Encore Bass Refinish - 4 - Refinish Finished

The Encore Bass refinish is finally complete.  I spent a week or so sanding down the nitro lacquer flat before buffing the scratches out.

I started with 800 grit wet and dry sand paper and gradually worked up to 1500 and then onto gradually finer polishing compounds.

Slowly the scratches and swirls start to disappear and the shine begins to form.  I used a hand held car polisher buffer to apply the compounds and  polish but did the hard to reach places by hand.

Once I had a nice mirror finish I re-assembled the guitar.  I had purchased replacement tuners as one of the originals had gone missing and had been replaced by something similar in the past.  Also the tone pot was very noisy so I ended up replacing both pots.

I also replaced the worn out control knobs but everything else is original.  I set the string heights and intonations and tested the bass out and it sounded great.

Unfortunately I only took one picture of the finished guitar as a colleague snapped it up as soon as it was finished.  It looks beautiful though, I would describe the finish as a very very light relic.  It was always my intention to portray this 30+ year old guitar as one that had been hidden away for years and years and hardly ever used, like finding a gem in the loft one day.

What's on the workbench today?

I have been working on several different projects simultaneously over the past week or so and so here is a brief summary:

DLP Mandolin Prototype

I have all but finished this project now, although there is still some minor adjustments to the bridge required as the string action is a little high.  Also the two pots I used for the volume and tone need replacing (I recycled a couple of very old pots and they are just not up to the job!)  I have a couple of small knobs to fit as well.  All in all the sound is great and even though it is primarily an electric instrument it still sounds good when played acoustically.

Encore Bass Refinish 

This project is all but finished, I still have to string it up and set the string height and intonation.  I am waiting for two knobs (black with a silver hat) to finish the front and a colleague has expressed a strong interest in purchasing this from me.

Ibanez Blazer Bass Re-fret

Another colleague asked me if I could install frets on an old Ibanez Blazer bass guitar he owns.  The bass was given to him some years ago without any frets as the previous owner had pulled them all out as he wanted a fretless bass.

I ordered some wide fret wire (matching the marks left by the original frets), bent it to profile and cut the 21 pieces and started installing them last night.  First I cleaned the existing slots out and I used super glue to ensure a secure hold. Next I will trim the sides and file them flush before levelling, crowning and polishing the frets to a nice shine.

Other Ongoing Projects

Elsewhere I had sprayed the two Telecaster bodies with a dark red nitrocellulose paint, I'm not happy with the finish on one of the bodies so I will attend to that before respraying and lacquering.  One of the DLP Lap Steels is finished and the other body is awaiting finishing and carving.  I have decided to finish them with Tru-Oil but I'm having too much fun playing the one I have finished to take it apart and apply the finish!

Stratocaster Project - 9 - Another New Finish

I have been working on the finish of this Stratocaster copy for some time now.  I wasn't happy with the first finish I applied which was also bright red so I sanded everything down and sprayed the body solid heritage cherry but I didn't like the colour!  I always wanted a red 'Hank Marvin' like Strat so I started from scratch and resprayed the body red again.

There were a few pits and marks which needed spot filling with lacquer.  I used nitrocellulose clear lacquer so I was able to carefully spot fill and then sand smooth after a couple of days knowing the lacquer would melt into itself leaving no trace of the blemishes.

Sanding down a guitar body by hand is not easy and I made things more difficult by starting off with 1200 grit sandpaper.  I have sanded through the finish on previous bodies in seconds using courser grades of paper and knowing how thin I had applied the lacquer I did not want that to happen again.

I started with 1200 grit and then onto 1500 grit.  All the areas I had drop filled with lacquer flattened out and blended seamlessly so I then went through 3 different grades or abrasive liquids applied using a hand held buffer. This certainly made the job much simpler and quicker.  There was still some areas that the buffer couldn't reach which  completed by hand.

Finally I buffed and polished to a lovely mirror finish and started assembling the hardware.  It wasn't long before I had attached all the body components before attaching the neck and fitting the strings.

Everything tested fine and I am now a proud owner of my very first Strat.  It's nothing like Hank Marvin's, for starters it has a rosewood fret board, an alder body, silver hardweware and a rather sparkly pick guard.  But this time the finish is staying as it is... no more refinishes for some years please!

Encore Bass Refinish - 3 - Restoring the Fret Board - A Hidden Gem!

One project I haven't mentioned much is the Encore bass refinish I have been working on.  The guitar itself was purchased from a junk shop many years ago and I hardly ever played it.  

I decided to refinish the whole thing as it looked well worn the day I bought it so a couple of moths ago I stripped it down and repainted the body and the neck.  I sprayed it black but added racing stripes to the body a couple of weeks ago.

This weekend I decided to have a look at the fret board.  It was always my intention to re-crown the frets but I decided to clean the fingerboard initially.  I tried various solvents to clean the wood between the frets but int he end took some sand paper and to my utter surprise the fingerboard looks like it is made of light maple not something like the dark rosewood I assumed it was made from.

Years of use, sweat and beer must have accumulated to darken the wood leaving the impression this bass had a rosewood fret board.  I had to really work hard to get a nice even colour all over the front of the neck.

The picture below is a good example of the amount of grime I had to contend with.  There is always a chance that the wood was stained to look darker than it actually was, the white fret markers don't stand out that well against the light maple.

I used my random orbital sander to get right up to the edge of the frets and then sanded carefully across the grain with 400 grit sandpaper on some of the more stubborn marks and then eventually went over the whole neck following the grain to remove any sanding marks.

Gradually the true nature of the fret board is revealed! It's quite exciting to think that this has been hidden from me for so many years, I never suspected the neck would look so different and the light colour will fit in nicely with the ivory racing stripes I have painted on the body

Once I was happy with the fret board I masked the neck up just leaving the frets exposed ready for crowning.  I marked a indelible blue line on the top of each fret and then took a 3 sided file (with one edge ground smooth to avoid damaging the fret board) and started filing each of the frets.

The idea is to leave a thin crest or crown on each of the frets, the blue line shows this perfectly.

Once each fret had been filed to a peak I took some sandpaper and started removing the tool marks, starting with 120 grit, then 220, 400 and 600.  I then used my dremmill with a small buffing wheel and some abrasive compound to polish each fret to a nice shine.

Finally I used some Nevr-Dull to polish a really nice shine onto each of the frets.  the pictures below don't really do the neck justice.  I will post some more at a later date.

One final thing, I put a coat of sander sealer over the fret board and left it to hand and dry overnight.  I'm considering spraying a thin coat of lacquer over the face of the neck just to provide a little protection.  and hopefully keep this thing looking great for many years to come.

Workshop Roundup

During the weekend I have been continuing work on the Telecaster neck including adding fret markers to the side of the neck and paining a thin black over the join between the fret board and the back of the neck.  I did it the wrong way round though and added the pinstripe first so i have to repaint this once i had installed the fret markers.

I also started laying out the positions of the bridge and pickups etc on the Telecaster body.  It will feature a P90 pickup at the neck and a standard single coil pup at the bridge housed in a traditional 'ash tray' bridge.

I also have a couple of other ongoing projects which I managed to make a little progress with this weekend.  I have been working on a Stratocaster style kit for some time now and have attempted to repaint it a couple of times now and never been happy with the results and most recently the colour!  I want a RED Strat!

The previous colour was too dark (Heritage Red) and was more appropriate on a Gibson SG than on a Strat.

So I sanded back the finish a little to allow the bright red to adhere and sprayed 3 coats from an aerosol can. I will let this set hard and then lacquer over the top.  This is much more like what I was after.

i have also been working on re-finishing an Encore Bass guitar I have owned for years.  It was originally back and I liked that but I wanted to give it something extra so I decided to paint ivory racing stripes on it.  I masked the body and it only took two coats of paint to give a nice even finish.

I always love the reveal when I peeled back the masking tape.  The lines are very sharp and the contrast is great.

Once again I will let this set hard for a week or so before applying lacquer over the top.  And I will need to apply enough so I don't start cutting into the ivory paint when I wet sand before polishing as the Ivory stands slightly proud of the black background.

A Blast From the Past!

I was in the loft getting the Christmas decorations out at the weekend when I happened across an old cardboard guitar box.  When I opened it I was shocked to find my very first guitar... and also my very first attempt at customizing a guitar! Inside the guitar I wrote 1983 so this was 30 years ago when I was 15!  I found a gold ring in the street and been a good citizen I went and handed it into the local police station and when it wasn't claimed a month later they said it was mine so I went into Birmingham and traded it for this guitar.

  It is a very cheap guitar nylon string guitar and looks like its made of plywood.  After a few months I decided I wanted to fit steel strings to the guitar and went about modifying it and also painting it.

I attached the steel strings to the existing bridge and they pulled it off so I made a 'floating bridge' out of meccano. I also modified the head by adding a couple of extra bits the the side of the head to make individual machine heads fit replacing the existing 3 a side all in one tuners.

You could drive a truck between the gaps in the nut and I also painted the fingerboard with white spray paint including the frets! I eventually scraped the paint off the frets but they are almost buried in paint and varnish!  It used to have a clip on pickup in the sound hole which I still have to this day.  The pick guard is strange as it actually stands proud of the body.

I sprayed the body blue and then hand varnished it with the red flash added for impact!  What was I thinking!!!  Still, that was my first venture into any type of luthiery and i'm pleased the guitar never got thrown away!  The biggest problem at the time was that I didn't know what a truss rod was... so after a couple of weeks the neck bent making the thing totally unplayable!

It looks like my girlfriend of the day was called Karen (Kaz) and my brother and I made a band called 'Take 4' along with 2 other boys from our road.  We practiced our 2 songs in my dad's garage and I have a tape somewhere where you can hear my mum calling us in for tea!  Maybe I will restore it one day, or maybe I will just hand it on the wall in my garage as a reminder... and a lesson!!!

Stratocaster Project - 8 - New Finish

A few months ago I painted my Stratocaster kit bright red using rattle cans.  It took a lot of paint and a lot of lacquer and a long time to dry.  When I sanded the finish I wasn't really all that happy with it so I decided to repaint using nitrocellulose lacquers.  Tonight I started the wet sanding and polishing process.

I started with 600 wet and dry sand paper, then moved to 1200 and then 1500 before using abrasive polishing compounds gradually working through 3 different compounds and then a bit of car polish!

There is still a long way to go but early indications are that this is going to shine beautifully.

Another Round Of Painting

I had a chance this weekend to get the paint gun out again and continue finishing the 3 guitars I have hanging in the garage, this is the Encore Bass, Stratocaster and DLP Les Paul prototype.  I noticed some very fine hairline cracks appearing in all 3 bodies and can only assume it is to do with the moisture content in the wood causing the bodies to change shape slightly and allowing the paint to crack?

So I sanded these imperfections out and then re-coated each body.  Each guitar has received 3 coats of colour this weekend separated by about  15 minutes between coats.

I removed the masking around the binding on the Les Paul Prototype and carefully scraped the binding with a razor sharp craft knife blade  revealing a nice contrast between the slightly off white binding and the black front and sides.

I haven't revealed all of the binding on the front of the guitar, just a very thin border about 1mm all the way round.  The effect is very subtle but pleasing.

Hopefully i will be able to start applying the clear coats this weekend if the weather stays warm enough although I have installed a heater in my garage to try and maintain a constant temperature down there.

More Fun Painting

I'm in full paint shop mode still but the weather is thwarting me at the moment.  I was a little too keen a couple of days ago and sprayed when it was too cold and I ended up with 'bloom' on all 3 guitars. Unfortunately it seems the only way round this is to sand back the bloom and paint again. 

I took the opportunity to fill a couple of blemishes that showed up on the Les Paul prototype.

The Encore Bass didn't need too much attention although it is easy to see how thin the paint goes on as I have sanded through the primer around the edges.

The Stratocaster looks pretty cool as it is... If I wanted a road worn look this would be the way to go!

Both necks needed a light sanding as well but on the whole are not too bad.  I just need to be patient and wait for the weather to warm up a little, I was too keen to start the other morning and it was quite warm in the afternoon so I would have been fine.