This
guitar was finished in a 'rough finish'. they did not fill the
mahogany grain (on purpose) so the wood felt textured. The funny thing is after playing it for a while you get a high gloss finish where your picking hand rubs against it, otherwise it is a matte finish. I must say, I always thought the finish was very nice but I am ready for a change.
I had painted some Chinese characters for Sensei (Teacher) on it. I am thinking about trying to do some handcut inlay to represent those characters. It is a S-S-H configuration (my favorite) and just one volume tone series (also my favorite).
I had some fairly large dings and dents on this. Mahogany is not the hardest wood and with no protective finish it did pick up a lot more wear than other guitars. The other issue with the open grain was it is easier to flake off.
It has a rear control access (which I also love), keeping the front mostly wood. It had a floating tremolo which I normally don't use so I will be probably putting in a fixed bridge. Notice the four neck bolts aren't symmetrical.
I find that when I first went through I went to fast and spent a lot of time trying to repair things with 220/340 which #1 doesn't work and #2 is just plain painful. So I did have to go back to the 80 and 120 to repair a couple of spots. But I think in the end I had the best sanding job I have done to date. I did a leave a gouge in the back though. Now I think I should have sanded it out but at the time I was nervous about taking off too much wood on the back. As you will see though, it did fill and blend in to an extent later on.It was a lot easier stripping this guitar down then others with a high gloss finish on it. Here is a picture of it stripped down next the GAX guitar I am doing.
I am starting at 80 grit. I probably could have gone 60, no problem. I spent a lot of time with 80 grit and 120 grit. What I learned is even with this grit you need to double check for scratches, especially ones that go against the grain. It is difficult to get an 80 grit scratch out later on. You can't avoid them at that grit, but at least ensure the last sanding at 80 is done with the grain. This is a butcher block body with a couple of nice boards. The color of the third and fourth are a darker tone. It is open grain with some nice subtle coloring. I am thinking just a little red amber tint to the french polish. I will have to grain fill and seal on this one. Having learned a lot from the flame maple test board I was ready to be very precise in my sanding and wood preparation requirement. In other words I wanted to put a lot of attention to these areas as I have found them quite troublesome later on...
From 80 Grit I plan to go 180, 320 and maybe 400. At around the 180 stage I will start the grain filling process. I plan on doing that process twice. Then sealing it. I am unsure if I will dye it or not. I have some pecan stain that might look good. I think I have a spare piece of mahogany I can test it on.
The finish is not too bad to remove and it did not stain the wood too deep. I used the ROS at 80 Grit and it took it done pretty well. The horns are difficult (as always) but I have an old belt sander loop at 80 Grit that I cut into stips. I have some felt and I was able to create a semi-firm sanding tool that worked fairly well. For wood removal I went from side to side (horn to neck), but for the final sanding I go top to bottom. I think it leaves a better transition. Historically I have been doing a terrible job on the horns so I really concentrated on this one. Ibanez does the offset screw holes for the neck. I prefer the rounded neck to the standard square.
Well plans change. I initially was going to use a water based grain filler with a little dye thrown in. I read a lot of articles on Internet and decided on using shellac for the grain filler.
Here's a link to the original great article. In summary, you basically sand to about 180 grit than using shellac you put on several thick coats. All you are really wanting to do here is fill the grain pores. Filling with Shellac is supposed to give you a more 3-D look to the pores since it is somewhat translucent, rather than opaque. I found this very appealing since I had everything I need and was familar with shellac.
Here is a picture after the first coat. The wood really soaked it in which meant the pores were filling up (I think...) The sides and the horns came out pretty well this time, but I spent a lot of time on them. I had to be sure not to leave any large scratches.
When I get 4-6 Coats on I will than sand down to wood. It should have shellac freckles all over which indicates the filled pores. I then put shellac back on and level as normal. The wood in this guitar is very nice, and fairly uniform. There are distinct lines where it was butchered blocked but some very nice coloring. One of the boards has a pinkish redish run in it, very beautiful. I am complete with my coats and am ready to sand tomorrow night. I am currently working on deciding the inlay for the fretboard. I am considering doing my own cutting but am trying to talk myself out of it :-)
Here is the guitar body with the 4-6 coats of shellac on it. The surface, although you can't really see it, is very bumpy, pimply almost.
Here it is from the back. I did hesitate to take sand paper to it.
I used 150 grit hoping it wasn't too much. After sanding it down you can notice little red spots. That is where the varnish stuck in the pores after sanding. In retrospect I still would have used 150 Grit but probably for a shorter and more focused sanding.
The area below the bridge had abundant, large pores. I think this area will really look spectacular once finished.
I had to pay particular attention to the transition areas at the bottom and sides. The horns required a lot of extra attention also. I did get some good scratches and will have to go to 220 to try and remove them all while judging how deep the shellac really got in the pores. I then work up to 220 grit and 340 grit.
I am starting to believe sanding is the key. This is the skill I have to pay particular attention to. I don't particularly enjoy it, but I think it's key. You can't rush through the steps either, they demand the time and attention no matter what the schedule. I have to remind myself each day, I am NOT going to finish my project today, no way. :-) It teaches you patience.
Here I will have to sand a little more. I am not worried as long as it is as level as I can make it. I am using two felt blocks, one medium and one small. If there are some spots of varnish left, the new coats will cover them.
Here is a picture of the gouge that I left in the back. You can see the wood does have a pretty open grain. I like the coloring of this particular body, a lot of reds and pinks.
As always the horns, sides and transition areas all take a lot more attention. It gets difficult sometimes on the sides to know if your done or not since the grain does not travel in one direction. So with the 80 grit it still looked very rough and scratchy, but as I increased the grit it seemed to clarify nicely...
And now begins the French Polishing process. As always, I started with 2# cut, adding more alcohol as necessary. I will apply this fairly wet, but not allowing runs or pools. I will do this about 3 times each front and back. Each time I do one side I do the interior of the horns as well as the sides, so that they actually recieve about twice as much as the front or back which is good.
In between french polishing sessions I will use alcohol to rub it out. The purpose is to smooth out any runs or ridges that remain. I use the airplane landing and taking off stroke. After the three sessions it looks like the above picture. You can see the grain is pretty filled in, not much 3-D but a definite shine starting. The reflection is still refracting, so everything is fuzzy and not well defined in our gloss, but we aren't close to done yet. Notice the blurry spot on the lower left hand area. There are several reasons why you get these. This one was I spilled some alcohol on it :-( But since I had three coats on I figured I was pretty close to having to level anyway.
If I followed the new process exactly, I would now resand down to the wood. I decided since I really had a pretty good fill from the first coat of varnish, and I paid a lot of attention to the sanding, I would just level it.
In my opinion, leveling is a fun process. You take some type of object that provides a flat surface. I use a felt block. I feel especially for guitars it gives a nice solid backing, but has enough give for the curved surfaces of a guitar. I usually use 800 grit unless there are obvious defects I am working on, then I will go as low as 400. The intent is to leave a smooth and flat surface behind.
When you sand, you should ideally be leaving a uniformly dull surface behind. If you have little amber speckles you have irregularities in your surface and will never achieve the super high gloss (mirror like). But this is just a check, as you apply more and more shellac to the depressions and sand the top of the surface, you will eventually achieve a level surface.
You can see I am about 80% the way there. Most of my pores are filled in very nicely, I have a fairly uniform dullness to the top with some irregular surface towards the outer edges. We are are ready for the bodying process.
and this is where it starts to get fun... After an additional coat of shellac and an alcohol rubbing the gloss is starting to reflect more distinctly. Notice the color is starting to deepen. I probably won't be able to do it for this guitar, but I will be buying some amber shellac flakes so I can add a deeper tone if I want. Right now it is a little light but I think by the end we will have just the tone I was looking for...
It's really staring to look good. Time to start to look at what I want for a neck. I would like to do a hand carved mahogany neck for this body, ebony fretboard with some mother of pearl inlay...
I continued the process of leveling and building for several weeks. I could not correct an issue between the neck and middle pickup. It was very dry and dull. I tried several things to correct it, sanding, pumice, stiffing. I even tried floating pure varnish on top of it! Nothing. I follow someones blog on french polishing an acoustic guitar and from our postings I think I determined that I was not applying enough pressure in the french polishing sessions.
Once I started really putting some pressure behind my rubbing I began to see drastic improvements. In order to increase the pressure though, it was almost mandatory that I use oil too. Other wise it ended up looking very dry and sometimes congealed on itself. When I used oil I could really increase the pressure to the point were I was working up a moderate sweat, I could see the shellac turn glass like. Nice! (Thanks Martin).
Here is the guitar ready to sit and dry for about a month. Then I will begin the polishing. While that is drying I will be working on the neck.
October 2nd, 2010
Finally, we can start polishing.
I have trepidation about polishing with polishing cream instead of hand polishing with alcohol only. I am concerned about possible burn through, I have put a lot of effort into this one and to start over would be daunting. I have a Medium, Fine, Extra Fine and then wax. I also have a nice hand held pneumatic polisher. It greatly simplifies the process but definitely increases the risk for burn through.
So starting with the medium, I smeared it evenly on the pad. I then pulled the trigger and gently ran the polisher over the body while pausing to wipe away the residue periodically. The desired result is a hardening and solidification of the coat and it because increasingly reflective. I was able to build a very strong shine but I still had a problem.
The area around the top neck and middle pickup has resurfaced. It looks dry and dull and is spreading with repeating polishing. Damn. I don't want to start over. It is only noticeable from a certain angle oddly enough, but it is noticeable. Not knowing exactly what it is causing it makes it hard to fix it. I decide to finish polishing medium - fine, then try rubbing out with more shellac, alcohol and a lot of oil so I can build up the heat on it like I did last time.
I was able to do that and it looks like I was able to rub it out. I will let it dry though and see where we are tomorrow. I might be able to just polish it and go from there...
Check out the shine on the horn :-)
