Simon, I was thinking about how to sand out those scratches and scraping seem to be a great solution as I can get very close to the frets. I will try something on the stain and see what happens. I have a replacement bone nut so that should not be an issue.
How do you think a traditional sunburst would turn out on this basswood body?
It has been some time since I have worked on this. It sat still in the box in the middle of the room on the floor for three weeks. My wife and I left for the afternoon and my dog got upset with me. He decided that he would take his frustrations out on my guitar. He opened the cardboard box, ripped up all the bubble wrap into tiny 1 inch pieces. Then he took one bite into the guitar body in the neck cavity.
I guess he decided that basswood doesn't taste that great, but he got the message across. I was able to get almost all of the final sanding completed. I then carried it over to a gentleman who has offered to supervise me while I put this together. HE has built at least a dozen guitars, from scratch and they are stunningly beautiful. I chose a standard P-bass template for the head stock. I had to resize the image a few times to get it to the size that would fit. I cut it out on his bandsaw, sanded it with his orbital spindle sander and then we assembled all of it. It took about 4 hours total to get it to the point in the picture. We nailed the bridge placement after a few different methods of checking alignment and taking measurements off of his bass. We put on the two outer strings and moved the bridge until the strings had equal amounts on the edge of the fretboard. The intonation is only off on two strings and is very slight. We did not adjust it any because we still have to replace the nut with the bone nut I purchased with the kit and then set the string height and adjust the truss rod. The strings are too high at this point and after we lower the strings, the intonation may be perfect as it is. I have to sand a few more places, like the headstock that I cut out. Then disassemble it all, take the neck back to his house where he is going to show me how to do a fret job on it. He already has the nitro cellulose lacquer colors for a 3 color sunburst. I need to patch the place where the dog took a bite. After thinking long and hard about what I wanted to do on the neck, I decided I am going to try a boiled linseed oil finish so the neck is not "sticky" when playing with a sweaty hand. The nitro cellulose finish he had on his guitars was very nice, but my hand stuck to it. I took this idea from Chris's video from Highline guitars. pictures to follow
Last edited by PB4ME; 22-02-2022 at 07:32 AM.
Steam might work on the tooth marks. Although maybe you should leave them. How many people have a bass with actual bite marks?Originally Posted by PB4ME
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After much thought about the dog bite marks, and several people telling me it makes a good conversation piece, I decided to steam them and get as much out as possible and then leave it.
It is barely noticeable and if I tried to fill and sand it, I think it would turn out worse than before.
My 'mentor' had a son to get married and then other things of life that have kept us from working on it for about a month or so. This past weekend, I spent most of the day on Saturday getting a lesson on fret jobs. He showed me the tools and technique and handed me the files after a little bit of setup that he did. Basically, he laid the neck on the bench and used a straightedge and to check for high or low frets. I had a high one on the third fret. The rest were pretty good! Then then marked each fret with a red marker and then he used a 12" radius sanding block and sanded all the red ink away.
Next step was to mount the neck in his vise and he gave me one lesson on taping, marking, filing and sanding the frets.
about two hours later, I had them completed. We then checked it with the straightedge again to make sure they were flat and none were low. He was very happy with it so I must have been a quick study! He took the body over to a room he uses as a paint room and after attached his paint broom stick handle jig, he sprayed on a few coats of clear lacquer for a base coat. I think the plan this weekend is to go back and wet sand that, then start with the color layers. HE says about 8 more coats and if I don't sand thru the layers it should be really nice! Then we will leave it to dry for about a month.PIctures to follow!
Last edited by PB4ME; 06-04-2022 at 10:13 AM.
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