demonx

I've been thinking of playing around with topping a carve top guitar, however I've never attempted wood bending before. How pliable is say 3-4mm thick rosewood (back and sides bookmatched) if I was to soak it in water over night and try bending it over a carved top superstrat? Am I dreaming or is this a possibility? I've seen it done over comfort curves, but I'm talking a full carve (like a Jackson soloist style carve) Brings me to my next question, when/if people do this, how to approach the contact surfaces, as in if I'm joining timber I run it through a jointer, well the top piece I can drum sand, but the carved surface is still a mystery to me without cnc

Congrats!

Ok - so the post I made above formatted correctly, however when I go to edit my old post now its editing in HTML

I just made a post - several paragraphs, however its displaying as one chunk of text I went to edit post, re formatted it and it still displays the same. If someones making updates/changes at the moment I thought you'd like to know this...

<p><p> Correction - I WAS !!! Theres a neckthru in my workshop I started same time as this I havn't posted pics of yet too - (see pic below) Since I screwed up my elbow ligaments nearly a month ago I've barely done anything. I'm actually on workcover and doing light duties at work 3 days a week. The rest of the week I'm eiter at physio or bored at home which would be the perfect time to be out building but I can't! I can't do much more to this build as I have to carve the top which the elbow doesnt allow and might not for several months. I really shouldn't have attempted to carve the neck (which isnt finished yet, its just roughed but I wont do anymore to it till the elbows better, just roughing it probably set me back a fortnight or more of healing. Live and learn. I actually sent a message to another forum member nearly a week ago offring to pay them to carve a top template for me so I can use it on my marlin but never got a response. I saw this as a way I could keep going on this build without using my elbow but oh well. I cant even swing a hammer at the moment!

Looks nice whichever way you photograph it! Great work!

Nice details. I'll be following this build. I like the second inlay, I also like that wherever you got them from supplied a template, that is rare!

Looks like you scored! They all look good quality too! I bet you're a happy man right now!

Welcome to the forum!

If you've painted bikes and cars, then use the methods and paints you are used to. Only thing that is different is the paint will sink into the grain. You can either fill with grain filler, or fill it with bondo/bog before you prime

What he said!

Am I to assume you've never painted automotive paints? If this is the case I'd suggest not trying flake and candy as your first paint job. Being that you have "no equipment" leads me to think maybe try something basic??

Looking at the pic, they're not perfect but they'll come up ok. They'll look a lot better than you expect. You really won't know till you sand it back. Make sure you use plenty of rosewood in the epoxy. If the board was plain black Ebony with your tolerance like that you'd never see it. Sttripy ebony shows up a bit more, Rosewood shows it up even more, then Maple shows up everything.

I dont use cutting compound these days - BUT - I sand to 3000 so thats the difference. You can always polish it and if yuou're not happy try something afterwards, but you cant do it the other way around.

It looks better in the pics than in person! Its usually the other way around! I'm hoping that a bit of stain will help get some definition into it later on - will have to wait and see. It was actually your build with the kahler in last months GOTM that made me try the heel cap thing, I thought it looked pretty cool. I'd thought about it before but always figured it'd look tacky, but yours looked good.

The dot inlays look dead at the moment as they're rough sanded to 60 grit. When I sand and finish them they're actually quite pretty pieces of Paua. I had a bag of 100 dots laying around which I'll probably never use as I'm not too keen on dot inlays, so I picked out the best ones for this guitar.

Goal - just a mess around guitar built from offcuts laying around my workshop. Specs: Body 5 piece lamination: USA Maple Fiji Mahogany Alder Quilt maple 2 piece top Neck 7 piece lamination: Tasmanian Blackwood Ebony Indian Rosewood Queensland Maple ------------------------------------------------------------ I was looking at some body offcuts wondering what the hell I could do with them and decided if it was a solid color guitar then it doesnt matter what color the timber lams sre, so I cut all the ends from the waste of some previous made bodies and jointed them: Same for the neck blank. The ebony is a finger board I left out in the cold after I'd thinned it to 5mm and it warped, the Rosewood was another screwed up board. Now I have a drum sander I was able to salvage them both. Add in a strip of QLD maple and frame it in Tasmanian Blackwood! This is the body that was discussed in the "cutting bodies with router thread" I decided to add a quilt top to it so I ran the body through the thicknesser to cut it back enough to chuck on the quilt. This is a top I bought off ebay several years ago, was listed as a bookmatched 5A quilt. When it arrived it was more like 2A and it didnt resemble the sellers pic in any way. It's been stored for several years so I figured I'd throw it on this scraps build. Curly Maple fingerboard (has a slight defect which I centered at the first fret dot) Because it had this defect I considered it a scrap board Curly Maple Binding from stew mac - I had 2 pieces that just didnt match other pieces so I havent used them. I put the better of the two on top where it's visable and the lesser of the two underneath where it wont be seen I tried this "pinning the board" concept which a few guys here are doing. I went to my other shed and got the smallest nails I could find that looked like they'd hold place, I drilled a couple guide holes making sure to not go deep enough it'd effect my profile carve. I tapped them through with a hammer making sure not to split the maple board: I then drilled some matching holes in my clamping caul, so after I clamped it, before the glue had set I pulled the nails out with pointy nose pliers. It held very well, no movement, was lined up to where my grey lead marks were, so I'm very happy with this method: I saw on a previous GOTM submission someone had added laminations the the heel area of their build to make up for the blank being too small - I liked the look of this and thought I wanted to try something similar, so I added some QLD maple and Indian Rosewood to the heel to give that "capped" look when the neck is carved: The headstock is actually a 2 piece horizontal lamination, it's two pieces of quilt offcut from other bodies but I've thicknessed them the same depth and glued them together to make a headstock as I didnt want to cut up a good piece of quilt for this guitar and these pieces were just scrap laying around: I'm yet to decide on hardware. It'll be black but I'm not sure Kahler or Floyd. I'm yet to decide on the body carve. I liked the look of Crows Jackson Soloist copy but I'm not decided yet. I'm yet to choose a color. It'll most likely end out being candy black or candy blue with a solid black rear and matching headstock.

Glad to help. Forgot where I picked that up... Sadowsky maybe? I use 1/16" stainless steel pins from McMaster Carr and I put 2 in the nut slot and one at the base of the neck beyond the end of the fretboard. I kind of put my own spin on it but it's essencially the same concept. Will have to post pics in a build thread some time

Dont bother going to Bunnings - they wont have anything. You need to go to a autopaint place for fine grades. About temperature. It depends on the paint. I have expensive paint here that I can bake and I spray it under heat lamps. I have cheaper paints here that when I try to bake them they blister. Read through the product info sheet/tech sheet for the actual products you've bought. Dont use it as a bible, more like a rough guide as they are written assuming you're spraying in a controlled environment, aka a temerature controlled and dust free paint booth. So you have to alter your approach to allow for the paint environment youre spraying in. With all that said though, warm day is the safest bet. If Melbourne is anything like here at the moment I wouldnt be spraying without some sort of mild heat.

I'm used to sanding 2k, not acrylic, but if you have 1500 that should be fine. I usually start wet sanding around 2000 and go to 3000 unless I'm really cutting back a shitload of peel, in which case I'll start around 1000 wet. I only ever wet sand clear, I never dry sand it. I guess it depends how good you were at 1) setting up the gun and 2) using the gun to make sure it's smooth. At a second look at your pic theres plenty of small peel, so it'll definitely take some sanding. You can see it at the far right of the second pic where the light is cutting into the photo and reflecting off the peel. Dont feel bad, you'll ALWAYS get peel. But as you get better and better at spraying and setting up equipment and then using better equipment and products the peel will get smaller and smaller till you can't see it. It'll still be there, but you wont see it. So... fellow Aussie! sweet and welcome to the forum. Hope you hang around a lot more and add photos, learn **** and so forth. Check out my facebook page too, plenty of pics there - links in my sig.

This is all normal. Althought it looks like you've got a lot of dust and **** in the paint which means you're not painting in a very well planned environment. First off, watch this for a few tips on setting up a dust friendly area (yes that me): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWQmZwQL2ik Ok, the clear. I can see orange peel. It's hard to see peel from the pics, but the way comfort curve is reflecting the lite tells me theres plenty of peel in it. Once you start sanding you'll see how much peel is really there. It's much easier to see once you start sanding. What I'd do is wet sand this back and see how flat you can get it. Hopefully theres enough clear there to get it smooth, if not you might have to sand it as much as possible without hitting color and then spray more clear. Repeat this process until you can sand it smoother than glass.

I would. I love headstock caps. In fact in some future builds I plan to use a lot more of them.

Hard to see but this guitar I radiused fron and rear. Just another style of rear carve:

Looks great! Very nice.

I'd be sanding the crap out of it to try get it back to raw timber then seal it as much as possible to try prevent it from happening again. Imagine how pissed you'd be if it split again? No way.