Andyjr1515

Thanks! It's a bit of an evolution from a number of the builds I've done over the years. It's actually identical to Jane's Swift Lite: I like it because it lets the strings be perfectly straight through the nut but isn't quite as cut off as, say, a Seagull acoustic (which is very triangular and a bit 'cut short')

OK - last shots before the potential of me wrecking it and it becoming BBQ fuel. This is one of the more - er - exciting bits of building acoustics. The fact that pretty much the most critical and difficult bit comes at the very end! Fitting the bridge. Here we are before I potentially wreck it: The neck is fitted - and I'm pleased with the fit. The tuners are some leftovers of a gold/black mixed set I used for one of my electric builds - that one was black knobs on gold bodies, so the leftovers are gold knobs on black bodies. The neck profile will be tweaked once the strings are on it - because then I can shape and play and reshape the neck to get it just right for my playing style. Then it's just the fret-levelling and final setup. But first I have to fit the bridge. And it has to be right. The only thing you have to play with is the saddle insert height and the 1/2mm or so either side of centre of the saddle top for intonation. So that bridge HAS to be glued in the right place. If it isn't, the guitar will be, at best, lack-lustre and, at worst, pretty much unplayable. This weekend is a bit higgledy piggledy for family reasons, but in any bits of spare time I will be re-looking on the various websites about the best way of positioning and fixing, finding my bridge clamp and then checking, re-checking, re-re-checking EVERYTHING before attempting the scrape (the area that the bridge will be glued to needs to have the varnish scraped off first) and finally the fix. It's only a guitar, but this is the bit of the whole thing that most scares the c**p out of me!

Have a great day, all

Yup - will do Have a great day tomorrow! Very sorry to be missing it.

With my varnish method - which is a bit of a compromise due to lack of facilities, knowledge and skills - I get to the point where I have to say 'OK - Stop there...that's close enough'. The reason is that, too often, if I 'just give it one last coat' it invariably makes things a lot worse rather than making what is basically OK into something a bit closer to perfect. And for this - especially as it is a bitsa build for my own use - I've got to the 'OK - Stop there...that's close enough!' Having no spray facilities or equipment, I basically wipe or brush the finishes. Anyway, here is the body prior to fully hardening and final polishing: It doesn't bear very close examination but, for the overall look, it looks OK at the cursory level. The next bit is probably only of interest to those who commented about their own trails and tribulations of finishing I promised I would run through some of the finishing trials and tribulations. I'll split that into 4 aspects: top vs back&sides; prep vs finish coat. AS ALWAYS, THIS IS JUST HOW I DO IT, NOT HOW IT SHOULD BE DONE! Preparation (post finish-sanding): Back and sides: I use tru-oil slurry and wipe to seal and grain-fill all in one go. Works a treat, even filling the horrendous tear-out I had at the back. Couple of sessions morning, left to dry between each, then sand the following day and it's usually ready to take the gloss. Top: Tru-oil would do the job used just like for the back and sides above, but for spruce and maple it does tend to give a reddish hue and so, certainly for an acoustic top, I don't use that method. Last acoustic, I used an old classical guitar method of egg white. Yes - standard egg white, brushed on, left to dry, sanded off. Maybe repeat, but basically then ready to varnish. Didn't do that this time...and wish I had. What I did try was Chestnut Melamine. Very stinky. Tough and no discolouration beyond the darkening of the dampened spruce. But I couldn't sand it down without it becoming a little patchy (probably not enough coats) so basically sanded it off the surface and used that which has soaked in just as a sanding sealer. NEXT TIME - I'm going to use egg white again. In retrospect, it did the job perfectly well. Finish Varnish: Here, my big restriction is that I do not have the facilities to spray and therefore I am restricted to wipe-on or brush-on finish techniques. Those of you who have followed previous threads will know that my preferred finish for a full-gloss is good old Ronseal Hardglaze Polyurethane Varnish. I used to do this exclusively wipe-on but since Ronseal did a formulation change to lower the volatiles, I've found that thinning the varnish anywhere near what I would do for wipe-on gives major problems and that less thinning and using an artist's fan brush is the best alternative: Method is simple: I thin the varnish down with about 5% white spirits (this is WAY different to my wipe-on with the original Ronseal formula which could take up to 50% thinning!) I brush it on - not stopping and ensuring each strip is merged into the previous one (that will already be stiffening), laying off gently with the brush at each strip to even out any ripples or air bubbles After drying, I use micro-web (1800 to 4000 ish) used wet and then recoat once totally dry and cleaned with a good quality tack cloth (I use a microfibre cloth designed for cleaning windows) Now - the trouble is with the new Ronseal formulation is that for subsequent coats, the varnish has more adhesion to itself than it does to the previous dried coat of varnish. This means that it parts, like the Red Sea parted for Moses, leaving what looks like deep brush marks! (I have a photo somewhere I'll try to find). The answer is, of course, to sand and give it a key. But then the 'final' coat shows the dull patches of the sanded substrate (even with 2000+ grit). So you do another coat without sanding. Then it creeps again. Etc Etc Etc And then every now and again, it is almost OK. And that's where I STOP. Which is where I started this post I keep meaning to contact Ronseal - they MUST have other people that have the same issue! And it is 2018. To echo @honza992 's earlier comment - can it really be THAT difficult to make gloss varnish that can be applied successfully and works? But why, I hear you ask, does Andyjr1515 use old fashioned Ronseal polyurethane gloss rather than a modern water-based varnish anyway? Well - this is Ronseal Hardglaze: And this is the exact same wood, prepared in the exact same way...but finished with one of the better water-based gloss varnishes, Osmo Polyx Gloss: It's nice enough - but it ain't the same!

For the neck, apply a coat of tru oil and let it fully dry to seal it. Then use 400 wet n dry with tru oil as the wet to lightly slurry an oil/sanding dust mix. Wipe off when still wet. Let it dry. Repeat the truoil slurry but this time wipe it off and then, preferably with a different cloth, buff up vigorously. Let dry overnight. You should have a satin, silky smooth finish that still feels like wood but keeps the dirt and sweat out. If sometime in the future you want to spruce it up, just repeat that very last step. I use this for ALL of my necks - even the stained ones

You could put small side dots on the line like an unlined bass rather than the in between position like the top dots?

Oh... that's a bummer! Mind you, good save from the look of it I can't remember what the issue was, but I do remember the result of a similar oversight - which resulted in defretting AND having to take the fretboard off too. It made me feel sick when I realised the error I'd made - the trauma of which has wiped the memory of actually what I'd done wrong

Haven't forgotten about the finishing debrief, but just a quick update of ongoing progress. The finish has maybe 2 coats more to do. There's a lot of waiting around, though, when the varnish is dry enough to touch and handle but not dry enough to take the next coat. So in that time I've started on some of the other jobs. The bridge goes on last (you have to scrape away the finish that you've just spent weeks putting on!) but needs to be shaped to match the spheroidal shape of the top. This is where the old 'engineers blue' approach comes in - except you use blackboard chalk. I put a wide strip of easy peel masking tape where the bridge will go and gave it a liberal coating of chalk. Then placed the bridge on top and moved it around a couple of mm. Hey presto - the high spots: Then all you do is scrape where the chalk is and repeat (multiple times). Here it is after the first scraping: So same m.o. - now scrape these areas away. After about 8 iterations, I am getting there: So I know now that most of the area is making good contact. Just a final bit of tidying up and it will be ready to fit as soon as the final coats of finish have been applied. The colour won't change much now - it will just get glossier. Here's where we are at in overall look so far: So - all being well - a few more days of finish coats and drying and then I can move towards final steps

Yes - I agree. They work a treat, too.

That looks a very good coverage for a first coat of such a strong colour! If I tried to do that, I would have runs all over the place!

Both of these look outstandingly good. I generally struggle with the look of headless designs but this looks just right. Beautiful basses, both of them. The finish on the headless has brought out the beauty of the wood nicely. I'll be interested how the EMG system performs. It is very neat as a preamp system if it does, indeed, sound OK.

I'll bet you all thought I'd gone to that great gig venue in the sky!! I'm in the middle of the finishing process for the body so there's not a huge amount to see at the moment. I still try various things in terms of acoustic guitar finishes - some work and some don't. When this is done, I'll run through what I have used and also the other things I've used in the past. This is how it's looking at the moment with probably 3-4 coats more to do: It's only when the finish is done and set that the neck and bridge can be fitted...all a bit back to front in many ways, but I reckon the whole thing will be finished by the end of next week

Somehow missed this! It's looking good

I agree with @SpondonBassed (there's a first time for everything!) - it all makes sense now. That is a great look

Back to blocks - I had a gig practice with Pete last night and noticed the MoP blocks on the SG-ish I built for him a few years ago: Well - I've never noticed it before, but the block on the first fret is quite a different colour to the rest: You don't really see it in this photo but in normal daylight it is quite blue, whereas the rest are whiter. And now I look at it in the photo - look at the three swifts! The larger one is different to the other two - all cut from the same 40mmx40mm piece of shell. Pete's never noticed and wouldn't worry if he did. And I never noticed until last night - and I've seen this guitar up close at least 200 times, let alone when I was building it!!!

Sounds like a result

I think they suit some people. I personally don't feel the need. I always carve necks for guitars and basses intended for my own use to a soft-ish 'V'. That gives me a feeling of a very slim neck when moving up and down the board, but a comfortable thickness when using barre chords and the like.

Lest I forget it (not that you could ever forget such a shape), the Mouradian-esque built for @gelfin

Started the neck carve. It will probably take the rest of the day off and on but the bulk is removed: Other than checking the neck thickness with some calipers, I'm carving this one pretty much entirely by feel - sitting in a chair, holding it like a back-to-front cello and using a variety of tools including spokeshave, cabinet scrapers and microplanes. I often tweak the shape in the same way once the guitar is fully finished and strung up, just using a cabinet scraper and finishing off with sandpaper, followed by a quick reapplication of tru-oil slurry and buff.

Option 2 Mother of Pearl is a natural product and natural products vary...otherwise they don't look natural. Those blocks look perfect

Spent a bit of time double checking lengths and positions of the fretboard, and also fitted the trussrod ready for fixing the fretboard to the neck. One job needed was to cut the fretboard to length. The pickup system I am installing is the Shadow Doubleplay As well as a piezo under the saddle, it has a mini magnetic pickup that fits at the end of the fretboard. It is the same system I fitted to Chris's build in 2015 shown here: As you can see, the fretboard has to be cut to the correct length to fit the magnetic p/up at the end. That cut, it was time to glue the fretboard! And yes, @TheGreek - you can NEVER have too many clamps!

Back home after another 16 hours driving (the things we do...!) and back to a bit of normality for a couple of weeks. On the critical path is gluing the fretboard - but I can't do that until the neck is absolutely spot on in all planes. So out came a huge array of hand tools to try to create a 1.4 degree angle on the heel in one plane to straighten the neck without affecting the other plane, affecting the neck angle and string action height. Eventually got there. It lines up: And - using a long thin strip of abrasive cloth the floss the joint, I have a secure and even contact between the heel and the body, confirmed by transfer of chalk (seen in the above picture) from one to the other when the two are assembled. A bit more tweaking and checking, then the trussrod can be fitted and fretboard glued

Bummer about the kitchen. But gosh - that is a beautiful job on that bass!

I like that lots