surface with each coat. Which is why you need to build up enough depth to sand it all smooth without sanding back to the wood.

Really thinning the Tru Oil will let it fill up the dips a bit better, but you need to keep it flat to do so. And Turpentine still has a reasonable amount of surface tension, so won't just sit in the 'valleys' but will still cling to the 'hills'.

Sanding as you go along helps remove particles that have got stuck to the Tru Oil with each coat, but you are never going to sand it back properly flat unless you get a good number of layers on (and intermediate sanding will reduce the thickness each time you do a mild sand).

So it could still be bumpy, but now with enough thickness to sand flat. Without knowing exactly what you've done in terms of coats and sanding, it's hard to tell. I gave up on Tru Oil after my first attempt with it resulted in a sand-through after 30+ applications of oil. But that was on the ridge of an ES-1 's archtop, so an easy place to sand through and a place where the Tru-Oil would tend to run off when applied.

[ThatCluelessGerman]

Hi Simon,

yes, this is exactly what I've been doing. Sanding in between every few layers to have it flat and lint free. I don't know how many coats I have been adding so far, but it's been almost two(!!!!) small bottles of tru oil so far. Now I know that grain filling with tru oil was a dumb decision, I now know what grain fillers are for, LOL! But I think I have been laying doing 40 or even more coats of tru oil so far. I think a combination of filling and sanding is what's needed, but it's a slow process. To be honest, I don't know if I would use tru oil again. I just don't have the patience to add 2-3 coats a day over the time span of many weeks. Really, that's just not my thing. I need to try the wipe on poly next time.

[ThatCluelessGerman]

Sanded with 1500 grid again and it's looking better. But instead of sanding down until there are no more shiny pits, this time I'm trying to fill up the pits before sanding again. I'm just experimenting here, but I want to avoid sanding down the tru oil too much again. Unfortunately, there is a week of lower temperatures ahead, yesterday it was quite warm (26-28°C) and the tru oil was drying very quickly. Today I need to be patient.

I'm almost out of tru oil and the new bottle is not here yet. So I just hope that the back and sides are a walk in the park compared to the burl top. Otherwise, there will be much swearing I guess.

[jugglindan]

I always wanted to try tru oil until I read this thread. Now it's a no no for me.

Sent from my moto g(7) using Tapatalk

[ThatCluelessGerman]

I think it can be really nice if you have flatter wood or used a sanding filler before. On the back and on the sides of my guitar, it looked great from the beginning. But the front of my kit is this burl veneer which has like a gazillion tiny holes and dimples. I SHOULD have used a sanding filler before starting with the oil, but I didn't know this beforehand. So what gives me the trouble is that I am basically filling ALL the tiny holes and spots with the tru oil, and man, this takes ages.
So if I knew it before, I would have either used the sanding filler or something like wipe on poly.

If you are good with wood working, it's probably basic knowledge, but for me without any former experience, it's a lesson learnt.

Yesterday I was so frustrated that I never wanted to use tru oil again, but today, after a good night of sleep, I think it's pretty beautiful stuff but you have to accept that it's not a quick process, it WILL take quite long compared to poly or spray lacquer. So all I can do is getting on with it, coat by coat ;-)

[JohnH]

I always wanted to try tru oil until I read this thread. Now it's a no no for me.

Sent from my moto g(7) using Tapatalk

I would still recommend it - I've used it on half a dozen projects and always had great results. It is slow though.

Most of the early issues I had with the LP jr were to do with the wood (it has very deep and obvious grain) and the timbermate not working well. Later issues were operator error!