Q4 22 Challenge - Another headless guitar

Roland

This has been on the metaphorical drawing board for a while. The Q1 22 build came out of a goal I set myself years ago: to make a guitar using wood which grew within a few hundred yards of my house. The Q4 22 build is another attempt at the same goal. Same design. Same pickups. Same 5-way switching.

What’s different? This time I’ll use timber which is less decorative, but more stable because it has been seasoning for longer. I’m currently debating between Sycamore and Walnut for the neck. Instead of importing a hideously expensive Hipshot tuner/bridge I’ll use one I’ve already bought from Passini in Brazil. I might try a 500k volume pot.

Where is the challenge in this? It will be in the finish. Shiny guitars have never interested me. Once they’ve been played for a while they get scratched and dented. Mine are covered in plectrum scratches, regardless of whether they were finished in wipe-on oil or hard varnish. Inspired by the recent thread on tough finishes I’m going to use CA. It’s a finish which I’ve experimented with on non-guitar items. I wonder how resilient it will be on a guitar, and whether it will protect the wood from yellowing.

paulnb57

Excellent!

Roland

In my mind the Q4 22 challenge was going to run from 1st September to 30th November. Wood doesn’t observe these timescales. It needs to be cut, shaped, and relaxed over years. Last year I cut up a neighbour’s Sycamore tree, and stacked it for seasoning. Earlier this year I re-sawed one of the planks into neck blanks. This morning I broke out one of those neck blanks. It’s moved about a millimetre over the last six months, meaning that it’s relatively stable. It’s given me a reason to break out the planer and level it off. It will now sit until I’m ready to make the neck.

I’m not sure yet what I’ll use for the fretboard. Probably more Sycamore because I like blonde fretboards.

Roland

The internet says that CA fumes are noxious. Most people will have noticed the smell when using small quantities. I’ve just bought three 50gm bottles. A fair amount of that will go on the guitar body in a short amount of time. 

To get used to working with large quantities I’m using CA to finish a 30cm bowl. The air got so bad that I had to leave the workshop between coats. 

Note the fan blowing fumes away from the lathe. 

Roland

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been watching videos from people experimenting with CA finishes. In storage is a second set of book matched yew planks to make a body cap. My experience earlier this year has persuaded me to use a different wood Today I’ve re-sawed some Sycamore and some Rowan looking for a suitable cap.

Sycamore, which I’d be tempted to stain blue electric blue with white binding:

and Rowan with black binding:

which looks like this with a CA finish: 



These are going to lay around while I get on with the neck.

Andyjr1515

Nice bowl! 

I've been experimenting with CA to toughen up some paulownia for a lightweight bass build.  Lots of precautions needed.  I used a full canister mask, good ventilation, very sturdy and suitable gloves, and a 'Beware - the application cloth gets VERY hot' mindset and precautions. 

It's worked well, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it for anyone without the right kind of experience and safety gear.   

TTony

The Rowan looks interesting.

I don’t remember seeing that used before?

Roland

The bad news is that I can’t find where I’ve put the Rowan. 

TTony

Roland said:

The bad news is that I can’t find where I’ve put the Rowan. 

That’s age ... I know I put it down somewhere in here ...

Andyjr1515

TTony said:

Roland said:

The bad news is that I can’t find where I’ve put the Rowan. 

That’s age ... I know I put it down somewhere in here ...

I can be actually sitting down and lose stuff...

Roland

Surprisingly the Rowan wasn’t in the workshop, but where it should be in a stack of drying flat timber. Unfortunately it’s developed shakes, and has split. I’ve planed it down to 10.5mm, which is just thick enough to allow the forearm champfer. Now to see whether it’s possible to cut around the damage.

The fallback position will be dyed Sycamore, for which I’ve been running some tests:

These are sanded up to 400 grit before dyeing and coating, then sanded back to 400 before buffing. Colour representation isn’t very good, but you can see how CA and water based acrylic varnish both darken the wood. I learned something else which you can’t see from the pictures. Osmo is almost self levelling. CA and acrylic aren’t. Acrylic has to be applied with a brush. Being water based means that paper towels leave fragments in the finish.

Acrylic can be levelled with 240 grit, whereas for CA I had to start at 180, showing that it’s more resilient to abrasion. At 400 grit the CA has a much smoother surface than the acrylic.

The lessons from this are:
1. It’s difficult to get consistent colour density on dyed wood.
2. CA is harder than acrylic varnish, which in turn is harder than oil. Whether it is significant more resilient to a plectrum remains to be seen.
3. CA vapour wasn’t as noticeable as I expected from working on the bowl, which I did with the lathe running. I’ve seem other builders trying to rub it into a guitar body as they would with an oil finish. For this test I just wiped it on and left the room. 

4. With CA I could build up three layers in 20 minutes. So a full finish would take about two hours. With acrylic and Osmo it’s more like one layer every two hours.
5. Ordinary CA is suitable for building depth of finish, but top coats of thin CA a will help to level the surface a bit before sanding.

Roland

Andyjr1515 said:

Nice bowl! 

Thanks. It’s the tree which does all the hard work.

impmann

All these headless guitars - you ought to use the maker's name Guillotine Guitars! ;-)

Roland

impmann said:

- you ought to use the maker's name Guillotine Guitars!

Nice idea, but there’s no headstock to put the logo on.

Roland

I have to confess the I’ve made a mistake making the neck. I flattened the underside of the fretboard, but left the top side rough and slightly uneven because it’s about to be radiused. Last night I discovered that I’ve glued the fretboard to the neck the wrong way up. It it going to have to come off? I don’t want dead spots, or have dips develop, or be able to see a line between board and neck when playing.

Rocker

Pardon my ignorance on such matters but what is CA finish?

Roland

@Rocker CA = Cyanoacrylic glue, also knows as superglue. It gives a harder surface than more popular finishes.

Roland

Two months on, and I’ve not made any progress. My excuse is that Autumn is a busy time in the garden: harvesting, autumn digging, planting spring vegetables, pruning back shrubs.

So today I went into the workshop to re-saw some of my wood store into neck and fretboard blanks. One of the advantages of making a headless guitar is that you can use smaller blanks. 

Then I went back to the neck I was working on in September, and managed to mess up the fretboard. At least that makes the decision about whether to replace it.

Sarge

I missed this thread at the start.
I've taken to using ca as a grainfiller, and it is a revelation compared to the usual Rustins debacle. 
Used on a deep grained ash body it filled the grain in 2 passes, 3 passes and I'd levelled it using 300 grit mirka goldflex pads and was impressed that it was almost at a finish level. 
I think the next naked clear body I do will be a full ca finish to as high a gloss as possible. 
That first time I had no eye protection, BIG mistake, eyes were streaming in seconds. 

Roland

Today I’ve tried to resurrect the fretboard by re-doing the radius. This has left the board a bit thin. Hopefully it won’t break when I tweak the truss rod.

I’m glad that I experimented with CA earlier in the year when turning bowls. I learned that I could only get a smooth fretboard surface if I finished the board before inserting the frets. After the slots were cut I used a knife blade and vacuum to make sure they were clear of wood dust. Then I wiped on two coats of CA, using folded kitchen towel as a pad. I don’t know how much CA has crept into the slots. If it’s a problem I’ll have to recut them before fretting, but I didn’t want to cut slots through a hard, shiny CA surface.

When the CA was dry and hard I sanded with 600 grit to remove pad marks. Applying the CA wasn’t too difficult. The quantity was small, and didn’t affect my eyes. I forgot to wear a mask whilst sanding. It only took a minute, but the dust affected my breathing. On the body I’ll wet sand with white spirit.

TTony

Roland said:

Two months on, and I’ve not made any progress. My excuse is that Autumn is a busy time in the garden: harvesting, autumn digging, planting spring vegetables, pruning back shrubs.

Feel the pain. 

I've done more mowing in the last month than I did all summer ... and have so far collected a few trailer loads of leaves, with a few more to come.

Roland said:

Today I’ve tried to resurrect the fretboard by re-doing the radius. This has left the board a bit thin. Hopefully it won’t break when I tweak the truss rod.

If you put a fillet over the top of the truss rod when it's in the neck, that might give a little more protection against that sort of break?