1961 Jazzmaster W/ Ash Body - Restoration Project

Bringing your older offset back to life.
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bencrit
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1961 Jazzmaster W/ Ash Body - Restoration Project

Post by bencrit » Tue Apr 17, 2018 5:15 am

Well, here is another Jazzmaster Project for the garage this year. It took so much work to do that fiesta red 1959, I thought I would never do it again, but here I go.

Had a link here, but can't seem to get it to work here, so I'll have to work on it later! Sorry!

As you can see it needs some work. It was painted red at one time, so I am gong to have to do some elbow work to get it ready for a blonde refinish...otherwise its another custom color. Since I don't have a decal I could go for a matching headstock. But I would highly prefer to get this back tot he original blonde.

Neck apparently needs some work. The seller said the truss rod didn't seem to be working right. There area couple things to try for an easy fix, but my wizard Luthier has fixed my broken JM truss rods before, so no fear there!

I picked this up for a song, so no worries there.

Overall, it looks like a great candidate for restoration.
Last edited by bencrit on Tue Apr 17, 2018 2:21 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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skink
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Re: 1961 Jazzmaster W/ Ash Body - Restoration Project

Post by skink » Tue Apr 17, 2018 6:15 am

The link seems broken. Looking forward to seeing it, though. I've got an ash 61 myself.

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bencrit
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Re: 1961 Jazzmaster W/ Ash Body - Restoration Project

Post by bencrit » Tue Apr 17, 2018 9:40 am

skink wrote:
Tue Apr 17, 2018 6:15 am
The link seems broken. Looking forward to seeing it, though. I've got an ash 61 myself.
Well, it works when I click it. I'll see if I can't figure something out.

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Re: 1961 Jazzmaster W/ Ash Body - Restoration Project

Post by zhivago » Tue Apr 17, 2018 12:31 pm

My '61 used to have an Ash body that was stripped when I first got it. Eventually I swapped it for a '61 Alder body, as I had my heart set on a Black JM with tort, and couldn't live with covering the Ash body with anything else that Blonde.

I hope that you will be able to strip the body ok and I vote for Blonde :)


By the way, the link doesn't work for me either :(
Resident Spartan.

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Re: 1961 Jazzmaster W/ Ash Body - Restoration Project

Post by countertext » Tue Apr 17, 2018 12:57 pm

My logic for getting pics to post: get an image open in a tab all by itself - no frames or viewers, just an image sitting on a browser tab all alone - and copy/paste that url between img tags from the button above. Sometimes an image I want to post can't apparently be maneuvered into a tab by itself, and then I reckon I just can't post it. C'est la vie.

Some websites intentionally protect their images from that kind of maneuver, but most image hosting sites make it possible one way or another.

That may seem obvious and oversimplified, but it always works for me.

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Re: 1961 Jazzmaster W/ Ash Body - Restoration Project

Post by bencrit » Wed May 09, 2018 4:05 pm

OK, here we go. After another botched attempt at pictures I’ll try to get it right.

First, here is the progress we made yesterday:

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I’m only going to do a shot of these two areas, because they are the worst. ash grain can be long and deep on the front and back of a guitar. That’s where the brush comes in very handy. The small bristles get into those cavities and help jar the paint loose.

The sides are a whole other matter. Basically you have small pinholes along the edges where the grain is “exiting” the body. Think of it as a long pipe. If you cut it in half the long way, you have a very long grounded strip to deal with. Cut in half The “short way” and you have something much smaller, and in the case of wood grain, more difficult to deal with.

I tried the brush technique on the ends with minimal success. It turns out I had to get some heavier grit sandpaper and just get to work on it. Are used different grits in different places, alternating between 100, 120 and 150. You have to be extremely careful because you don’t want to over sand or significantly alter the contours or the rounded edges of the guitar. At the same time, you do have to get down to the bottom of the grain or the red paint is going to stay there and eventually bleed through the blonde paint. Then we just have to start over and do the whole thing over again, and that’s not something I look forward to :wacko:

So here is the progress I made this afternoon sitting out in the nice Pacific Northwest sunshine on my lovely deck:

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As you can see, I’ve made some progress but haven’t quite finished. The biggest problem areas for sanding are at the shop or curves right around the neck pocket area along the edges. You just can’t get a flat or even rounded sander in there very easily. You basically have to go very slowly with One Direction swiping down over and over and over again. Very tedious but necessary.

special care has to be taken so as to not over sand. So far I think I’m succeeding. I really get impatient with these projects and want to start spraying paint as soon as possible. But the few times I have done this have taught me that 90% of a good paint job is done in the prep work. So I am going to persevere.

By the way, heres a shot of the view looking north from my deck. It’s a little cloudy but you get the idea of the mountains I can see.

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Permit me to express my personal belief here, but I find it much nicer to see the Lord’s handiwork when tediously sanding than stare at the bland concrete in my garage. I certainly wish I had divine power to make this sanding job go faster…

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