OK a little late to the party, but here's the first progress shots of an ST-1JR 3/4 I'm putting together for my son. This is my second build, the first being a 335 kit from somewhere else. The requested theme was "Ice Wing", which is apparently some sort of dragon made out of ice from a book he's reading. The head I carved out on a bandsaw to resemble a dragon tail, and then tried to put a paint job on it resembling ice crystals. The last piece will be to put an engraving of a dragon into the pick guard.
For the paint, I started out with a metallic blue acrylic paint as the base coat. I applied it with a foam brush which worked OK, but I didn't want to clog up my sprayer with whatever flakes were in the paint. Topped with polycrylic and sanded to 320. Then I made some urea + dish soap solution following instructions on the internet, and sprayed that on with a spray bottle. After it dried, it looked horrible so I wiped it all off and tried again. Then I did that 3 more times before I was happy with it. Then I topped that with some gloss black enamel. Let it all dry, and then scrubbed back some of the black with scotch-brite and water. Then lots of polycrylic over top of that using spray gun. Polished with micro mesh by hand, then followed up with plastic polish and a buffing wheel on my drill.
The overall effect wasn't quite as "crystal" as I was shooting for, but the customer is happy so I'm not going to start over hoping for better. I maybe could have gotten a better effect if I had purchased the $200 off the shelf crystal paint solution instead of $8 of urea fertilizer from amazon. Or maybe it was my prep work. Probably my prep work. Couple things I learned - the urea solution is not a supersaturated solution as I tried first. When I did that, the urea crystalized immediately on contact and didn't leave a crystal pattern but instead built up in a sludgy layer. I watered it down until it took a few minutes to crystalize as the water evaporated. I couldn't get it to take longer than a few minutes - probably due to the extremely low humidity here. I tried several things to get it to leave a thick layer and so leave bigger crystals, and in the end a couple squirts of dish soap worked the best, but still not great. The black paint also didn't scrub off as neatly as I was hoping - possibly/probably I should have used a rougher grit sanding of the clear coat before spraying down the urea so as to get better adhesion between the clear coat and the black. It might also have to do with the mixing of chemistries - I used acrylic for the base, acrylic for the clear coat, but my black coat was oil based - I probably should have gone back out to the store and picked up some black acrylic instead.
I decided I wanted something darker than the rosewood or "blackwood 2" or whatever it is for the fretboard, so I hit it with some general finishes espresso gel stain which got it to a nice dark tint that matches the paint better. Time will tell how well that wears. I still need to polish some of the stain off the frets, but it came off with just my fingernail where I made an attempt, so it shouldn't be an issue.
Attached the neck to the body. I notice that there's still a gap just big enough to put a piece of paper in between the neck and the body that wasn't there when I dry fit just before. Maybe I can close it up with more torque. Or I might just scratch it all to hell in the process. Given how much he scratches his acoustic guitar through inattention, not sure it matters. LOL.
Next steps:
1) Just noticed that the output jack hole was not pre-drilled. So I'll need to drill that, hopefully without messing up the paint. Test fit your hardware, friends. Somehow I never tried to put that piece on the body before I started. Oh well.
2) Paint the cavities with something conductive.
3) Make a new pick guard. The white one doesn't really match. I have some clear cast acrylic on order. I ordered from a local company so it gets here faster, and after they take my money I get a note "that's in our Houston warehouse so we'll put it on the next transfer shipment and it will get here in a week". Grrrrr... The plan is to run it through the CNC to shape, then v-carve an "Ice Wing" dragon into the underside of it. I'll paint it to match, with the paint on the underside so it doesn't all get scratched off by an over-eager 10 year old shredding some AC/DC.
4) Replace the covers on the pickups and switches and knobs with something black. I wish they offered a black hardware option on this unit.
5) Install all the hardware.
6) Plug my ears
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