Hi folks,
After the relative success of my first electric build (and it's subsequent sale, woohoo!) I wanted to push myself (my luck) on my second build with a few experiments..
First I wanted to try a scarf headstock and stacked heel to see if the cost saving of using a 1" neck blank was practical. Jury is out at the moment.
Second I wanted to make the fretboard from a blank and bind it. To do this I've used the bagpress fret slot jig (amazing piece of kit @darrenking) and a Radius Dish radius jig (questionable quality compared to Darren's).
The binding went well and happy with the result so far.
I've also used a router table for the first time and think that's a more stable experience for profiling work.
For the body I plan to add some carving to the top and cutaways for the first time.
I'm also reading up on using osmo hardwax oil to finish, but also want to stain the body first.
Any thoughts or comments welcome.
Cheers
Dan
Have a look at crimsonguitars.com, they do a range of stains (both spirit and water based) and finishing oils. I used the penetrating guitar finishing oil on my Winebox guitar and it gave a nice satin finish in about 4 coats and could have been glossier with more applications. Gives a particularly nice feel to the neck.
There’s a good video on how to apply the finish too.
Good luck with the build, looks good so far.
AwRaBest,
Brian👍😃🎸
@liebe looking good, the osmo poly x stuff it brilliant imo, bought some not long ago to try out and very happy with the results.
I don't see it in the pics but if stacking the heel use different pieces of wood to create a feature, seen people use laminates etc too, looks really cool.
@nsj yeah, good suggestion! I've not done it on this neck, but I have another 1" blank and a small selection of veneers. Could look pretty cool.
Apologies in advance for the incoming interrogation!
With the Osmo oil, does it play nicely with stains? I've got a few water based and spirit based. I was going to test which worked better, and would love to hear from your experience.
After a trawl of the internet it seems the satin version is preferred for guitars, is that your take too?
Wood finishes direct are just down the road from me, so was going to pick up a tester pot or two. How much is needed to finish a guitar?
Cheers
Dan
@liebe I’ve not used the Liberon oil yet but will probably finish my current build with it, I imagine the Crimson oils and Liberon are pretty similar, the method of application certainly is. Thanks for the kind words about my Winebox, though I have to admit that it was really a body only build, I bought a ready made neck for it.
Brian😃👍🎸
@liebe Sweet T guitars on youtube would be the guy to check out regarding using it with stains. I tend to just go natural.
https://www.youtube.com/@SweetTGuitars
And yeh, matt/satin is where I'm at. Mine came from that place
Nice work Dan. I've used the liberon finishing oil on a couple of acoustic guitar builds and it turned out well. I put 5 coats of it on.
I'd be interested to see some other pictures of how you clamped the neck in place in this picture if you have any.
Cheers,
Russ
🎸🙂🎶🙏
🗝️ "Life's what you make it"🗝️
Thanks @nsj I'll check that out
@russ I don't have any more photos, but essentially I'm clamping directly on to my bench top.
It was all a bit of an experiment and I had planned to cut some holes in the sides of the jig so I could clamp the neck to the jig and the jig to the bench. I just thought I'd see how it would work out if I clamped direct to the bench. It felt secure enough, so I just went for it.
I don't have any issues as I was only skimming the surface on each pass, but If I did this again I would cut the holes in the jig to make it more secure.
Mark's you tube vid on scarf headstocks was very helpful.
Hey @nsj, I've watched the vid they do on Osmo. He uses an Osmo woodwax oil (I guess similar to finishing oil) before applying the Osmo polyx finish. Is that what you did too?
I thought the polyx was all the finish needed. I'll guys I'll do more research!
@liebe It's designed to go straight on wood, it's a hardwax oil. This guy uses hardwax oil over stain without anything else. Same sort of thing, just different brand. Try it on a test piece.
After a brief hiatus, I've moved on with carving the neck profile, radiusing the board, installing front dots and adding a headplate.
I seem to be making design decisions a bit on the fly. The position of the dots were last minute and the headplate is made of alternating layers of white & black 0.6mm veneer.
I'm having a bit of trouble clearing the binding glue from the fret slots. Should have done a better job at the time!
@liebe For sure, without it you can use a regular fret saw lol
What glue did you use? I found out the hard way that wood glue doesn't work with plastic binding lol. Superglue was fine though and didn't really get much if any in the fret slots.