Not the Styx song, the current situation.
So to amuse myself I tried to fix the finish on a guitar that the clear coat had spiderwebbed on me.
It was the bassackwards Firebird zero. The snazzy sparkle finish one.
I disassembled the thing and got to work.
Needless to say, nothing worked. I had a guitar that looked like it had varicose veins.
I tried sanding down the clear and polishing back the gloss.
Nope, cracks were still visible. Eventually I blew thru into the sparkle, then it was over.
This poor guitar... Started life as blackberry color, then got silver sparkled.
Now it was gonna get assaulted once again. So out comes the heat gun and I have at it.
The guitar was chucked up by the neck on a sawhorse as I heat & scrape, and just as I was finishing The body started to sag...
Uhh, what's happening here? The neck joint was failing.
How could this be? It wasn't that much heat. The wood would have burned before that much heat could penetrate.
So taking my misfortune and turning it around, I saw this as a perfect opportunity to correct an existing problem with this whole run of guitars.
A too shallow of a neck angle.
Looking at the original joint you can see it was void of glue on the bottom of the neck tenon.
The inspection mark is still like new.
The only place this neck was glued was an area aprox. 1" x 3/4" on each side of the neck.
The neck pocket had inspection writing in it as well.
There was a .040 gap between the neck tenon and the bottom of the pocket.
That explains why the neck fell off.
But I'm getting ahead of myself here.
Back to the body, it was now naked and needing attention.
No way was it going to get sparkle anything again, or clear. A nice opaque color was in order.
I had fancied a nice antique white...
So I painted it purple.
Here you see it straight out of the can.
Then after a flattening with 600 grit wetsanding.
Then, as the finish pops after working up to 5000 grit...
And some polishing compound.
So now that it looked better, that neck needed to be reattached.
I made a tapered shim to fill in the gap between the tenon & the pocket, as well as correct for the too shallow neck angle, and glued everything back into place.
Bingo. I Gained almost 1/8" more height at the bridge.
So here it is, in all it's purple glory.
How I spent my time in lockdown...
I hope this is the last time...
So to amuse myself I tried to fix the finish on a guitar that the clear coat had spiderwebbed on me.
It was the bassackwards Firebird zero. The snazzy sparkle finish one.
I disassembled the thing and got to work.
Needless to say, nothing worked. I had a guitar that looked like it had varicose veins.
I tried sanding down the clear and polishing back the gloss.
Nope, cracks were still visible. Eventually I blew thru into the sparkle, then it was over.
This poor guitar... Started life as blackberry color, then got silver sparkled.
Now it was gonna get assaulted once again. So out comes the heat gun and I have at it.
The guitar was chucked up by the neck on a sawhorse as I heat & scrape, and just as I was finishing The body started to sag...
Uhh, what's happening here? The neck joint was failing.
How could this be? It wasn't that much heat. The wood would have burned before that much heat could penetrate.
So taking my misfortune and turning it around, I saw this as a perfect opportunity to correct an existing problem with this whole run of guitars.
A too shallow of a neck angle.
Looking at the original joint you can see it was void of glue on the bottom of the neck tenon.
The inspection mark is still like new.
The only place this neck was glued was an area aprox. 1" x 3/4" on each side of the neck.
The neck pocket had inspection writing in it as well.
There was a .040 gap between the neck tenon and the bottom of the pocket.
That explains why the neck fell off.
But I'm getting ahead of myself here.
Back to the body, it was now naked and needing attention.
No way was it going to get sparkle anything again, or clear. A nice opaque color was in order.
I had fancied a nice antique white...
So I painted it purple.
Here you see it straight out of the can.
Then after a flattening with 600 grit wetsanding.
Then, as the finish pops after working up to 5000 grit...
And some polishing compound.
So now that it looked better, that neck needed to be reattached.
I made a tapered shim to fill in the gap between the tenon & the pocket, as well as correct for the too shallow neck angle, and glued everything back into place.
Bingo. I Gained almost 1/8" more height at the bridge.
So here it is, in all it's purple glory.
How I spent my time in lockdown...
I hope this is the last time...
