Ready for finish....

Today was sanding day. Lots and lots of sanding. My goal was to get the SJ ready for the beginning finishing stages so I can get the first coats of lacquer on it this weekend. The first thing I did was to install the last 6 frets on the fretboard extension. Once those were in sanded the neck and body to 220 grit. I noticed that the soundboard had a couple of rough spots where the runout in grain made the top look fuzzy. I was a little concerned about this because I was very careful to use a backer for sanding, but it still looked like I sanded deeper in spots like I used my fingers when sanding. Fortunately, these spots sanded smooth with 320 grit paper. Once the guitar was sanded to 220, I spent about a half out getting the bridge location marked and masked off. I also masked off the fingerboard, neck tenon, nut slot, and the extension location on the soundboard. I then sanded the entire guitar to 320 grit making sure to get all of the glue spots cleaned off. One hurdle that I needed to clear was the maple bindings. With all of the sanding of the ebony on the neck, and the camatillo on the body the maple was really dirty. I hit it with high pressure air and a vacuum, but it still had a lot of purple or black dust in the grain. I decided the best way to clean it out was to mask the dark wood off next to the maple and then sand the bindings clean. It worked pretty well. I had some scraping with a razor blade to do to get it totally cleaned but all in all it turned out pretty well. That was something I had been worrying about for a while now.

So, the guitar is ready for a thin coat of shellac to act as a sealer on the back and sides, and shellac on the neck binding to seal it from the neck stain. I will then pore fill, stain the neck, then start the lacquer coats. Depending on how much sanding I do during the pore filling, I may give the body a second coat of shellac before starting the lacquer coats. I am a little concerned about the water based lacquer sticking to the oily camatillo which is why I am using shellac. Shellac makes a great binder coat because it sticks to just about anything, and just about anything sticks to it.

I picked up a great little fret leveling tip off of the OLF boards this week from Rick Turner. He uses small little pieces of aluminum angled stock with sand paper on one side to touch up frets under string tension. The angle fits under the strings and between them allowing fine tuning the frets without taking the strings off. Once the buzzes are gone, the frets can then be finished off. It is a great idea and cheap! I picked up some stock and will try it on the SJ once it is finished. I picked up some more go-bars as well as a new spray gun. I wasn't happy with the amount of lacquer I was using while finishing a guitar. After reading the amount other people use on a guitar, I realized that I was using a lot more than normal. I determined that the nozzle size was way too big for what I was using so I picked up a gun with a much smaller nozzle that is the recommended size Target Coatings says. It is also gravity fed which I like a lot better than the siphon feed I used before. Hopefully I will notice an improvement in my spray jobs, and a lot less waste of material.

One of the more difficult things I had to do was to clean up the spot where the ebony and mahogany comes together in the 'V'. It was a lot of very tedious sanding. It isn't perfect but it looks pretty good. The top point was the most difficult part of the whole thing and that is where the irregularities are.

The body with the bridge and fingerboard extension locations masked off.

Oops, I forgot to mention, I also drilled out the tuner holes.

Here you can see the difference in the bindings. I cleaned the one on the left, and the one on the right is how it looked before sanding. They had a purple tint to them.

This is one of the spots I mentioned about the grain runout. I was a little nervous when I saw these. I was able to clean these up with 320 grit paper.

The neck and body ready for the next step in the finishing process.

Here are the two bridges to compare my saddle angle. The top is a pre-made LMI bridge, and the bottom is the one I made. You can see my compensation angle is a touch greater than the pre-made one. I did this on the 000 and was able to get pretty intonation on it. The guitars I have built with pre-made bridges don't have as good intonation which is why I changed the angle.