Mikes ST-1 Build

[MikeL]

My ST-1 arrived on Tuesday, it's now Saturday so I've had a few evenings of sanding already done.
I spent some of that time prepping so I could get the most out of the weekend.

I had three goals I was wanting to achieve today.

• Fit the body to my home made Rotate'o'tilt'o'matic.
• Get the body undercoated
• Shape the head

So my Rotate'o'tilt'o'matic works a treat. It's basically a broom handle stuck through a VW Clutch throw out bearing on a stand. It allows the body to be tilted and rotated without having to touch it.

Now that I have the body I had to figure out what to use as the counter weight. Turns out a 600ml Coke bottle full of wet sand weighs the same as a ST-1 body, go figure



A couple of pictures from the undercoating process. I chose to use' Dulux 1 Step', primer, sealer & undercoat. Watered down 25% for the Spray Gun. (Consistency of creamy milk is the rule of thumb for paint spraying)






Ok, now to leave that probably until tomorrow before I consider sanding it back before the second coat.


So now for the headstock. If anyone saw my concept image from a previous post you may have noted I already had an idea in mind. Once I had the actual neck to play with I changed the design slightly to leave more wood in front of the machine heads



Initial rough cut ( Adam, your kits just keep on giving, the thankyou letter you include also makes an excellent template )



And here's the completed version ( needs another 15 mins of light work to clean up a couple of areas but I'm happy with the result )



As a side note, for anyone sanding the edge of the head, a handy trick, if you don't want to use power tools, is to staple sandpaper over the end of a plank of wood clamped to your work bench. This allows you to hold the neck and sand flat sections cleanly in seconds whilst rolling the neck up as you sand allows for easy control on sanding curves. ( You can see the one I used in the last pic bottom right, it's just a sandpaper strip for my orbital sander)

End of day 1 ( please give me any comments, suggestions or feedback you may have )

[Gavin1393]

Nice work! Good to see the tilto-whatsis-name in action. Looking forward to seeing how the headstock turns out! Thanks for posting on the progress!

[dingobass]

Looking good Mike.

Love the tilto whatsit, if we had an invention of the month this would win it hands down!

Can I make just one suggestion, mask the rout outs for the neck and pickups before you add any more paint.
It can save you some swearing down the track when you do the build.

Paint in neck pockets can seriously mess with fitting the neck and you will have to do some sanding off of paint to get it to fit.

[MikeL]

Quote from dingobass on February 2, 2013, 22:18

Can I make just one suggestion, mask the rout outs for the neck and pickups before you add any more paint.
It can save you some swearing down the track when you do the build.

Paint in neck pockets can seriously mess with fitting the neck and you will have to do some sanding off of paint to get it to fit.

Thanks DB, The pickups I hadn't thought about but the neck one I was purposely getting paint into as it has a bit of play in it, and after a test fit and alignment I do need it to lean one way a little more than the other, which will leave a gap on one side... not enough to be an issue but I'd know it was there.

One of the cool things about working for an engineering company is some of the laser alignment tools that like to spend the weekend with me

[adam]

Nice work Mike. Your tilting system is inspired, but I couldn't quite make out the clutch. Can we have some close ups on the Tilt-O-Matic?

It also looks like you've got some good spray equipment. Looking forward to seeing the results.

[yakkmeister]

It's the grey/metal ring between the two uprights that the broom-handle passes through.
You can see it just in front of the stool's seat in the first picture.
It's a bearing though, not a whole clutch

[adam]

Quote from yakkmeister on February 3, 2013, 18:23
It's the grey/metal ring between the two uprights that the broom-handle passes through.
You can see it just in front of the stool's seat in the first picture.
It's a bearing though, not a whole clutch

Ahh, ok, got it. Thanks.

[MikeL]

Day 2

Gardened and fixed computers mostly but did get the body sanded back ready for the second undercoat.

One of the things I'd noticed is that Basswood is a kind of fluffy wood, it doesn't seem to really like being smooth. So on a hunch I actually undercoated it while it was still fairly fluffy. It did have the result I wanted, it hardened the surface enough for it to be sanded smooth easily.

Naturally this approach will only work if painting, so I'm going to use it on my ST-1 and SV-1, as in my mind they're painty style guitars, but when I do an LP I will be trying Wudtone.

These pics don't really show anything but I took em, so here they are anyway

[keloooe]

Quote from MikeL on February 3, 2013, 20:23
One of the things I'd noticed is that Basswood is a kind of fluffy wood, it doesn't seem to really like being smooth. So on a hunch I actually undercoated it while it was still fairly fluffy. It did have the result I wanted, it hardened the surface enough for it to be sanded smooth easily.

Yeah, when I got my LP-1, it was nice and fluffy...

[MikeL]

Prepping took longer than I'd anticipated but like anything, you only get out of it what you put into it.
This guitar is for my wife, mine is in the shipment delayed until March so I have a little extra time to spend on this one but the weather in Brisbane has been crappy for painting... if it's not raining it's too humid etc.. Plus she wanted the neck pained too.. Blarghhh.

But anyway, after much sanding and 8 undercoats to get it butt smooth, here's the first colour coat.
It is actually purple but camera's just don't seem to be able to capture how vivid it is or the actual colour it is for that matter.

Another 3 colour coats and 3 to 4 of clear before a cut'n'polish.