Maple Guitar Project (Stratocaster)

This guitar actually started it's life as a Fender Squire.  I found it in a Guitar Center, and it had a ding in the front about 2-3 mm in diameter.  I struck a deal with the salesman and brought it home and immediately dismantled it.   Here is the original body before stripping it down.

 

In order to do this I had to route out some wood to accomodate the veneer.  I carefully measured the strip so that it would 'follow the necks trajectory".   I used a  chisel to put in a stop line for the router and then very carefully routed the wood.  I then went in with a block of wood and sandpaper to clean it up.  I did the same on the front.
 

 

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I ended up doing initial 'little circles' and figure eights, then using the 'brushing technique' explained in the Millburn Guitars Web Tutorial.  Then I would go back to the little circles then the brushing.  I could usually do this with recharging the muncea once.  I would do 4-6 layers then level.  Leveling is simply taking a felt block and wrapping it with wet/dry sandpaper and sanding the surface level, taking care not to hit the wood.  I had a fair amount of shellac down before I leveled.  I would say at least a good 20 layers.  The goal of leveling is to have the entire surface look dull which means that the sandpaper was able to hit the surface at a consistent level.  If there are depressions than they will remain shiny.  You have two main choices, continue bodying and eventually after several levels you will obtain a flat surface (which is what I did), or you could sand until you the areas are no longer shiny.  This in my opinion is a fairly risky solution.

Also don't forget about the sides.  When I would do a surface say the front, I would do both sides down to the bottom but not the heel so I could stand it up.  When I did the back I would again do the sides but do the bottom and stand it on it's top.  That way the sides got a very liberal application of shellac.  this guitar has absolutely beautiful grain on the sides to begin with.  In this picture I think I had level for the first time.  You can see the shellac build up and a shine starting.  The shine took a while to develop.  Definately starts as a matte finish and then with each leveling and reapplication the shine seemed to pick up a notch.

Heres another shot of the end grain.  This had been leveled 2 times.

When I got to the 4th leveling, I only had a couple of shiny spots, one near where the veneer meets the body, so I doubted I would be able to make that meet and it was only noticeable on leveling.  Probably should have fixed that during the sanding process...  But barring that, it was pretty consistent in it's dullness across the body.  At this point I could have moved on to glazing.  That is the same as bodying but you use the brushing technique 80% of the time and only use circles to fix up areas.  Since I thought I had a fairly consistent surface I decided to move to the automotive polishes.  I have a medium, fine and swirl remover.  I had just purchased an air driven polisher so was excited to give that a try.  Above is the result using the medium and fine.  I think there can be a fair amount of hand rubbing to get it to where I will then use the swirl remover.  The hand rubbing does seem to put more of a sheen to it but the polisher was definably a god send for the brute force.

Here is a picture of the back.  You can notce a fairly detailed sheen starting to develop by the outline of the lamp.  I am going after a high gloss but want to stop short of the mirror effect.  I would say I am about 70-80% there...  You will also notice that I used honey amber flakes which definitely added a nice rich amber color but not so dark that it obscures any of the grain.  It is a little more red than I intended which could have been the cherry stain...

I got to the point where I thought I had enough base coat to finalize polishing.  I had no idea how long I needed to polish.  I ended up polishing through the base coat in an area about the size of a dime.  It slowly increased to about the size of a quarter and I knew I needed to start over.  

I had a test board I did some polishing on and I think that the polishing needs to be brief.  It is not sanding.  It is knocking the very fine ridges down.  So when polishing with medium grit the goal is to go from fine lines going up and down to fine swirls.  Then fine is to bring it down to almost clear.  Again, very brief polishing is needed.  Then swirl remover.  I ended up doing the swirl remover mostly by hand.  On the test board I followed up with some paste wax just to provide an extra protective cover.

In summary, I thought the advantages of using a french polish to be:

1. Ecologically Friendly (If you used grain alcohol you could sip the polish :-)
2. Fairly easy to work with (epecially liked the quick drying aspect)
3. Fairly easy to repair.  Was able to fix issue with elbow grease instead of abrasives
4. High shine and nice amber color (though you can choose darker tints).
5. Inexpensive.  I bought about $50 worth, and I would say could easily do 3-4 guitars.

Disadvantages

1. It is a fairly slow process.  You also need to provide significant (2 days) gass off periods for drying.
2. It is not as hard as some other finishes.  I am thinking that this would be fairly vulnerable to fluids and alcohol.

Gecko Fretboard Project

This project was 'one of those' if you get my drift.  It started in a funny way, I purchased a rosewood fretboard from Stew Mac.  When I got it, the fingerboard looked dull and lifeless in color.  There was also a crack at the top of the fretboard.  I called Stew Mac and they said they would said a new board out and keep the old one for scrap.  Oh, Ok.  I must admit, I purchase quite a bit from them, and have had three issues.  All three times I had a replacement free of charge in 3 days.  Anyways this wasn't an advertisement for them.

The fretboard I did recive was actually spectacular in color.  Deep rich oranges and some yellow in a gorgeous swirl pattern.  I instantly new I wanted to work with Paua Abalone.  So I went to Andy DePaules site and started narrowing down my choices ;-)  I thought the oranges and yellows seemed tropical to me so I decided on the geckos.

I knew that doing a design on rosewood would be tricky from the start, but using such a contrasting color would be interesting.  Following my norm I began laying out the pieces.  I had originally thought of them as one per fret but actually decided that I would place them 'randomly' on the fretboard. some crossing fret lines.

As is also my norm, I apply liberal amounts of white out to the fret board and place the inlay on top.  After the white out dries, the inlay sticks enough for me to scribe the outline.  I then use a chisel and outline a stop gap.  Then using my router with a precision base I rout out the area.  I went a little deep on this one, which meant a lot of sanding dried epoxy latere which took a while.  Also a slightly thinner playing surface.