It warmed up a little bit today so I decided to work on the guitar masking off the various parts that needed masking, as well as re-doing the edge markers. I figured if I could get the shop warm enough I would go ahead and do some pore filling. First thing up was to take the body outside and look at it under the bright sunlight for scratches. I found and marked a few that I missed and also noticed a very fine crack along the center of the guitar back. I took it back up to the shop and wiped the crack with some naphtha to get a better look at it. While it was wet I pushed on either side of the crack to see if it indeed was a crack or if it was just a scratch mark. Unfortunately it was a crack. Fortunately it is along a grain line and tight. The only way I could see that it was a crack was with it wet and when I put pressure on either side of it. The reflection of the naphtha shows that the two sides could move independently of each other just a tiny bit so it definitely was a crack. I cleaned it all up, let it dry and ran a line of water thin superglue all along the crack and beyond following the grain. I then put a little pressure on each side of the crack to help hold it tightly closed until the glue set up. Once that was done I sanded it and it is invisible now. I guess the lack of humidity right now caused it to crack. Fortunately the crack was under the center strip brace so I didn't need to glue a patch inside and the superglue held tight so it isn't visible, even to me. I really want to get the finish on because it seems that the Granadillo is very affected by humidity changes. Once the finish is on, it should help a little bit with the humidity swing issues I have been having with this wood. I like the looks and sound of the wood, but honestly, I don't think I will use it again. It just seems too 'fragile' when it comes to humidity changes. Being a beginner, I don't need those kinds of headaches. I make enough of my own! Once that was done I thoroughly sanded everything down to 800 grit, and inspected for any scratches. Once I was happy with it, I masked the soundboard, fingerboard, and neck end to get ready for pore filling. By this time I had the shop to just under 70 degrees so I went ahead and filled the body. I am using the Stewmac Colortone clear water based pore filler. I used the same stuff except it was light brown for my dreadnought and I really like how it works. You put it on a small area, let it dry for about 5 minutes, squeegee it off at a 45 degree angle, and then let it fully dry. Once dry, in about a half hour, it can be sanded. It is very easy to use and does a great job. I have considered using the System 3 epoxy but have read a lot of mixed reviews about how hard it is to get mixed correctly. In my opinion, if you have to get a digital scale that goes down to 3 decimal places to get the correct ratio, that is not user friendly. I might go so far to say that it is borderline a defective product. Anyways back to the topic at hand. In between coating, drying, and squeegeeing, I drilled out the white fingerboard edge markers and re-installed black markers. I like the black ones a lot better. They show up much nicer in the maple than the white ones did. I finished the first coat of filler and sanded the body and neck. By eye, the body looks great and it looks like almost all of the pores are filled. The neck looks okay but it needs a second application which I will do tomorrow. The instructions say to let it sit for a few hours between applications. If the weather holds up, I might be able to start the finishing this weekend!
This is the body just before I started pore filling. If you look closely in the expanded picture, you can see the open pores. The pores are much smaller than the mahogany of my dreadnought were but they are still fairly good sized.
This is about how much filler I did at a time. The stuff drys pretty fast and if you do too much, it all drys at once and that makes for a lot more sanding.
Here I am getting ready to drill out the side markers for black. I went from 1/16" dots to 2mm dots. Just a touch bigger which gave me a little room for error while trying to drill the old ones out.
The neck with all the dots drilled out. Although the picture looks like the dots are not lines up, they are. Again it is just something that happens in pictures.
All the dots installed. Much better!
The hole on the right is the one I talked about earlier where the wood chipped. You can see the piece on the top of the hole and the triangular piece below the hole. The top one is covered by the tuner washer but the bottom one goes about 1mm past the washer. Note the pore sizes before filling.
Here is the head after the first pore filling and sanding. It looks pretty good but it needs a second application. You can see a small spot that I missed sanding closest to the nut.
The back after pore filling and sanding. It turned out very good. I will probably give it another coat just to make sure I got everything but in reality it probably doesn't need it.
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