Sixty Six Body

[Sonic Mountain]

Agree, nice shaping work.

[JimC]

The body is currently getting scraped/sanded back a good bit since the dye revealed all sorts of scratches that I didn't see when it was bare wood. When that's done I'll have to make a decision on colour. The Fiebing's dye is pretty good to use and reasonably economical, but man, I wanted a red guitar and I cannot see what in their range would give me that.

[JimC]

Sanding sanding sanding. It's the cutaways that are the big problem, although there's a general pinkish cast in some spots. The next colour ordered is a much deeper red, unfortunately a different brand because I had no confidence that anything else in the Fiebing's range has less blue in the red. I will experiment with a pink wash under the new colour as well as using it on cleaned back wood, I might get lucky.

[JimC]

A panther that is positively pink...

[JimC]

Ironically, having obtained some "wine red" dye, which to my eyes is more of a reddish brown, my current thinking is to get the pink coloured red out again and put a coat of pink and then a coat of brown.

The body needed resanding anyway, it wasn't wasted effort getting the first pink off.

[JimC]

This is where I am at the moment. I really wanted a purer red, but between what the colours turned out to be in the flesh, what colours were available off the shelf from GBR vendors (I refuse to use the multinationals on principle), and how much I was willing to spend (big factor!) I've got here. I'm not unhappy at the moment, it should improve when the tru oil goes on.
It's one coat of pink (Fiebing's Red) and two coats of reddish brown (Dartford's Wine Red) it's a shame about the ugly wide stripe of grain, but hopefully the bridge will do a lot to disguise it.

[JimC]

I think this is probably where I'm stopping with dye. I wanted to have at least the rear pickup clear of the scratch plate jazz bass style, but my craftsmanship fine shaping the pocket isn't quite up to it, and the odd fact that my two Seymour Duncan pickups have different shaped ears and backplates doesn't help either. The trick, I suppose, would be 3d printed custom pickup covers.
I'm planning to have a custom control plate water jet cut by a local engineering shop. I'm now wondering if I could persuade them to do a scratch plate as well.

[fender3x]

It's a cool color. It will look good with some gloss on. I guess I had thought you'd be using a Tele plate on this. Nice to have access to a machine shop that can do that sort of cutting! Will be interesting to see what you come up with. If it were a solid color I'd definitely go for ta scratchplate. With nice grain showing hard to know whether that or pickup rings would be better

[JimC]

The silence has been while I struggled with a lack of talent and experience with finishing in general and dye in particular. There's been another major sand back, associated with problems in the grain filling arena. The result has been somewhat felicitous though, since my struggles, caused by my foolish desire not to shell out for some sort of substantial grain filling product, has resulted in rather more prominent grain., which I think I like. The patch behind the bridge isn't ideal, but it's far uglier under the bridge!

This is a cosmetic dummy setup with a second prototype scratchplate made of paper and a control plate from duct tape. At the moment it just has a few layers of Birchwood sealer filler. I've just done the holes for the string through bridge, which took several hours due to measuring umpteen dozen times and drilling in several stages from both sides, but the result is more even than my normal raggety hole locating. When I've done the holes for the neck screws and deepened the control cavity then it will be tru oil time.

[JohnH]

It's looking great! - love the colour