Dub's Wacky Project Guitars Thread--we're baaaaaack

[dubkitty]

i got a hair up my butt and decided to try some finishing stuff on the GFS Galaxiemaster body, whose paint has a nice case of orange peel. the heavier (Meguiar’s) polishing compound was ineffective so i went to sanding with 2000 which seems to work. i’ll have to polish out the test area to be sure, but a single round of sanding would be much better than i’ve been expecting.

[dubkitty]

i'm slowly working my way into the Jetstar stuff. i was kind of disappointed in how well the CA worked on the headstock ding and that's dampened my enthusiasm somewhat, as have the facts that i'm very tired, somewhat depressed, and generally burned out on sanding and tweaking things. but it's happening.

i decided the best thing to do first was to fill the divot left after i dug the white paint and filler out of damage to the fretboard on the bass side at the 2d fret, assumedly the main point of force in the break. that seems to be going swimmingly for the moment...the filler looks much more in tune with the paler-rosewood board than it did with the mahogany on the Kondor body though of course it isn't dry yet. i also spread a little filler over adjoining areas of the board edge which had white paint impregnated into glued cracks that i couldn't get out without doing violence to the edge. it's deliberately thicker than it strictly needed to be so i have a bit more wiggle room when reducing it. once that's dried and been sanded i'll clearcoat the divot and the exposed edge of the board in the adjoining areas, which is about 2 inches. there's another spot where the finish on the edge of the board is funky down by the neck join, but i haven't decided whether to redo that as well. when the clearcoat had dried and been sanded down i'll tape it off and start with the CA. i still plan to try the CA out on the body ding first where a lousy result would be less consequential. perhaps later, after more coffee.

[dubkitty]

today's results were mixed. i think the side of the fretboard came out reasonably well, and some lacquer marker balanced it out a bit. i did a drop fill of clear CA for the divot after the photo was taken. the irregular edge between the fingerboard and neck will be taken care of when i do the painting.

on the other hand, the side ding wasn't nearly as successful. i was able to mix a pretty close match to the paint color and get it applied consistently to the problem area. however, once again the (tinted) white CA was unable to cover the darker imperfections. it was also a screaming bitch to sand, and in the process some additional spots got the paint sanded off. you're supposed to be going in the opposite direction, dammit.

at this point i'm declaring CA, at least in the StewMac formulation, ineffective for finish fixes other than small drop fills. i'm quite disappointed given that they represent otherwise. i guess the next thing will be to find some Vintage White paint that won't fuck up the extant poly finish and go for a Kondor-style coverup of the bad bits. i'll still find some way to make it look OK, but i really didn't need the letdown on a Monday. oh well. i won't get back to this till Wednesday because i'm going out to Becky's straight after work and thus won't have time to shop.

[dubkitty]

i found some satin finish Vintage White craft paint at Michael's which isn't quite an exact match, but it's pretty damn close. it wasn't doing a terrific job of covering the dark spots so i rather troweled it on. i'd rather sand more than sand through. the headstock seems to be coming along quite well, and i'm managing to get a decent straight edge between the black face and the white side.

the side looks to be a bit more challenging because of the dark areas of exposed mahogany. i'll do another coat here and then carefully sand down till i get a reasonably flat surface.

assuming i can get a decent flat painted surface, the rest should be relatively simple. a couple of coats of clear brush-on poly, some judicious sanding and polishing, and we should be rolling. they say to leave an hour between coats, but i'm not doing another till the afternoon (it's 0845 now). if i have one big takeaway in filling and sanding, it's that it almost always takes way longer for something to dry and harden than it says on the can. but i feel better now...i may not be able to match the OG paint perfectly, but at least the flaws won't be visible from 3 feet away. it's also possible that the clearcoat might balance out the colors as happened with the sides of the Kondor body.

i feel really good about the actual surface of the neck, which sanded down nicely to get rid of the broken paint that was clinging on. i'm waiting to do the neck stuff until i see how well the paint does on the areas i don't have to touch every time i play. if the acrylic->clearcoat thing is a winner, all i need to worry about is cleaning up the edge of the fingerboard. then i need to file deeper slots in the bridge saddles because the Stetsbar's two moving steel plates leave the bridge a bit higher than optimal for decent action. i'll have to be careful, though, because the bridge is a bespoke Stetsbar part with conical projections where the bridge posts would go through the bridge. i think it'll be OK because i'm a lot more careful now after doing a few nuts and bridges.

[dubkitty]

noticed that the back of the M-75 was rather more scratched and dingy/dull than i’d originally thought, so i broke out the Meguiar’s and in half an hour it was much improved. with that done there’s really nothing else to be done with it other than putting on the pickguard when it (finally) arrives. my fucking shoes from China will arrive sooner.

IMG_6899.jpeg (104.25 KiB) Viewed 20 times

[dubkitty]

second coat on the side ding and headstock edge done. now i have to do something i'm not good at doing, which is be patient and let it cure before going at it. i so want this to be done, because it's been an inordinate pain in the ass and because it's going to be so fucking great when it's done. but i'm not there yet.