Hi All,
I ordered a custom GR 1SF Lefty around June last year.
Opened the box very excited. Then when I placed all the components together I realised the tremolo was a right hand version! Adam then found that the factory didn't have a Left hand tremolo, so he sourced a real Bigsby Lefty ( at a discount cost). Thanks Adam. But now I had my first ever build that had to live up to it's hardware. No pressure.
Then I had all sorts of plans for the paint job. Something fun, different, very graphic. It took months, and I wasn't happy. Life took over and I had to put the project aside for a while.
So a month ago, I decided I wanted to see the grain and I started researching finishes, and watching people spraying bursts in lacquer, and the Dingo tone videos and I emailed DingoBass with a couple of queries. I really liked his GR 1sf but then I saw an Ibanez Artcore vintage and thought that colour would be great. And not just a copy of DB's.
Dingotone colours weren't all available and there weren't sample panels to see so I eventually settled on using Feast and Watson stains and Tru oil.
I bought Prooftint stains in Maple and Golden Teak. The colours look very different on ply. So I experimented and made a colour for the top from one part of each plus one part Prooftint colour reducer. I thinned it with this because I didn't want to go too strong first off. It's a lovely warm honey colour.
For the sides and neck I made the mix without the reducer, with a little more of the Maple.
The Head stock face had this colour mixed with Black Japan which I had in the shed. it made A nice dark brown.
Before application I had done all the sanding, vacuuming off the dust and masking the binding. I saw a guy online make thin strips of tape by clamping a craft blade onto a small stack of cards and turning the roll of standard tape around against it. Worked a treat and saved a lot of scaping colour off.
Staining finished now. In the oiling with Tru oil process. 4 coats on so far. starting to look nice.
Picks attached.
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