ST-1 build no 5

[stansby40]

A friend of mine is retiring at the end of this year. He is a guitarist and used to have a strat but it was a heavy ash one and he didnt like it. I have decided to make him a strat and picked the lighter basswood option. I also have an ulterior motive as I would like to test out a vintage butterscotch finish using tinted F&W liming paint. Keeping it standard at the moment and may upgrade things later. The neck fits quite well and the body is good. Here are some pics.

[JohnH]

What a nice idea!

[colin2121]

Will be interested to see the colour of the F&W.

[McCreed]

Good one Stan! Does he know about it, or will be a surprise?

[stansby40]

Good one Stan! Does he know about it, or will be a surprise?

Yes he does know about it.

Headstock shaped to roughly a strat but with a slight look of a tele. I hate removing those plastic nuts even though I take extreme care i always chip a bit of rosewood off which I have to supaglue back on.

3 coats of FW liming paint tinted with FW golden teak. You leave the coats on for 5 to 10 minutes and then wipe off. It is sort of a blonde/butterscotch colour but I am happy with the result. Wont know until the the final acrylic clear goes on.

Neck will have wipe on poly for a natural look.

[Simon Barden]

Should look good under clear.

[Petebullgtr]

Very interested to see how this comes out. Would also like that finish on a project down the track. keep up the good work and keep us posted.

[colin2121]

Looking good.
Interested to see how it goes with the clear coat.

[stansby40]

Its been pretty cold in Tassie lately too cold to spray acrylic lacquer. However last wednesday I got the shed up to a balmy 16 degrees and proceeded to spray the acrylic lacquer. Things from the start did not look the same as previous spray jobs I had done and there were quite a few runs particularly on the back of the guitar. Oh well I could fix them later I thought. 24 hours later I carefully got a sharp razor blade and attacked the larger drips. To my dismay vast chunks of the finish just flaked off. In fact all over the body the finish would pull off like peeling an onion. The acrylic would not adhere to the liming finish!. Whether it was too smooth or something in the liming paint (I had read somewhere it might contain polyurethane) prevented adhesion I am not sure. Anyway back to the drawing board as I have to resand and apply the liming finish again as there are parts where the acrylic did adhere such as some rougher parts of the sides and the cut away areas. The recommendation of FW is a poly finish over the liming paint and I may have to go down that route if I want this type of effect.

[Fretworn]

There have been build that successfully used the FW liming before. You would have to dig back through build diaries from 4-5 years ago. Sorry I can’t remember who did it. But their build diary may hold the secret if you can find it. You could try using the search function on the forum and see what you can find.