Veneer - White Glue Method

I am starting to explore using veneers for some of my guitar work.  The following is a brief description of some of the work I have done using veneers.  I have used the following site as a reference.

http://www.oakwoodveneer.com/tips/ironon.html


Veneer comes in packages of very thin sheets, mine were very curled and cracked.   I decided to use a Veneer Softener.  I sprayed the veneer sheet I was going to use.  I soaked it down, not to the point of saturation but I did want to ensure a good 'spread' of the softener.  I knew I would be giving the veneer plenty of chance to dry back out.  After wetting down the veneer I gently wrapped it in paper towels and put it in a cold press for more than 24 hours.  The veneer came out much straighter and some of the cracks had healed but I won't know how good until I apply...

The basic premise as I understand it is that preparation work must done to the veneer then glue is applied to the veneer and the wood that will be veneered. The glue is then allowed to dry while separate.  Once dry you can then placed on top of each other. Using an iron you then apply heat to the veneer through cloth or some type of intermediate heat transfer media in between the veneer and the iron which will reverse the glue and allow it to mix together. Than you put it back into your cold press to dry.

My first test is with TiteBond 3.  I really did not allow much time for the glue to dry, perhaps 30 min so we'll see how it comes out...  I used a foam roller for the application of glue to the wood.  I squirted out some glue, ran the roller over a couple of times to spread the glue out then applied to the surfaces of the wood.  I put enough on that provided the ability to see the glue on the surface but no more.  The first layer soaked into the wood pretty well on both pieces so I did reapply the glue once.

 

Here is a photo of the veneer applied to a thin board.  The board is on top of the sheet that I cut it from.  The two blue oval objects next to it is something my wife worked up in polymer clay.

I imagine veneer doesn't have much tolerance for sanding so I started at 220 and went to 340.  It was enough to move all of the adhered fibers and dirt off.  It was nice and smooth.

I treated the wood with my fingerboard oil (Dr. Fret).  The result I think is excellent.  The edges I think will be the most difficult part.  

I did want to try some stains, so I prepped the veneer with a pre-stain.

 

Ibanez GAX 70 Project

I had an Ibanez GAX 70 that I never really played.  After sucess with the Stratocaster Conversion I decided to try and tackle this one. 

Originally I was going to redo the fretboard with the vine inlay and leave the body intact.  I actually completed the vine inlay project only to find out that the fretboard scale was a Gibson vs Fender. 

So I purchased an additional fretboard slotted to that scale length and started over.  I went to Andy DePaul's website and selected the Lotus, I decided to do the white mother of pearl because initially I was going to keep the body black. 

The first step to inlay is making sure you have your pieces correctly setup.  I have almost inlayed some pieces out of order but caught it before I routed the wood.  So now I always line my pieces up and keep them in the order they will be applied.  This helps with not losing any (yes I have lost pieces and have had to buy individual replacements) and keeping you on track.

The next step is preparation of the fretboard.  I knew that with this design, ensuring the inlay was dead center was going to be paramount.  I marked the center of each of the frets I was going to inlay.  This would help me when placing the pieces so I at least knew where center was.

As I normally do, I paint the area with white out, then while still wet I put the inlay piece on top so that the white out will hold the piece in place when it is dried.  I do this because I have had problems in the past with contact cement and other adhesive where I break the inlay getting it back off.  This seems to hold it in place firmly enough so I can do the scribing but is fairly easy to remove. 

  

Once I scribe the general outline I then follow up with a mallet and chisel so that I have a stop line when routing.  This helps considerably in preventing a 'run' with the router.  I usually do the general outline with a 3/32 bit then go in after the crude shape is cut and then use a 1/32 bit to fine tune it.  Then I use a chip knife and chisel for the final fit. 

Just a word about the final fitting, this is really the most crucial part.  You can try to just fit the entire piece in and trim back where there is overlap but in the past I have gotten a 'drift' of the rout as one side fits and the other doesn't so you trim that side.  You can end up 'chasing yourself' and end up with more of a 'pool' effect where the inlay doesn't fit snugly.  Now I usually choose to fit from the bottom or top first.  In this case the bottom was larger and flatter so I tried to fit the bottom in first.  Once I had a snug fit I could then trim the top to fit.  This prevented the bottom from floating as much.  I did run into a little chip out close to some of the fret slots and will have to fill these later with epoxy.

Glueing in the inlay is also tricky.  I use epoxy and hardener from Stew Mac and then mix in ebony dust I have from routing.  I create a fairly thick mixture, more of a paste.  I then put the paste into the rout and press the inlay piece in.  If your rout is somewhat of a pool, you have to be careful that piece doesn't slide once covered.  I have a caul to fit over the fretboard when I am ready to press and dry.  Also if your pieces had broken during the fitting phase, you will have to reassemble them and ensure that they have a clean fit again.  I then cover with wax paper, put the caul with the reverse radius over it and clamp and let dry.

Once I let it dry for 24 hours I am ready for sanding.  You can see some air pockets are the inlay which will need to be filled.  Usually glueing ends up being a two part process.  First is to affix the inlay in the route, the second is to even out the drying of the glue.  As the expoxy hardens it does contract and if there are air bubbles you will get pockets.

I usually will use flat 80-100 grit just to remove a percentage of the glue. In this case I really didn't need to. I started in with the 180 grit on a 9.5 radius sanding block. This picture shows it sanded down to the point just before I will change to 220 grit for the final sanding. You will also notice some of the fret slots will need to be re-cut but not all of them.  The most important part with sanding is paying attention that you don't apply a lopsided radius.  It is easy to do.  I usually stand so that the finger board is horizontal to by body.  I will then rock my body and arms from the left to the right which minimize the turn you apply when you use your arms only.  This is slow work and you have to pay attention to inlay and how far you have sanded it.  Most inlay's are only a few mm in thickness.

Here is the fretboard, sanded and frets re-cut.  It is ready for it's first coat of oil.  These boards are usually very dry by the time I get them and since I live in a very arid part of the county they get bone dry.  At this stage I will normally oil it up once to let the wood recover before I put the frets in.  At this point you can evaluate the inlay.  In this case I did fairly well but 2 of the inlays were just slightly off.  It will be interesting to see if it becomes more obvious once the frets and strings provide a basic grid...  My goal is never perfection, if I wanted that then CNC would be the obvious choice, so a little bit of patience with yourself goes a long way.

Here is the fretboard after its first drink.  You can see the natural color of ebony coming out and the grains are more pronounced.  This will all settle down after a couple of days.  I usually won't do any sanding after oil application.  The next step will be the installation of the frets.

Now we can turn our attention to the headstock.

I am not sure what the headstock was made of.  I believe it to be an ebony veneer but am not sure.  The lotus design had two pieces to it designed to make one whole flower, I decided to split them apart.  You should be able to see the center line running through the center of the headstock.

 The procedure remains the same, whiteout, attach the pieces, scribe around the pieces, provide a stop cut with the chisel and then rout out the main part of the design with the 3/32 then trim with the 1/32 inch bit except this time it was done by my son :-)

For most of my routing I use the Dremel Drill with Router Base.  It seems to meet the need nicely.

Here is the headstock inlayed, sanded down to 400 grit and oiled.  I will apply whatever finish I do to the body.  I haven't decided that yet, although I do have some Spray Nitro that I have ben wanting to try.  It just hasn't been that warm yet.  While the work was being done on the neck I began prepping the body.  I soaked it in paint stripper for a couple of days then scraped the paint of which came off quite easily.  Underneath the paint is what I call the "zoot suit".  I have not found a stripper or toxic chemical yet that will remove the "zoot suit".  This is when the random orbital sander comes in handy, but the sides and horns need to be done by hand which is tedious at best.  Make sure you are wearing a good breathing filtration device, you don't want to inhale this stuff.

This is an important picture.  It is the first glimpse of the vision.  The wood is .  It was a butcher block three piece which is fairly standard on cheap guitars.  One of the boards looked exactly like mahogany.  One looked a little like ash and the other was just ugly (IMHO).  I had in mind an opaque color for the body to match the fretboard and headstock.  I thought of putting a 'racing stripe' of elm burl veneer down the middle and up the black.  I tested the veneer process and painted three swatches on them.  Ebony, natural and Cherry.  Everyone like the cherry but me.  I liked the natural and ebony.

I researched several different ways to "ebonize" the body.  I wanted a very deep opaque black.  I had  the materials for 3 Ways.  One was a Color Tone Stain, another was oil stain that they use for leather and a mini-wax ebony stain that I had used on the Stratocaster.  I pre-treated the wood with a pre-stain and let that dry for about 30 min.  I was decided on the oil stain and was read to go for it when I just had a desire to do it Cherry and see how it would turn out, if it didn't work out I could always 'ebonize' it.  So I put one coat of the cherry on pretty thickly,  waited 10 minutes and wiped it dry.  Let it dry for 4 hours and then I applied a second coat pretty thickly also.  Let that dry for another 10-15 minutes and wiped that off.

Here is the shot from the rear.  Really not a bad lookin guitar...  I am thinking of doing a quick wipe with the ebony mini-wax and see what turns up, I can always try my black spray paint :-)

Well ended up not opting for the black spray paint but finished with a Watco Danish Oil Finish and a nitro finish on top of that.  For the Danish Oil I 'soak' the guitar in the oil, let it dry for about 10-15min then wipe it down.  The next time I repeat with wet sanding 400 grit.  This creates a slurry which fills the pores and any uneveness.  I let it dry for 10-15 min.  Then I wipe it down.  Then let dry overnight.  I will repeat this until I get to about 1000 grit and the guitar is very smooth to touch.  I let dry for at least 48 hours. 

This provides an excellant base for the nitrocellulose finish.  I am trying out the spray can version since I don't currently have an airbrush.  I did the last guitar with a hair brush so I figured one step at a time...  I improvised a spray booth in my garden shed.  I warmed the spray can to about 80 degrees by sitting it in a hot water bath.  I have never spray painted so it took a little getting used to.  I got some beading and a couple of small runs which seemed to resolve a little with second and third coats.  I spaced the coats out by 2 hours and then will let it dry overnight.  Tomorrow night I will sand and apply more coats.

In the meantime I was working on attaching the fingerboard to the neck.  Having never worked wtih this scale neck before it was a little different.  Where the stratocaster finger boards have space for a nut, the Ibanez did not.  Trying to glue the nut square to the fingerboard was a little tricky and I did have a little uneveness where the 6th string would go over the nut.  I then drilled three guide holes for the fingerboard, applied glue and clamped together.  Unfortuntately I did not think ahead and I was already gluing something so the number of clamps became an issue.  I also forgot I have a fingerboard caul...  So I ended up using only three clamps.  It came out ok, but with some gaps between the finger board and the neck.

I decided to move forward anyway and trip the fretboard to the neck.  Normally I do this with a hammer and chisel.  I forgot I had purchased a scroll saw which would have made quick and efficient work of the overhang...  Once I roughed it in with the chisel I sanded it down to approximate width.

I also noticed some rattling (never a good thing) from in the neck.  I decided due to the poor glue job and the rattling I was going to have to re-glue the fingerboard,which meant taking off the fingerboard I just glued on.  Using an iron and a spatula I separated the fingerboard from the neck and found the problem.  The top of the truss rod had come free from the threads.  I don't know if it's repairable or not, will have to look at it more closely in the morning.

Stratocaster Project Part II

Please see part I for a detailed description of what I have done so far.  This is part two.  Part I composed of stripping the guitar down to the wood and doing an inlay on the body.  Part II will be making a custom neck with inlay, Part III will be painting the body and Part IV will be the electronics and putting it all together.

The plan for Part II will to purchase an ebony fingerboard and do the inlay.  Then separate the rosewood fingerboard from the existing neck and glue the new ebony finger board to the existing neck. Obviously the first step was to decide on the inlay for the fretboard.  This was not an easy decision.  I had to way my minimal (but steadily increasing) skillset with what I "really" wanted.  I feel for this project I have decided on a good compromise.

I have decided on the open hexagon.  This design was actually part of a Martin Limited Edition.  Since the guitar body will be black and the fingerboard ebony (I am considering painting the actual neck black also) I wanted to stay with white Mother of Pearl (MOP).  I thought the design simple but elegant.  The routing should not be an issue which will leave me to focus on all the other things that need to happen.  I ordered the fingerboard yesterday from Stewart - MacDonald and should receive by the end of the week. 

They come preslotted, radiused and cut.  I can then do the inlay and sand them down.  On the existing neck, I will have to steam and pry the old fingerboard off of the neck which I have never done before.  Once the old fingerboard is removed I can then glue the new one on.  I will then sand down the neck.  I want to try sanding the back of the neck to an elliptical shape to custom fit my hand.  Then the plan is to either paint or finish the neck and then attach to the body once I have painted it.  As I go through the steps of the neck I will post them here...

Sunday October 18th

OK, this is going to be a process.  I ordered the material from Stewart McDonald.

I ordered some painting supplies which came with a book "Guitar Finishing".  The ebony fretboard looks nice, it has a lot of light brown streaks to it.  I also received some black dye in case I decide to dye the fretboard.  I also bought some unrelated items, chisels, potentiators etc...

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 As with any inlay project, time to get a visual on the end result.  I laid out the inlay on the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 12th, 15th, 17th, 21st and 13rd frets for a total of 10 pieces. 

 

I decided on centered hexagons for the inlay design.  I then numbered the frets that I was using.  I then measured the Width and Height of each fret to be used to center the inlay on the fretboard.  

I then convered the area where the inlay was to go with white out.  I then take the measurements and draw a vertical and horizontal line in the white out.  This let's me see the exact center of the fret area.  I then glue the inlay down and let it dry.  I then take my scribe and scribe around the glued inlay piece.  This is probably the most important part of the process, getting an accurate inlay outline on the wood.

Here is a photo of the Inlay glued to the fretboard.  Notice the cross in the middle of the hexagons that lets me know where my center is.  The project would be a failure if the inlay was not lined up correctly.

Here is a close up of the hexagon routed out about 90%.  I leave the perpendicular corners to a chisel although splint out is common in ebony.  

I use a dremel tool with the braces and it works very well.  I usually use a 1-3/32 router bit depending.  Frequent fitting of the Inlay caused me to break about 4 pieces.  Although I consider the Inlay of high quality it is extremely fragile.  But for a good tight fit you need to frequently check.

As always I then glue the inlay in the fretboard usually overnight.  The next day I will sand up to about 220-280 depending on the pores in the grain.  Finer for larger pore and coarser for small pore.

Cats Paw Project

This project started because I wanted to do an Inlay where I manually did every step. I purchased some White Mother of Pearl blanks from Stewart McDonald along with a jewlers saw. As every project starts, I started with a cat's paw design, printed it out, then cut it out and glued it to the blank. I just use TiteBond White Glue and everything comes off very easily with a little sanding. Then using the jewlers saw I cut each of the shapes out. I was not exact with the blade but was able to sand them to the approximate shapes I needed with my Dremel. I then wrote on them in pencil (RP, R1, R2 etc) so that I knew which piece was which. I then super glued each of the pieces to the board. Once they were secure I then took my scribe and outlined the shapes.

I then pried the pieces of using a chisel. Then using my Dremel I routed out the appropriate areas. There is a relationship you will start to learn between how close you route to your scribe lines. Mine is just starting to develop after probably a couple of dozen routing projects. For this project I routed only half of the depth of the MOP. I used the 1/32 blade for the entire project, although I could have switched between a larger one for the paws and back to the smaller for the toes. Once I was done and could almost fit the pieces in I increased the depth to a little over the thickness of the MOP.

Then I took my sanding bit and sanded the sides in the block of wood until the piece slips in with a little pressure. This also has a distinct feel to it that I am starting to learn. Once your at that stage, I mix my epoxy, ebony shavings up and apply liberally, then push all the pieces in and clamp.

After clamping and drying this is what it looks like in the morning :-)

After sanding with 80-100 grit sandpaper.  This is where I still have a hard time.  As you can see several of the parts of inlay look black or like they are starting to wear off.  In reality it is the epoxy with the ebony mixed into it that is obscuring the inlay.  I always get nervous at this point wondering if I should sand some more or did I sand too much?  However with this one I know my routes were fairly deep and I probably have quite a bit to go before I sanded it off.  But be careful, 80-100 will take off quite a bit of wood if aren't careful.  I will switch off to 150 grit very shortly.

Here it is after sanding with 150 grit for awhile.  Notice I still have some black ebony around the outer toes and the left heel.  I think these actually went in just a little crooked so it is either the high side and it is being sanded off or the low side and still needs to be sanded :-)  So I sand a little more but selectively over these spots.  I am just about to switch to 220 once I can get those areas relatively clear.

Here it is after sanding with 220 for a while.  I also added a little Danish Oil to it which really brings out the color of the ebony.  The ebony has ended up being a very good wood to work with.  You can notice some disfigurement on the top toes, this is due more to the sanding with the dremel.  I was not getting an even sanding motion on the sides after cutting.  So as I sanded down, some of this can be seen.  I can probably fix this in the future so that I sand the shell down to 220 - 360 to really smooth it out.

Just a finaly shot showing off some of the color of the shell.  All in all a sucessful project.  I really enjoyed having control over all the elements and doing everything by hand.  I learned quite a bit to be used in the next seesion.

Flower

I have been thinking about it for a little while now. I finally purchased a jewlers saw and some mother of pearl blanks. I got white and grey to contrast with one another. I decided to create an inlay piece from scratch. I chose this pattern out of an inlay book I purchased.

I thought since it was my first attempt I wouldn't be quite that ambitious, but took the first flower for the design.  The first step is to break down the pattern into geometric shapes.

Here are the leaves at the base of the plant.  I will do these in white mother of pearl.

Here are the leaves to the left of the plant that I plan on doing in grey mother of pearl.

Here is the grey mother or pearl against the backdrop.  I decided to use Mahongy for this and wanted the grain going left to right to give the impression of a horizon behind it.  This presented a small challenge in carving since it is easier to go with the grain.  I also decided that the 'stalk' of the plant would be Maple.  I like the idea of contrasting woods, and I wanted the grain in the stalk to go perpendicular to the horizon.

Once I had cut the shapes out of the shell using my saw (I will do a separate blog on cutting shell), I arranged the pieces on the Mahogany to visualize it.

As with all inlay projects, I spread some white out on the wood, glued the pieces down and scribed around it.  I then removed the pieces by gently prying a chisel under the pieces.  I then ran the outline with a sharp knife to deepen the grooves.

Here is the piece routed out.  I decided to put a sun in the background.  My wife does polymer clay so thought we would experiment a little.

I ended up sanding a little too much on the right side and part of the sun and one whole leaf was sanded off - oops.