Finish testing!

[CTN]

Picked up some blocks of ash from Home Depot today. They're actually little 6" table legs, but they suit my purposes just fine. Since the tele body I'm getting is ash, I figured I'd get some pieces to test my finishing process on, test the colours, techniques etc that I'd be using to do the body itself. There are at least three tecniques I need to test to see how they come out, and i have an extra piece just cuz.

This way, I hopefully won't screw up the body when it eventually gets here.

What I'm planning is a sort of aquamarine blue burst. No black, just light blue to really dark blue. Sorta like the gradation from shallow caribbean seas to deep, dark, open water. On the back it's going to be a sort of reddish brownish orangeish colour. And a masked natural binding too.

Going to try to do it all using tru oil and pigments.

Right now I am filling the pores on test piece #1 with walnut coloured grain filler, because I wanted to accent it without going all the way to the extreme contrast of black grainfiller.

Then I'm going to mix up a couple of small pots of blue and orange in different strengths mixed with danish oil. It's the closest thing I have to tru oil at the moment and I can't just go run out and get tru oil because apparently it's very hard to get around here and only a couple of canadian websites sell it. I'm using linseed oil based oil paints. It's just pigment and linseed oil as the carrier, so it'll mix well with the danish oil or tru oil since they are both linseed oil based as well. It might lengthen the drying time slightly as the danish oil/tru oil gradually polymerizes the linseed oil in the paints. Discovered this technique from the guy at six gun guitars who posted a vid about on ye olde youtube.

Anyway.

Progress pics to follow later today hopefully.

[Big Flannel]

Bro...

Please keep me informed on your progress. I've wanted to learn how to finish guitars for a loooong time and have never gone further than being discouraged by youtube videos.

[Agileguy]

This is awesome. I can't wait to see how this turns out.

Like Devin, I've always wanted to finish guitars. However, judging by my proficiency with spray painting, that's not going to happen.

IIRC you said you're going to carve the top. How do you plan on doing that?

Oh and +1000000 on masked binding. Half of my guitars have it and I just love it. I'm not sure which I prefer though, the PRS style of doing it only on the side of the guitar and leaving the top completely colored or XSSIVE's style of doing it along the radius of the top. What are you planning?

[CTN]

Bro...

Please keep me informed on your progress. I've wanted to learn how to finish guitars for a loooong time and have never gone further than being discouraged by youtube videos.

Don't worry bro, I'll document the whole sordid build.

This is awesome. I can't wait to see how this turns out.

Like Devin, I've always wanted to finish guitars. However, judging by my proficiency with spray painting, that's not going to happen.

IIRC you said you're going to carve the top. How do you plan on doing that?

Oh and +1000000 on masked binding. Half of my guitars have it and I just love it. I'm not sure which I prefer though, the PRS style of doing it only on the side of the guitar and leaving the top completely colored or XSSIVE's style of doing it along the radius of the top. What are you planning?

I haven't fully figured out my plan for carving the top tbh. I'm in two minds whether or not I should hand carve it or use power tools. Nevermind the actual carve plan. I would like it to be a very pronounced carve, not unlike that which graces PRSes and Gibbos. But your average carved top tele has a really shallow carve. I dunno. there are some things I need to figure out first.

I definitely want to go over the radius though, for the masked binding. No freaking way am I going to do binding if it can't be seen from the front AND the side of the guitar.

You'll see from the test piece photos :)

[Agileguy]

Sweet. I fully support the idea of a dramatically carved top tele. Now that I think about it, you're right - any fender and most non-fender carved teles are pretty tame in terms of the actual carve. I wonder why that is?

[Oinkus]

Just a random obnoxious thing about the ocean colors , when you get to the good spot offshore (the gulf stream) the water is Deep Purple. The whole thing about finishing wood is proper prep and taking your time while using the right equipment. Not to mention a CLEAN sprayroom with powered ventilation. The smaller carve is most likely a cost cutting measure , time is money.

[CTN]

I'm not spraying anything Oinkus.

100% hand rubbed finish.

And here's the test piece at the moment. I'm going to leave it to dry for a few hours and then put some plain, non-tinted danish oil on top before I go to bed. With any luck, it won't pull up any of the colour. If it does, I probably won't need to worry that much anyway, cuz tru-oil hardens up much better than danish oil does.



On the blue side I used the walnut grainfiller full strength, and seeing as how dark it is, I think I might do what I did on the orange side - lighten up the walnut by mixing it with natural tinted grainfiller. Also, the dark blue is a little blotchy because of how I had to apply it. I was kinda using a couple of techniques including dabbing the oil to keep it from spreading around.

On the next test piece (it'll have to wait for another day), I'm going to try and wipe only, but building up the layers very gradually.

Looks like this may just come out looking nice after all. Phew.

[Oinkus]

Well that is a whole different and much easier ball of wax to manipulate , looks nice. I would let it sit for 24 hours before applying another coat of anything.It isn't a race , take your time.

[Securb]

Smart move playing with some slabs before jumping in. Looks great, I can't believe that is your first attempt.

[CTN]

Update on test piece #1:

so it took basically two whole days for that thin smear of oil paint to "dry"

by "dry" I mean that there's a layer of dried pigment/paint sitting on top of the wood whereas the danish oil has penetrated and sunk below it, so to speak, because that's what it's supposed to do. the colour isn't rubbing off easily, but it is rubbing off. I have yet to reapply more coats of untinted danish oil to it and see how it fares.

So um.. partial success, so far? I'm not really sure. Tru oil isn't supposed to sink into the wood as much as danish oil does. Tru oil is supposed to build on the surface so I think it'll dry up into a harder layer with the pigment suspended in it and I won't have to worry about the colour rubbing off. Subsequent layers of tru oil should just seal it all up under a hardened coat of varnish/oil.

Test 2, I'm going to try to wipe on/wipe off many layers of coloured oil and see how that goes. by wipe on/wipe off I mean wipe on and then wipe off excess. It still transfers the colour, but I'll just have to wait for each coat to dry before adding more oil and colour on the next coats.

After that I have to try a different method on test 3 - applying the paints directly to the wood without mixing them in oil, then after the paint is applied, cover in oil. I don't really like this idea as I'm not really sure how the danish oil and paints are going to behave.