The top is the last part to be sanded. First I looked for any large dents in the soft spruce top. I used a wet paper towel and a hot soldering iron to steam these dents out... and make them easier to sand.
Next I do a final voicing. I tap the top of the guitar and try to spread the vibrating surface even more by sanding the areas where the tone is not as prominant.... then I sand the whole top out to 240grit. Next I use a hacklinger thickness guage to check the thickness of my top.
I marked down for future reference what my measurements were.
Next I tape off the fingerboard, nut shelf, and truss rod. Then I made a masking tape bridge and place it where the real bridge will be using the sacle length and squaring it to the centerline.
Next I tape the truss rodd cover to the fingerboard so it can get sprayed as well. Next I put a balloon in the soundhole so the lacquer wont get inside.
Next I spray my sealer coat with a vinyl sealer. This is the first glimpse I had at what my guitar would look like with a finish on it.
after the sealer is on I can color match and do any burn ins and drop fills that I need to do. I do burn ins to fill in small gaps like this.
I use these hot knives
and these burn in sticks to fill the voids.
Once this is done I start filling the pores of the wood. I spread a pore filler over the guitar.
Once it is about 75% hazed over I squeegee it off.
and hang the muddy looking guitar over night.
For the rest of the day I worked on other things. Here is a telecaster that I have been working on this semester in my downtime.
Since I didnt do any inlay in my guitar my teacher would like me to practice for him. So I decided to inlay rosewood into mahagony in the shape of a unicorn... Todd Hanson style. I guess my mothers day shopping is done.
The next day I sanded off the pore filler which takes a very long time. As soon as you start to sand it the paper corns and clogs up. Very frustrating.
Next I spray another sealer coat, followed by a few light top coats.
This morning I went in to spray 4 topcoats. I got 3 of them on and while moving my guitar out of the booth my worst nightmare happened. The guitar slipped off the hanger and onto the floor. ( I hate reliving this)
the top had multiple cracks but luckily the ribs didnt crack at all.good news is that i know someone who fixes guitars...bad news is its me...and I have little to no time to finish this guitar. First I have to fix the cracks and re-enforce them. Once the cracks are fixed I will continue the finish. If the cracks cant be covered, My teacher suggested that we might spray a sunburst on it to hide thecracks.. I dont care for sunbursts so hopefully this doesnt happen.... I guess I have to make them invisible.
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First I align the cracks together... this went pretty smoothly.
I worked some glue into the cracks and then clamped them with a thick piece of plexiglass on both sides to keep them flat.
Next I made some small pieces of spruce into what we call cleats.
I chose to put in a total of 7 cleats on the inside of my guitar.
I did this by double stick taping them to a rare earth magnet and then placing another magnet on top this works as a clamp. The problem I ran into was that I had too many magnets in the same place. so I did them 1 or 2 at a time and then remove the magnets and tape and reclamped with the plexi.
Tomorrow I am going to go in and try to do more damage control. It just goes to show you how one short moment can result in hours of extra work. But I will tell you now that my guitar WILL be done next week.... fixed and ready to play by the time that guitar show starts. Thanks for listening to my shitty day.
