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Here is a project I have been working on. Last step before sanding and finishing was to drill the jack hole. This jig was neater than free hand, and quicker than horsing around with doing it on the drill press.

Keep us informed....

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Clever idea for the jig. Be careful when you do the round over on the back and any possible binding on the top that your follower bearing doesn't drop into the jack hole.

Thanks , will not be using a router to do the roundovers, but if I were, you're right, i'd be screwed. it's always good to think through the order of operations.

Reason I am not using a router is poor cut quality on this soft wood (poplar), as I discovered on some test pieces. I have done miles of roundover on a variety of woods and have never had so much mashed end grain, stringy long grain tear out, and burning. I've got a fresh bit, and I've tried climb cutting, normal cutting, gradually increasing depth of cut, slow feed rate, etc.

So I'm going to make some shaped sanding blocks

Dye stain burst

Looking good on the burst. I absolutely HATE poplar. It is no fun to work (as you've noticed), and most of the time it doesn't look nice (your wood is acceptable). I guess that's why Fender usually paints it a solid color.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Brushed on the 12th coat of Target Ultraseal WB Shellac sealer. I did some level sanding after 10 coats. This stuff blows me away how smooth it brushes out, but the coats are very thin. Planning on about 20 coats of the EM-6000

Looking good.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Still on the learning curve of guitar finishing, but pretty happy with how this is coming.

Target EM 6000. Level sanded to 1500 grit and hand buffed with Meguiars "Ultimate" compound, followed by Meguiars plastic cleaner.

Well, here it is, more pictures to come

Double dang! You're hired.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

That looks great! I hope I'll get to see it someday. And that amp is pretty darned nice too.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Thanks folks.

Jay, thanks a lot for all your help with the finishing schedule and extra tips.

Looks good. One suggestion though. The edges of the f-holes look like finish has dripped down unevenly and they detract from the overall project. My eye went right to that. One way to deal with that now is to take a black sharpie and blacken all the edges. In the future, use a small brush to apply your stain and finish to these edges as you work on the overall finish.

Thanks Barry you are absolutely right about needing to touch up those edges. I have a small jar of tinted finish that should work.

Did you brush on 12 coats of shellac and 20 coats of EM6000? That’s a lot of wipe on, wipe off. Mr. Miaggi would be impressed.

Out of curiosity, and because your results are very nice, what kind of brush did you use, how long did you wait between coats, how often would you level sand, and with what grit?


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Yes. Actually it was about 20 sealer and 20 EM6000, brushed on as thin as possible, more or less following the finishing schedule presented by Jay De Rocher at Seattle Luthiers Group (thanks Jay).

Yes you are putting on a lot of finish, and sanding a lot of it off.

I am by no means an expert finisher, but here is my experience.

I did partial level sanding a couple times during the process.

I used a brush from Tools For Working Wood. https://toolsforworkingwood.com/store/item/GT-WBBRU.XX. I used a 1" brush, wider would have been better. It is the best I have found so far, but Jay used a DaVinci brush that I want to try next time.

I found the Target "water based shellac" brushed on very smoothly. The EM 6000 had more brush marks. I tried adding reducer, but no significant improvement.

Despite the 20 coats, I managed to sand through in a couple spots. One spot only went through to the shellac. It polished up OK. Another spot went all the way through to the wood. I did my level sanding dry, so the stain did not get affected as it would have if I had sanded wet. I will touch those up next time I am using EM 6000. I am confident the EM 6000 will burn in just fine .

One advantage of brushing is you can deal with any drips or runs right away.

It is hard to brush smoothly over all the switch holes, control holes, and around the f holes. For the string ferule holes I used some temporary plugs set just slightly lower than the surface. That helped, but it was hard to get them out cleanly. Next time I think will leave the holes marked but undrilled, and put a temporary filler piece in the neck pocket. Not sure what to do with the F holes. As pointed out by Barry Daniels, the edges of the F holes need more attention during finishing than I have them, and stick out like a sore thumb now.

Last thing to mention is the "water based shellac" does interact somewhat with the trans tint stain, and I had a couple problem areas. One of them is discussed here viewtopic.php?f=10101&t=53279

I think these issues could be reduced or avoided by using a Preval sprayer for the first few coats of sealer.

Buffing was done by hand with Meguiars products. I really want a buffing wheel

I had trouble with brushing around the tuner holes. The finish would build up significantly thicker right at the edge of the holes. It made level sanding the finish problematic so I stopped drilling the holes before applying the finish. That took care of it.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

You got good results but dang that's a lot of coats. This is not making me want to try this. Love your guitar!

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!