FS-1 build

[JohnH]

Lookin' great, Grant! The contouring and the PUPs are both spot on.

[neverwas]

Thanks John.
There has been some progress, albeit a bit slow. Spent a weekend afternoon glueing small squares of 150 grit sandpaper to the end of pencils so I could sand inside the f-holes to remove the pencil marks and glue stain. Pencil came off OK but the yellow stain from the glue is there for good, did make it a little less noticeable though. There were a number of pencil casualties.

Sanded the side up to 240 grit and had to spend a bit of time alternating between using Goof-off and a small brass brush to remove as much of the glue mark as I could. Then polished the binding with 1500 grit paper and masked up front and back of body.
I'm using Colortone stains I have left over to try to do a tiger eye effect, my test piece of maple veneer came out alright but wasn't able to get the contrast between light and dark colours I was hoping for but hopefully still resembles what I'm after.
First step, a coat of black diluted with metho, covered the glue mark so was happy about that.

cont..

[neverwas]

Then used a cloth dampened with metho to pull some of the black back out and in doing so made some of the black bleed under the vinyl tape, just need to hope I polished the binding well enough so it will scrape off.
Next step was to make up the orange by mixing 4 ml of lemon yellow and 1ml of cherry red and diluting that with 50ml metho. Wiped on six coats which also helps pull some of the black out as well. The black is now more of a deep brown with the orange highlights where the curves change direction.
It is darker than my test piece but that may be a good thing if I need to do a burst to cover up the glue stain on the back by the binding. First pic raw stain

After two coats of vinyl sealer

Little bit of an oops on the back but that should cover up.


Grant

[ILRGuitars]

Nice work mate. Very classy.

[Simon Barden]

That does look good.

[gavinturner]

Looking great Grant! Pickups look awesome as well.She's going to look amazing when done.

cheers,
Gav.

[neverwas]

Thanks guys. Gav, it's a shame we won't get to see your FS-1 finished as that burst was perfect.
More colouring done. Sanded the back with 400 to remove some random sanding marks and then stained with the diluted black and then 6 coats of orange.

Have previously extended the neck pup cavity roughly 3mm to get the pup and dress ring to fit properly and keeping the neck at the right spot for the scale length.


cont...

[neverwas]

Then lightly sanded the front with 400 to again remove some sanding marks from the factory, then black and orange


The glue marks I knew about weren't a problem but new ones have a habit of popping up, along the centre veneer join and just to the right of that below the tailpiece post holes.

cont..

[neverwas]

Picked along the veneer join with a sewing needle to dig out the glue and then went over that with full strength colour the same way Kick did on his Red Widow.

Also had a spot to the left of the left f-hole , it was glue because it shattered when picking at it. Spot filled with natural timbermate.


cont.

[neverwas]

After dabbing and wiping on the stains ended up with 9 coats of orange in total

Repair spots are still noticeable on raw stain but with 2 coats of vinyl sealer seem to have blended in a bit better

The back is lighter than the rest at this point, it may even out a little when the top coats go on, just need to decide on gloss or satin for the finish.
Now have lots of binding to scrape.

Grant