Wonderboy

[DMorrison]

Great dunny roll sanding solution!
A tip with sanding: close your eyes and run your hand over - if you can feel it, stain or paint will highlight it

Great looking kit this one

Thanks for the encouragement Stan - I think I need to sand the top and start again...

[andrewdosborne]

Looks like your making great progress here. Grain on the headstock face has popped nicely. The marks on the body look like glue stains to me. I know some forumites have had success in using a product called 'Goof Off' to help in removing excess glue stains. Looks like some more light and careful sanding required. I've managed to remove glue in the past through very light wire brushing.

For Wudtone, the wood will have some bearing on the final outcome of the color. I've used azure sky blue over basswood and it turned out more surf green due to the underlying green tint in the wood.

[DMorrison]

Sanding is great for getting out of your head, and letting your mind wander...
The first guitar I ever saw or touched or played belonged to my father, and now belongs to me - it is a 1940’s Gibson L-50 archtop acoustic with a beautiful worn and cracked sunburst finish. This was not a fancy instrument when he bought it, but a working musician’s guitar. It has been well loved, even if it has not been remotely pampered. As a young man he almost lost it in a house fire - he dashed in, grabbed it and a pair of shoes, and ran out as the house came down behind him. He played it in USO shows when he was in the army, around campfires when he was a Boy Scout leader, and he used it to teach me a few chords.
It is wonderfully intact - only the pickguard is missing (it self-destructed - some kind of time-bomb cellulose). It's not easy to play , but it plays well. Thanks Pop.



Neck and headstock of Wonderboy got a second coat of the Wudtone Antique Yellow - I like it a lot. The body got a good sanding to get rid of mystery marks, and a fresh coat of Lady Teal (sounds like a stripper name). Back on it tomorrow.

[tonyw]

What a beautiful old bird that guitar is, and has family history, also from right around the same era as the 1st electric, Charlie Christian and the ES150 another classic archtop except it had a pickup.

[DMorrison]

Looks like your making great progress here. Grain on the headstock face has popped nicely. The marks on the body look like glue stains to me. I know some forumites have had success in using a product called 'Goof Off' to help in removing excess glue stains. Looks like some more light and careful sanding required. I've managed to remove glue in the past through very light wire brushing.

For Wudtone, the wood will have some bearing on the final outcome of the color. I've used azure sky blue over basswood and it turned out more surf green due to the underlying green tint in the wood.

Thanks. As for the color, the blue I'd hoped for does look rather green. What do you think my options are? I've got three coats on so far. Someone, Swanny maybe, mentioned using blue stamp pad ink...I wonder if that's an option, to mix it with the stain to make it a deeper blue?

[Swanny]

Dave, If the Wudtone is a waterbased stain, I imagine a waterbased ink like what I used could be used to deepen the colour.

I found if I diluted the ink in water, it had a lesser staining effect, until you built it up with more coats. If you used less water, you got a more intense colour stained into the timber.

[DMorrison]

Dave, If the Wudtone is a waterbased stain, I imagine a waterbased ink like what I used could be used to deepen the colour.

I found if I diluted the ink in water, it had a lesser staining effect, until you built it up with more coats. If you used less water, you got a more intense colour stained into the timber.

Thanks Swanny, I appreciate the guidance. I'll experiment on some scrap...

[Swanny]

No worries, Dave. I first tried on a piece of pine, while I was waiting for my kit to arrive... I mixed up some ink with water to make the stain, then sectioned off the piece of pine, and applied one, two, three, four and five applications of the stain to the different sections...

[DMorrison]

Thanks Swanny - very interesting. I think my problem may be that I had already started with the Lady Teal (2 coats) - just now I experimented with adding a dark blue ink to a mixture of white base coat and some of the LT - I added a little, then a little more, finally the whole bottle. At each point I did a small test on some scrap that was close to the basswood.
Small difference.
The guitar clearly wants to be green.
Here's the latest:

The color in the pickup holes will be the sides and back.
Happily, the neck and headstock are looking good.

[DMorrison]

So - here's the latest: 2 coats of Antique Yellow, 2 coats of top coat, 2 coats of lacquer, decal, 1 coat of lacquer, and I think it's done. I oiled the fretboard, and it looks and feels pretty good. I'm going to use a retainer bar instead of string trees.
As far as the body? I added a whole bottle of blue ink, and the difference is minimal. I think the wood has absorbed about as much color as its going to. In short, karmic payback for being a difficult child; it's time to accept it for what it is, rather than what I hoped it would be. Rather than the color of the sky, it's the color of the ocean - I can live with that.
Next, Antique Yellow on the sides and back.
Good night my friends.