There are some great threads on here on
how to do kit guitars, this ones about how not to
. I've debated posting this up here as I'm not exactly proud of my woodworking skills or lack there of but why not, it's been cathartic writing it and maybe someone will read it and avoid one of the many mistakes I've made. So here's a a step by step of the things I did highlighting what I messed up!
Ok, lets get started, so I got a cheap sub £100 LPJ kit as I really fancied trying a kit build, as it happened I bought this before I saw the
Tainted love thread where
@Andyjr1515 has made a really beautiful looking red LPJ so I thought "Great, something like that is what I'll aim for!"
Headstock first. After mapping out the shape of my LP's headstock on a piece of paper I cut that out and used it to shape the kits headstock.
I cut out the headstock using a handheld jigsaw with fine tooth wood blade which I doubt anyone here would recommend but it actually came out really well initially but I made my small screw up. I decided to cut out the notch in the center with the jigsaw. It would have looked so much better had I just left it rounded. It was too fine a cut and not enough wood to play with and I made a bit of a mess of it, Going too deep and wide. I ended up taking a lot off the top of the head-stock off to sand it down and smooth again. It's ok now but could have been better.
The body is three piece and the neck has a scarf joint but overall quiet nice.
I decided to use a mahogany grain filler on the body and neck anyway. Added some white spirits to make it more workable and rubbed it in with a cloth. Added lovely definition to the grain. All going OK so far overall.
At this point in a rush of blood to head I decided one evening about 9pm I wanted to glue the neck on. that would make it easier to stain I convinced myself. Now I had placed the neck into the body pocket before and knew it was extremely tight fit so logic should have said to sand it back a little so it wasn't too tight. I sanded it back a tiny bit but it was still very tight when I filled the pocket with Titebond Original and forced it in. No surprise, some glue was being forced out of the pocket which I cleaned off. Also, the fit isn't perfect. As you can see in the picture below there's a tiny gap. About a mm on the bottom of the pocket. Easily sortable if I took my time and hadn't rushed it but there you go.
I attached a hook to the back of the guitar where the strap button will go so that I could hang it up in the shed and starting staining. I used Diamine Oxblood red ink, watered down a little with tap water, applied with a cotton cloth. First coat below.
After 3 coats left to dry overnight each time I was really happy with the outcome, it looked great. (Note the pics below are iphone with kitchen spot lighting, in the flesh it was a far nicer deep wine/blood red)
Btw, I ordered the 80ml bottle of Diamine ink to be safe, you don't need to, if you go
down the fountain pen ink route 30ml would probably do multiple
guitars. I've barely made a dent in the bottle.
I had the fretboard masked off but I had used the green decorators tape, there had been a little stain bleed into the fretboard.
So next up I decided to apply polyurethane, I'd seen
@Andyjr1515 here had used Ronseal Hardglaze poly and decided I would use that rather than Tru-oil as I fancied going for a slightly glossier finish. Initially I was going to try applying with a cloth and gave it a very quick go but wasn't happy with it. I think I should have looked to dilute some with white spirits to make it more workable but as I had brushes handy in the shed I decided I'd apply with a brush. Now as I was applying it looked quiet good, the guitars colour really popped out. (Yet again, it was a bit deeper darker red in the flesh, looked great)
But here is where a couple of really bad decisions were highlighted.
- When I had sanded down the body (600grit to 2000grit) I had not used a flat sanding block, just by hand!! More on this in a bit.
- I applied the poly way too thick with the brush. I had even gone over the top a couple of times.
- I hung the guitar up to dry upside down, as the image shows above.
No one needs to tell me how dumb these moves were, I already know. When I checked on the guitar 24 hours later it was still a little tacky but worse, the top had very noticeable drips. You can't make them out in the picture below (in fact I think it looks quiet nice in that picture) but they were quiet visible in person.
So last night, although I was very tired I decided I wanted to fix the drips, this time though I used a block, this really highlighted the fact the surface was not even but at different heights and the drips were all in deeper areas of the wood so when I went over it wet-sanding with 600grit all the high areas got sanded back while the poly stayed in the lower areas. So now, because I'm a damn idiot my guitar body looks like a really shit relic job!!!
So you might think I stopped there to look at it with fresh eyes or kept sanding to take the whole top off and even it out so that I could re-apply stain and finish, because that would be sensible right?!? - Nope, in my tired and frustrated state I decided "
Screw it, it can stay that way" so the obvious course of action, apply another bloody coat of bloody poly!!!, I mean I'm laughing as I type this because I can't honestly believe I did it, I don't know why I did. So now, my guitar looks like like pic below. I'm not touching or looking at it for a few days and I'll decide what to do later in the week, whether to strip the finish and re-do it or just leave it like that as a reminder of how rushing/not thinking can make a mess of things (although it does have a strangely nice 3dish effect in the flesh now).
So yea, that's how my first kit build is going ha! - Great fun but man what a lesson in not diving into things without doing your homework and rushing jobs. I have a tortoiseshell sheet at home that I'll be making a pickguard and truss rod cover from so I'll do that next, you never know, I might grow to like my relic-ish job with the components on the guitar. We'll see.
Comments
Where did you get the kit, it looks nice...
And jigsaws are sneaky little blighters. You think you've got the hang of it, everything is going well and then it wanders off on it's own in a direction to didn't expect. I feel your pain!
the kit was from kitbuiltguitars.co.uk.
That looks good, but if I just... and I'll just... and I'll just... dammit!!
Like Father Ted trying to hammer the dent out of that car...
I'd love to be able to build guitars from scratch, but I'd end up with more wood shavings on the floor than an actual guitar...
It is, of course, easy enough to get it back down to wood if you subsequently decided to do that.
By the way, the sometimes misguided urge to rush to correct a minor balls up and making it a lot worse as a consequence isn't confined to beginner builders. I have done the same kind of thing more than once in the past six months let alone the past six years since I first started getting interested in this particular type of madness
It's like I'm looking for an LP kit at the moment - I want a plaintop standard body with an ebony custom style neck (Bolan-inspired - love the look of his hacked together guitar), but impossible to get those elements together - not surprisingly!
So I think to myself, how could I do this myself? Conclusion - I couldn't.
I love starting projects, but always, always rush. I'm really glad others are the same.
The options are:
*go with it and make it work.
*strip back to wood and try again
*level it off and go with a solid finish
I don't think either approach is right/wrong. I have done all of them, sometimes on the same guitar.
If brushing a finish on, the right brush and technique is crucial to success
Instagram
It certainly wasn't the look I had intended to go for but as Bob Ross would say "There are no mistakes, just happy accidents" (I have two of them already!) - So I had another look at it and have decided the relic job is here to stay, It's growing on me and when I showed it to my wife she pretended to like it and said it looks unique!! So I'll stick with it and post some updates on this thread once its done. Cheers for the comments all!
After I posted the thread on Monday and got some feedback on here and from friends I decided to stick with the relic, but I still didn't want the finish to look like crap. The thought process was to make the finish a nice (but not over the top) gloss with the relic effect underneath the gloss, thus making it look like a conscious design decision rather than a balls up! )
Monday night I took the guitar back out to shed, a light quick wet sanding with 600 grit to take out imperfections and bumps from the poly and applied an extra layer to the top and sides. This time lying it flat rather than hanging it up ha!.
I want to achieve a nice thick poly finish as I know I'll need to take a lot off to get it flat and do a buff and polish. That's the plan anyway. The surface while looking pretty flat to the eye is most certainly uneven, plus poly will dry a little uneven and with little imperfections anyway, particularly when applied with a brush on an already slightly uneven surface (Remember I didn't use a sanding block when I sanded the body pre-finish, this lead to tiny high patches and valleys).
As above. the finish looks nice and thick now, I put a thin layer on the neck and headstock as well after doing a little sanding with 2000 grit wet. I lightly sanded the neck with some 600grit first and got a bit of fading on the neck in keeping with my new relic approach to the guitar. At the moment the front of headstock is getting very little attention. I'll come to that in another post.
Tuesday night, having let the new layer of poly dry for 24 hours I checked on it, not tacky at all and seeming quiet dry I decided to do a little more wet sanding and see what happens.
As you can see in the picture, it really highlights how uneven the lacquer is, this is why I wanted to put it on so thick as if I want to go for a very smooth high gloss finish I will have to even this out. I only did a little sanding and had to stop as it was getting late so it's not flat and even yet but I'm happy with the direction it's going now.
Which raises another question, I want a reasonably glossy finish but I'm not sure I actually want an outright perfect finish. Perhaps a little bit of orange peel effect might work well on this guitar?! (No, I'm not being lazy, I genuinely do think it could work) So while I'll continue to wet sand down a bit more with 2000/3000grit to get the smooth finish. I may well buff and polish before it's perfect!! Still undecided on this, waiting for some rubbing compound to arrive first anyway.
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Lastly for this post, I wanted to highlight something else I messed up. I had written this in the first post but it looks like, in adding the pictures I somehow ended up deleting this section so just to mention. When I taped off the fretboard I obviously taped it off down to the line of where the fretboard meets the mahogany on the sides. I did this with green decorators tape. Now I think there was probably tiny imperfections in how I applied it as I ended up with some stain bleeding into the fretboard, see below. Perhaps green decorators tape wasn't the right choice with a water based stain.
Anyway, I was able to pretty much sort this out by taping off the now stained and dry mahogany instead and lightly sanding with 2000 grit plus washing with water the stained fretboard. It's not absolutely perfect but it's ok. If I had the time again I'd have gone to a bit more effort to perfect it but as it is I'm still reasonable happy.
While we're on the topic of the neck, when I applied the poly to the neck I applied it up to the edge of the fretboard to get a consistent feel. This is after I put some fretboard conditioner on the sides as well as the fretboard was quiet dry.
That's enough for this post I think.
I did find that old Nitromors (before the EU ordered them to remove all the useful chemicals from it) took Poly off brilliantly. New Nitromors doesn't do anything.
The hours and hours I spent dry sanding poly off!!
I no do engrish good sometims!
I know the show and tell element of the posts are OTT and most if not everyone reading knows this stuff. It's more for my benefit tbh, little build diary type thing,
As an aside, I've embraced my screw up/relic wholeheartedly and continuing down that route of trying to give it a bit of an aged wood effect. I'll have another update over the weekend but I'm pretty happy with how it's going now!
There's a light layer of poly on but that can be stripped off if necessary. I have a black plastic veneer for the top so I can go the red or black route:
Also, on my lunch hour earlier in the week I mocked up a logo for myself. It's meant to be a stags head in case anyone is wondering wtf it is ha!
So, here's my two initial logo designs on a red and black background. The plan is to print them onto waterslide decal paper ready to transfer to headstock. Then lacquer over.
Logo 1:
Logo 2:
So, opinions/criticism welcome:
and tortoiseshell scratchpalte material, ready to cut and shape (This picture was taken a few days ago, the top is in a lot better condition now)
Following this with interest - I have a couple of kits on the way for evaluation/to screw up.