Video of progress

I'm happy with the way finish progress is going now, but my pictures of it, that I've been posting here, don't really do it any justice. Maybe a video, even a crappy one, will give a better idea of how the color/tint looks and how the surface appears.

By next week the top will be looking like the back does. Maybe I'll get this thing strung up this month.

French Polish again

So I was unhappy with my progress on my first French Polish attempt. It wasn't going well, and on top of that, I sorta made an unrecoverable mistake on the back. It didn't look professional. So I stripped it and started over.

For the past week and a half or so, I've been building coats. I've been cheating with my technique. I wipe on shellac, then I let it dry. I cut the ridges with sand paper, and then rub it out. And repeat. I've built up a nice finish, and am about ready to do final bodying.

When I first finished the neck, it had a nice color, but up close it looked bad. I have not been able to get a good stain color on the neck that looks nice. The neck is a solid piece of mahogany, and it doesn't soak up stain evenly. It really looked terrible on the last application, believe me. This time, I have a clear base, and I'll be doing bodying with garnet shellac, which will darken it some. This will give the neck an even color, without streaking where the end grain is exposed on the headstock and heel. But then it will wear unevenly. Still, this will look best in terms of a coloring option.

I haven't yet been able to take a picture that looks like the real finish color. The flash makes it look too light and reddish/orange, and my digital camera does funny things with natural lighting.

Shots of the neck without flash.







































Shots of the neck with flash.


























































The top.



































Rosette detail.














































The back.




















Check out the rosewood binding in this picture. I really like how the color of it contrasts against the body. It came out better than I could've imagined it.
















I still have work to do on the sides. This is what it looks like before it gets 'scuff-sanded'. The binding in this picture looks uneven, the upper piece looks lighter than the lower piece. That's just a weird flash effect.

Stain color again

In-between the last pictures I took, and these ones, I stripped all the finish off of the body and the neck, and I re-did EVERYTHING. It's a long story. But essentially, aside from a couple of small ugly mistakes I made, everything was not looking all that professional, and I just couldn't live with it any more.

The last time you saw the state of things, the body had been dyed, and then shellac seal coats applied, then pores were filled with tinted pore-o-pac.

This time, the pore-o-pac remained in the pores after sanding down to bare wood, which I think I now greatly prefer. Then, the body was dyed with diluted transtint dyes. Then, I applied Minwax dark walnut stain over the dye. I like the result.

I've got a very even looking result, very similar to the way it was before, only much better now.

I've really learned a lot about staining and finishing:

• It's good to dilute Transtint dyes greatly with distilled water, and make lots of applications so that you can "creep" up on your desired shade.
• Transtint red mahogany dye is very red looking, but so is the brown mahogany dye. If you're looking to get a Martin-ish-looking mahogany finish using red then brown, get something else for the brown.
  
• If the Transtint shade is too dark, and you're diluting it with water, you can lighten it with a damp rag.
• Don't ever dilute Transtint dye with alcohol and then apply that to bare wood.
• Putting pore-o-pac filler on top of a seal coat makes everything appear too dull, and takes much of the "pop" out of a stunning piece of wood.
• Before finishing a mahogany guitar, dampen the wood and sand it to 220 grit several times. Sometimes the grain will just keep raising and raising!
• Naptha is very nasty stuff. It doesn't seem to stink too awful much, but then, the next thing you know, you've got pneumonitis.
• If you can, do this stuff outside, but not when cottonwood fluff is flying.
• Primo info for french polishing on guitars is here and here.
• Here is a good link with info on using transtint dyes.
• When doing french polish, never put the shellac directly onto the muneca. Load inside of it.
• If you dye your wood only with transtint dyes, the seal coat can take some of the color off and make your surface color uneven.
• Minwax stain stays more even in color than dye, when you cover it.
• I got best results with Minwax stains when I dipped a rag in the stain, then wiped the rag on something in order to get rid of as much wetness as I could, then applied that to wood.
• Don't mess with baby oil when doing french polish. Walnut oil is much better, and it dries with the finish.
• You can mix walnut oil directly with your shellac.
• When filling pores using pumice, don't get too agressive with it, you'll take the finish off and/or remove spots of stain.
• They say that rags soaked with naptha can spontaneously combust, but I tried, and I couldn't get mine to do that.

I think that's enough tips for now. More will come to me later. Or, call me and I'll tell you more. I can't help you with what to do when your wife starts telling you that you've been spending too much time in your shop, though.





















I have a couple of things mounted on my pegboard so the body can hang there. One goes thru the soundhole and two other little guys come out and touch the masked-off bridge area.


























































The camera's flash makes it look much lighter and more reddish than it really does.

French polish

I decided a few days ago that more pore fill with the Behlen's pore-o-pac was going to make the guitar too dark. And yesterday I had a mishap where I thought that using pumice only to fill the remaining pores would work. It turns out that it just dissolves the finish and ruins the stain color.

So I thought the best thing to do, with the pores mostly filled already, would be to just start doing build coats on the finish and then sanding them back with 600 grit sandpaper to level out the surface. Looks like it's working.

I have a hook on my work bench that goes thru the soundhole.







































Here's pretty much what the whole surface of the guitar now looks like.
















And here's a small area on the back that I worked on tonight.

First pore fill

I did the pore fill on the body using Behlen's Pore O Pac. I used the mahogany colored stuff. It is brown like Hershey's syrup. It darkened things quite a bit. I'm kinda pleased with the result.

Over the weekend, I sealed the neck, dyed it, and also did pore fill. I'm not so happy with the neck, but it does look sorta aged, and goes with the body, I think. I might do it over and use dark shellac so I get a more even appearance.

































































































































































































































































Because the guitar has been stained, I can't just spread the Pore O Pac on, and then sand it off. I am wiping it off just before it dries, which gets the pores mostly filled, but not all the way. To finish the pore fill, next I plan to use pumice, alcohol, and a pad, and do it the way a french polisher would.