The OOO is alive again.......

Yesterday and today I spent quite a bit of time finish sanding and buffing the OOO. I have to say that I am pretty happy with the overall look. To he honest, I wasn't sure if I was going to like the look when it was still in the white, but now that it is shiny and the finish lets the grain pop, I like it. The finish is not perfect by any means but it is acceptable. I have a lot of pores that just didn't fill right so the finish is not mirror smooth like my Dread and OM. Unfortunately during the finishing I didn't get the sanding dust cleaned out well enough and I have several white spots in the back where the lacquer dust collected and I didn't get them out. I wiped it down between coats and sandings with naphtha but it must have just made the dust look clear when it was wet. It turned white after the naphtha evaporated but I didn't notice. Oh well, live and learn I guess. I am also very happy to say that I temporally set the neck and it fits almost perfectly. It is dead on from side to side, and the straight edge just touches the bridge about 1/32" below the top. I haven't cleaned the neck joint yet so I am guessing that when I do that it will raise to skim the top of the bridge.

I also made a change in my building technique for the SJ side braces. After reading a lot about the subject, I decided to try and use cloth reinforcements. It seems that a lot of high end builders are now going with cloth as all of the pre-war Martins were done this way. Several people have tested the strength of cloth braces and they tend to be stronger than wood at stopping cracks. It also makes it easier to tuck the braces under the kerfing, which is something I haven't done with my wooden braced builds. That is one of those things that the Stewmac instructions do a poor job of teaching. They have you cut the braces to but up against the bottom and top of the kerfing. Most all builders say that it is very important to tuck these braces under the kerfing from top to back. Again, live and learn. Anyways, I used fabric 'bias' for this job. First, it is all folded up so I unfolded it and ironed it flat. Then I mixed a 50-50 mixture of water and titebond. I masked the areas where I wanted the braced to be and glued the cloth on using the titebond mixture. It went very quickly and easily. I will coat the braces with a layer of shellac to protect them.

This is the SJ with pieces of the cloth bias ready to be glued to the sides.

The cloth strips glued to the sides. This is all I did on the SJ today.

Here is the OOO. The EIR turned out pretty nice and I really like how the bloodwood bindings turned a deep red color.

A side shot to show the bindings. Again I just love the red color. As you can see, there is some polishing to do yet.

The neck joint. It is darned near perfect. Those white spots on the neck are just dust on and in the pores. They are not under the finish, I just need to hit it with some compressed air to clean it out. It's amazing how dusty the guitar looks through the lense of the camera!

The other side of the neck.

The peg head. Those slots were pretty difficult to polish up!

This is the entire guitar with the bridge sitting on it. Overall, I am happy. The only thing I would change if I had it to do over again is that I would have used a different wood for the fingerboard. I would have liked it to be a little darker.