Hello from Arizona FB1M first time builder

[dshaw]

Howdy from Prescott Arizona! I just got my FB1M kit and am stoked about building my first guitar. I am a working musician so I have lots of toys already, but am excited to make my own. My stable includes numerous custom shop guitars from Gibson, Fender and Taylor. All great pieces, but honestly my go to stage guitar is a custom built tele, built by a guitar perfectionist friend of mine. This inspired me to build my own. I have a luthier that takes care of all my guitars and I will no doubt seek out his guidance during the process, especially setting the neck and electronics. He replaced a broken truss rod on my classic SG last year and made it better than new!
I started my project this morning by shaping my headstock to a very similar shape to the original Firebird. It was much easier than I thought it might be! After watching the online video, I used a glass and straight edge and I was able to follow the simple design from a web picture creating a pattern and stencil which I traced on the headstock. I am NOT handy with a jigsaw as shown in the video. I found it much simpler(but more time consuming) to use a mouse sander with a heavy grain. Then hand sanding the headstock and neck down to 400.
I will sand the body week. I am still looking for information on how to accomplish the finish I want. I saw a picture of a Firebird with a distressed look. It was teal showing wear with white paint and some wood showing under in a worn pattern almost like a white wash. Open to ideas on how to accomplish this finish. Or if anyone has seen this guitar please send or post a picture.
Thanks and happy guitar building!
Dan

[wokkaboy]

welcome to the forum Dan, great kit to start on the Firebird.
Start a build diary and ask any questions there. Sounds like you have a cool axe collection.

[Fretworn]

Welcome Dan!

[Andy40]

Hi Dan, I really want to do one of these kits. make me proud!

[Dedman]

Welcome Dan, we don't see enough Firebirds
Andy...your GAS is as bad as mine

[Andy40]

Ohhhh its bad Deddy.....

[dshaw]

Well with my busy schedule it has taken a few months but the staining is finished. Funny how the wood stands up after a coat of stain? As they say in the Bulldog videos sand and when you think your done sanding, sand some more! Well the website will not let me upload the pictures. This is a very cool body. I used black lightly over the wood to let the grain show through then I used a flat lacquer finish over the black. The center strip and headstock are a distressed red. For the icing on the cake, I used a gold pen over the black body in one corner to autograph the guitar, just to give it a bit of taste. I will try and upload pictures later.

[Simon Barden]

If it's water-based stain, then yes, it will raise the grain when applied, just the same as simply washing the wood down with water would do. It's actually quite a useful procedure for getting rid of loose wood grains at the start of your build.

The normal reason for pictures not loading is that they are too big. You'll need to find a way of reducing the pixel size so that for a .jpg, .gif or .png the maximum length of any side is 1500 pixels and the overall file size is less than 976 kB (I use Photoshop Elements but there should be free editing programs out there - or else check for that function in any bundled picture editing software you may have). Or else host them at a 3rd party site and link to them there. Find the 'insert image' icon on the forum toolbar and copy in the link reference.