Rebuild: Update 13

Here is basically the last step in the rebuild process. Nothing special, so here goes.

 Begin with sandpaper soaking in water overnight. Here I have the following grits: 800, 1000, 1200, 1500, and 2000. I also have a rubber eraser at hand for use as a sanding block. For the whole guitar, I only needed about a 3"x5" piece of each grit, as shown.

 Beginning on the back (the side with the least amount of obstructions), I used the 800 grit to level the orange peel. I used the sanding block and sandpaper to hold a little bit of water, dripped it onto a fist-sized area, and sanded in circular motions until the shiny orange peel divots disappeared. I did this over the entire guitar. 800 grit took the longest, while the others took no time at all. One must take care to not miss any spots between grits, since it's hard to see where you have/haven't sanded.

After 2000 grit, the surface was dull. Here is the back after medium polishing compound (ScratchX). I used the StewMac's buffing wheel on a power drill. This changed the dull surface to a candy coating that tastes awful, but looks nice. Tight spots like the body cutouts required hand polishing, which is exhausting. I went over the entire thing again with Swirl Remover afterwards.

The holes for hardware were filled with epoxy/sealer/lacquer and needed to be re-drilled. This is tough, as doing so cracks the lacquer. I accomplished satisfactory results by slowly drill the area in reverse until the lacquer in the hole is removed, then forward to hog out into the wood. This picture also shows the tenon in the pickup cavity. Since adjusting the neck angle, the neck shifted further into the mortise by about 1/16". This prevented the pickup from being placed. I used a sanding drum on the dremel (which I've finally found a use for) to trim out the wood.

Bridge pickup installed with the wire pulled through the f-hole. 

Tuning machines installed. The A string tuner seems slightly off in the picture, but not so much in real life. Still need a truss rod cover.

Neck pickup installed. The bridge and stopbar mounting holes along with the potentiometer and switch holes needed cleaned of finish. Shown are the bridge and stopbar mounts installed.

I gave the fretboard a few coats of Fret Doctor. The first is shown, which I then wiped right off. I applied another heavy dose and left it to soak overnight. In the morning it had soaked it all in. I then gave the fretboard a good ol' wipe-dahn and applied yet another coat. 

Silly Strings. Looks great.

I'll need to replace the nut as I'm hearing a lot of buzzing on the high E string.

Fretboard's looking amazing.

 The cheap tune-o-matic bridge buzzes on a few strings and will need a modification/replacement.

Electronics are ready for soldering. They will then be forcefully shoved through the F-hole.

BAM

The action is perfect. It's just as I planned. Here is a comfortable/low string action height I set. The bridge still has a good 1/8" drop before bottoming out. The neck reset was flawless.

POW

Other than the slight buzzing on the bridge and nut, I also noticed how noisy and intermittent the potentiometers are. I'll need to swap them out eventually, but they aren't a big deal. I will order and install a truss rod cover and pickguard at some point in time. I finally have some money to spend.

Beyond this project, I purchased plans from Matthias Wandel's (http://woodgears.ca/) for a wooden bandsaw. He is a brilliant woodworker so I'd recommend checking out what he has on his website if you're interested. I plan the start the bandsaw soon. 

I hope you enjoyed the build. It only took me 3 years.

Rebuild: Update 12

Chemicals. Smelly Chemicals. Smelly Chemicals in Cans.
Naphtha for surface prep. Klean-Strip Lacquer Thinner for lacquer clean up, and Behlen Qualalacq Lacquer Reducer (Lacquer Thinner) for actual thinning. Vinyl Sealer for sealing and adhesion purposes on the epoxy filler. Behlen's Stringer Instrument Lacquer for its obvious use.

I'm still using the purple Harbor Freight HVLP Gun #66222.

 

 About $70 in finishing solvents and lacquers. It's good practice to use a good lacquer thinner for thinning. I believe the cheaper thinners have more moisture/solids in them which can blemish the finish. However, I've heard plenty of people having success with cheap thinners. I recommend doing some research, but I'd say use good thinners, and you won't have a problem.

Same garage booth. Temp and humidity are perfect. Shown above is about the lowest both have gotten over 4 days. They have gone up to about a max 48% and 70F. With the small microwave fan blowing out the garage door window, warm and dry air is pulled from the air conditioned house. Two floor heaters brought the temp up a few degrees.

Da' Boof. Every consecutive booth I've built loses craftsmanship. This 3rd one is incredibly half-assed. Two 9'x12' 3 mil tarps taped and clamped to the ceiling. No poplar braces. Nothing. It'll do.

After coat 7. (orange peel looks much less pronounced in person)

I didn't document much on the actual spraying. It was a lot of fiddling with air flow, air pressure, fan shape, and fluid control knobs on the HVLP gun.

The first 3 coats were awful. Incredible orange peel. I didn't lay on enough material and the air pressure and CFM was shit because I accidentally choked the supply air by leaving the pressure regulator down low at the compressor.

The next 3 went on nicely, but the orange peel from the previous coats still showed through. I had added about 10% thinner. After 48 hours curing, I level sanded the finish (3-4 hours of straight sanding) with 400 grit dry.

The last 2 coats were thinned 50/50. I applied it as thick as I could. The results were amazing. The final result was a rather respectable smooth finish, especially when the value of the tools used is considered.

 Wonderful. The wet sand/buff work will be quick and painless.

I didn't level enough on the headstock, and some bigger orange peel has shown through. Not a problem.

The wood grain depth and holographics are much more pronounced with this epoxy, sealer, lacquer finish than in previous attempts. The mahogany neck looks fantastic.

After coat 7. Some sanding marks shown through. It disappeared after the final coat 8. The leveling and flow-out of the lacquer is quite satisfactory. 

After coat 8, hanging in an unused shower. The fretboard tape was carefully removed 24 hours after the last coat. The f-hole paper towels were carefully pulled out. Thumbs up.

It's hard to capture the texture.

I almost don't need to buff it.

This mahogany is beautiful. On a side note, I've determined the type of mahogany that I used. I realized through working the wood that it had a differing figure and smell compared to 'regular' mahogany (honduran, etc.). It smelled like flowers or old lady perfume when tooled. Some folks on a woodworking subsection on Reddit linked to a wood database and I found the only type of mahogany that smells. http://www.wood-database.com/lumber-identification/hardwoods/santos-mahogany/

Now to wait 1-3 months to wet sand and buph.

-Andrew

Rebuild: Update 11

Not much to update on the actual guitar, so this post title may be a little misleading. All to report is the body has 4 coats of epoxy, and the neck has 2. Everything seems level so I will soon order some vinyl sealer and prep for spraying in a few weeks (the more time, the better).

I've been researching dedicated luthier jigs lately, and decided to build a few. I figure it'll be good for the future to have the special tools ready, and not have to keep rebuilding them.

Here's the router jig shown previously, along with six mounting brackets made from more 3/4" birch plywood. They will soon be mounted to a large base. A note on the routing jig: The pine I used for the parallelogram isn't the best material for the bolts to be riding on, and this causes them to rock. I'm going to need to either replace the wood with a harder material (plastic/metal), or order some bearings and recess them in.

 These brackets were made from 2" rips from birch plywood. I plotted some common guitar profiles (a 'standard' acoustic, les paul, es335) in AutoCAD to see where the optimum placement and length for the bases of each bracket. Thus, as you can see from the previous picture, each bracket base has a different length. A wingnut on a bolt with a lock washer is used to adjust the height of the support. Cork was used to cushion the guitar from the birch plywood. These will be perfect for securing and leveling the guitar body for binding routing.

 One problem I recalled having was joining the 12" wide sheets of 1/16" veneer together for the laminate tops (Update #3 from May 2010). The process of doing so was inspired by methods others use to join acoustic guitar plates. I decided to build a more permanent jig for joining. Above is the bottom half of the jig. The holes on the left are for threading the rope, which I will explain later.

The center of the bottom section has a flat surface of 1/4" MDF and plexiglass, held down with some countersunk screws. Also notice the counterbored screws at the plywood intersections. The 2" wide lengths of plywood were joined used a dado? joint, with the counterbored screw. I cut the dados with a few passes on the table saw.

The top portion sitting on the bottom. The purpose of the plexiglass is to prevent the glue at the joint from sticking to the surface and to provide even clamping pressure. 

Here is the joining jig in action. The rope is anchored in the drilled holes to the left. It is then loosely wrapped around the jig 'arms'. With the other end tied off, the rope is tensioned using a 2 foot long wedge. This provides downward and compressive clamping force on the two work pieces (the two shown are just scrap, without a true edge). This will be repeated for all 4 'arms'.

Alternate view. Remember, the sample work piece is only scrap, and not true (it's crazy false). 

A view of the other wedges. I routed all the edges with a slightly lowered 1/4" round-over bit. Doing this eases the sharp, splintering edges along with making the jig look more professional.

I'm moving further into the finishing stages of the guitar, so progress will be slow.

-Andrew

Rebuild: Update 10

I've done more epoxy work along with some jig building. Check it out.

Here is the guitar with the walnut body sanded down to 400 grit, and wiped with naphtha. There's currently 2 epoxy coats on the body, and 1 on the neck.

 Here i'm applying the third coat to the body with a squeegee. As more coats are applied, and the pores are sealing more and more, the amount of epoxy needed per coat decreases.

Left: 1st coat unsanded. Middle: 2nd coat sanded. Right: 3rd coat unsanded.

3rd coat applied. The epoxy now makes the surface reflective as it becomes more level.

More looks at the reflection.

The sides are leveling nicely. I may need to apply one more coat to the entire body, especially the back, as I can see a few spots of grain still showing.

I figured I'd wait until the epoxy cures a lot first before applying a third coat. In the meantime, I decided to build a jig. I was rooting through my scrap pile from the original build and found my makeshift binding router jig. It was terribly inaccurate and prone to making errors. I decided to do some research to find alternatives. I've seen this jig (http://blackwaterriverguitars.com/Tools%20-%20Binding%20Routing%20Jig.html) along with other similar ones online. It looks relatively simple to build, so I began my design. I used AutoCAD to design the jig and give it dimensions. This was based off of mostly pictures and a few dimensions other luthiers listed on their websites. The resulting dimensions from the CAD file were accurate down to 0.01". I virtually drew a 4' x 2' board of plywood in program and laid out each jig piece out to determine the future cuts. I bought the board, some hard pine, a 12" lazy susan, and a 20" drawer slide. I then made each cut on the table saw, using test pieces to check for the ~0.01" (give or take) accuracy. I had all the pieces, and then pretty much screwed it all together. No reshaping. No filing. No mistakes. It went together exactly as the CAD drawing showed. It took about a day and a half to begin research, design, and build the jig.

Ain't she a beaut. A laminate trimmer will soon be mounted to the end of the arm to the left.

The docked drawer. These beefy 20" slides have almost no play to them. The back portion here is nice and flush.

 The arm extended fully, with the 'parallelogram' raised. She has quite a reach. With a router/laminate trimmer mounted, a small counterweight will inevitably be placed on the back end. The router, when used, will have its entire weight supported by the guitar's edge, so the only true purpose for this jig is to keep it perpendicular with the work surface.

Cheesy DOF picture. Them there's some 1/4" 20 4" bolts with locking nuts on the parallelogram. 

The clearance on the drawer is quite small. However, since everything I build is perfect, the sliding drawer wood never comes in contact with the stationary outer drawer.

Mounting a laminate trimmer (handheld router) to the end will be easy. I just need to get one first. I will then test on a scrap piece of wood. The semi-hollow epoxy job will soon get level sanded and recoated.

-Super duper.

Rebuild: Update 9

20k views. whoopee.

I've begun finishing work. I chose epoxy again for grain/pore filling. This time, however, I'm using the proper epoxy and the proper procedure. I ordered Pacer's Z-poxy finishing resin. Normally reserved for fiberglassing, this epoxy is much less viscous and has a longer open time (20-30 minutes) than the 5 minute Loctite I used before. The procedure was determined through research on luthier forums and a few youtube videos (mainly, this 3 part series: Epoxy Pore Filling Part 1). One big difference in procedure from my first attempt is to build the epoxy up beyond the surface of the wood, resulting in a thin film. The lacquer will then be laid atop. The result should be a perfect glass-smooth finish, without any wood grain showing as pits on the surface.

Step one, prepare the wood. The acetone I used to strip the existing lacquer left a thin film of finish on the surface that needed to be removed. I started with 180 grit sandpaper and continued to 400 grit, followed by a wipe down of naphtha. Some of the binding needed attention. Removing the old binding tore some walnut wood out, most of which I've touched up before adhering the new. However, some spots got filled with binding glue and now look awful.

The binding on the left has been untouched, while the right side has had its walnut/binding seam scraped. You can see the bottom left binding with a little filling of glue. I used an X-acto knife as a scraper and 'picked' out the glue mess-ups.

 I planned ahead and applied the black dye to the headstock before I seal it with epoxy. Letting the dye 'cure' for a few days will prevent any dye from smearing during sealing. 

 I built this stand for the guitar to elevate it off of the table for sealing. This allows me to epoxy the back, top, and sides of the guitar at once without waiting for one section to cure.

It's very well balanced. The back end of the guitar has a screw set in the strap hole which sits on the support.

The fretboard has been taped off, only to see the light of day once the finish is complete. The wood is sanded and waiting for epoxy.

Mix ratios are important, as improper mixing can result in uncured resin/hardener left on the surface or an improper cure in general. I am using a little medicine cup for mixing. My batches are very small so it is difficult to get the ratio right. I will eventually invest in a gram scale for precise measuring. This is difficult to find in a store due to the usual market being 'drug-people'. I got a couple funny looks in the UPS store for asking. My best chance would be to order online. Meanwhile, my spoon method seems to work fine.

 After mixing, briefly heat surface with magic heat dispenser.

And then...do it. Sorry I couldn't take any pictures during the process, but it only involved  pouring a little epoxy on and squeegee-ing it over the surface. After full coverage, squeegee off any excess and remove any drips from the edge.

Once I get one coat over the entire guitar, I will use the stand I built. For some dumb reason I flipped this image around. 

The grain looks great. Further coats of epoxy will make it look more gooder. Yes, more gooder indeed.

Sides will be done next.

I've done a few test pieces, and the first coat merely seals the pores, while the later coats fill up the grain. This shows the guitar top and the sealed surface.

 

New updates will probably include the result of sanding level the surface after all coats of epoxy have been applied.

-APB