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My First Build: A Bolt Guitars Thunder Road (T-Style)
SteveF
Frets: 543
Most of you will have seen @TTony and his thread about building one of these, so hopefully this isn’t too much repetition.
I have never built a guitar or partscaster before but always been keen to try. Full courses have been prohibitive from a time and cost perspective and I have always been put off by kits, assuming that they were not of great quality. I had thought about a partscaster but every time I costed one up it seemed like I’d be spending a lot of money and ended up just buying something close-ish to what I was after from one of the usual brands. So when @BoltGuitarsUK posted on here and offered an introductory discount for tFB members, I thought I would finally have a go. The fact that they looked like they were good quality, decent design, with everything needed in one box, including the finish, really appealed. I had a look at the first couple of videos online and thought they were really well done and easy to follow. That made my mind up.
ParcelForce did make an effort to ruin my plans by throwing the box around a bit and it arrived a bit bashed up but everything inside was so well packed that it all survived unscathed. My only criticism from the packaging was that the cardboard mount that holds the turners wasn’t too secure, so a few tuners had broken free in their battle with Parcel Force and were rattling around a bit inside. No damage to anything though as everything that could have got damaged was so well packed. I did pass a bit of feedback to Sam and the guys at Bolt and I noticed from @TTony ’s video and a couple of other posts I have seen on Facebook that they have started wrapping that part up to keep everything together. Excellent response to feedback.
I have never built a guitar or partscaster before but always been keen to try. Full courses have been prohibitive from a time and cost perspective and I have always been put off by kits, assuming that they were not of great quality. I had thought about a partscaster but every time I costed one up it seemed like I’d be spending a lot of money and ended up just buying something close-ish to what I was after from one of the usual brands. So when @BoltGuitarsUK posted on here and offered an introductory discount for tFB members, I thought I would finally have a go. The fact that they looked like they were good quality, decent design, with everything needed in one box, including the finish, really appealed. I had a look at the first couple of videos online and thought they were really well done and easy to follow. That made my mind up.
ParcelForce did make an effort to ruin my plans by throwing the box around a bit and it arrived a bit bashed up but everything inside was so well packed that it all survived unscathed. My only criticism from the packaging was that the cardboard mount that holds the turners wasn’t too secure, so a few tuners had broken free in their battle with Parcel Force and were rattling around a bit inside. No damage to anything though as everything that could have got damaged was so well packed. I did pass a bit of feedback to Sam and the guys at Bolt and I noticed from @TTony ’s video and a couple of other posts I have seen on Facebook that they have started wrapping that part up to keep everything together. Excellent response to feedback.
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Then a bit of sanding with 240 and then 320 grit.
Then same process on the neck. This was just after adding the water to raise the grain. You can see the flame starting to pop already. Interestingly you sand the fretboard between the frets. I assume if I was doing this from scratch this would happen before the fretting took place. Either way it was nice and easy, just had to be careful around the frets.
Body and neck smooth and ready for finishing.
I was in two minds about whether to go with the "beach washed" look and stop at 2 coats or do some more and go for a more even, solid colour. There is a slight knot in the wood on the back just below where the neck plate goes that was quite prominent still after a couple of coats, so I decided to go further.
I managed to get a little bit of cotton fluff or something on there after the third or fourth coat, so I gave it an additional light rub back with some 320 grit and then added some more. I stopped at 8 coats as I think it was looking pretty even and I could still see a little bit of grain which I liked. The colour is slightly less yellow in reality - the setting sun is making it look more yellow than it is.
First I needed to attach a piece of wood to the neck pocket to hang it from my bike stand.
After the first coat. I think I actually went a little heavier than they had suggested in the video (following @TTony advice from his thread) so the colour is relatively even. It goes on very easy and the process is simple:
1. Mix the gloss into the colour up to the fill mark on the bottle and give it a shake.
2. Take a bit of t-shirt cloth or similar and fold it into a smooth pad (use the flat rounded edge to apply the finish)
3. Wipe on the finish, small amounts, in smooth strokes. My system was to do the flat bit at the neck join first, then the edges, followed by the front and back. After the first coat you give it a very light sand back in case any more grain has been raised. As I mentioned, I also did this after the third coat just because a bit of lint had come off my cloth into the cutaway.
After a few coats:
Then where I stopped for the night:
I wonder whether using one of those sponge type paintbrushes might make it go on even easier and reduce the risk of any lint from a cloth, but I am happy with how easy the process was. I might try it on a bit of scrap and report back another time. There's plenty of finish to go as opaque as you like - I did 8 coats (they suggest around 3 for beach washed look) and still have more than half left - I reckon you could probably get two guitars out of a bottle easy. Even if you don't want a full kit, I believe they're making the finish available separately and I would suggest (being a beginner myself) that you won't find an easier system to colour your guitar.
This was the first two nights' progress and I had to leave it at that point. Will update as I progress further.
It's definitely worth spending the time on this stage and getting the finish to how you want it to look.
Wish I'd thought of using my bike work stand when I was doing mine! Genius idea!
Keep us updated with your progress
Bolt Guitars – High-end guitar kits with everything included
Unfortunately this didn't go as smoothly as it had been yesterday. It seemed that as I was trying to put the gloss on, I was getting a lot of streaks and disturbing the dye coats underneath. My previously glorious looking finish was starting to look... less than glorious. In particular, I got a streak of some kind (sort of like I'd rubbed off a load of the dye underneath) in a very unfortunate place - right between where the bridge plate and control plates go - so it would be visible on the finished guitar.
I took a moment and spent a bit of time chatting to Robert from Bolt on their Facebook group chat. I think I have either (or both);
- Left it not long enough since I did the dye coats yesterday before moving to this stage. I did a load of extra coats to get a more solid finish, so maybe it could have done with longer to fully cure before sanding back and adding gloss; or
- tried to go too thick with the gloss coats.
Robert was extremely helpful and happy to advise (despite it being after 8pm) and suggested that I could try sanding it back to level and then build a bit more colour back up before trying again (offering to send out more finish if I needed it - great customer service again, as this was clearly my own error and not the fault of the product). He also suggested that another method of completing the finish would be to continue adding the gloss to the dye mix to give more gloss content, rather than putting the clear directly over the top. I think I might try this. Again, Robert reassured me that there was nothing to worry about as they would soon fire me out some more finish if needed.
I have a couple of social events over the next couple of days so I am going to let the current finish cure and then give it a light sanding on Friday before deciding fully how to proceed. I was pretty bummed about the setback, but have to say it was great to have the Bolt support there to chat to - something I wouldn't have had with a 'standard' kit. Before I finished, I decided I would finish on a high and gave the neck a rub down and another coat of oil so it could also cure fully by the end of the week.
Interesting suggestion to add more gloss to the mix, I might try that myself - I also had a slight problem, self-caused, after I’d “finished” it all, and put it all together.
The neck looks super, btw
The neck looks super, btw Cheers Andy, reassuring to hear that it happens to others too!
I moved the (finished, assembled) guitar off my main workbench, but, being careful not to damage it (!), I laid it on a gripper mat on another bench. And left it there during a hot day. Next morning, I lifted the guitar up and the mat came with it. I had to peel the mat off the back of the guitar, but that left a gripper mat pattern on the back of the guitar.
Tried a quick fix - rubbing hard and trying to polish it out, thought it had worked, added another coat of gloss, but the pattern then revealed itself again when tilting the body to the light.
So, out with the sandpapers.
We tried all different types of materials (even sanding the finish in) to use, and the tried and tested one that came out tops was a plain old bit of cloth. Rob is right though, in that adding a bit more of the gloss to the mixture should help the process and really seal the coats you've put on- and the curing time and applying almost atom thick coats is key. It feels touch dry very quickly, but needs the time to cure and fully seal before proceeding.
All that being said, it still looks like an absolutely bang up job you're doing, and that neck is pretty special, even if I do say so myself
Any more issues don't hesitate to drop us a line.
Cheers,
Sam.
Bolt Guitars – High-end guitar kits with everything included
Bolt Guitars – High-end guitar kits with everything included
Attach the neck
Pop the neck pickup (incl unattached springs) into the cavity
Slide the scratchplate into position, ie under the fretboard extension.
Drop the neck pickup screws through the holes in the scratchplate, through the springs beneath the scratchplate, and then jiggle everything around a little bit until the screws find the screw holes in the pickup baseplate.
It was a little fiddly, and took a bit longer than fixing the pickups to the scratchplate first, but did work.
The springs are held in place, upright, against the side of pickup cover, so the screws did drop straight into them. More or less.