my first project: 66 mustang rescue - all done!

[drteeth]

here's the awful awful job of putting the sanding sealer on:
waaaay waay too thick, i won't be making that mistake again.

runs, sags & otherwise fail:






i let it all dry for 3 days and set to sanding and scrapping all the runs out. i sanded a little too eargerly in some places, and wore the slight discolouration of the grain filler off in certain places which left a few bleached looking areas. whats worse is that i think i'd gone deep enough to open up the pores again so when i put a light, wash-coat of sealer on, these bleached looking areas would just drink up the finish, where the areas around it wouldn't. you can see it below, notice the darker stripe along the middle of the ass end, and the two lighter areas above and below:


since it was the grain filler causing the colouring, my friend convinced me to wipe a few thin coats of filler on the lighter areas to blend in a bit more. that seems to have worked decently well, and i'll update next with some pics of that.

[ohm-men]

What kind of wood is this new Mustang body made of?

[mcjt]

that's a great looking piece of ash!
it'll make a great guitar.
i'm in montreal too, and have some projects requiring lots of grain-filler.... korina and swamp ash. ugh.
i bought some Bartley's in a wood store in Boston. what are you using?

[drteeth]

i'm in montreal too, and have some projects requiring lots of grain-filler.... korina and swamp ash. ugh.
i bought some Bartley's in a wood store in Boston. what are you using?

i'm using target coatings water based grain filler which i order from woodessence in saskatoon. i've also used another waterbased filler (opaque this time) called timbermate with some success and you can get it here in town.

here is the body after touching up the grain filler, and trying to even out the colour tones. not perfect, but certainly an improvement...

[mcjt]

Bartley's comes highly recommended for guitar projects, but i bought 'natural' colour, which seems to be white, and i have little white dots every where on my swamp ash!

[edouglaspratt]

Beautiful piece of wood...it'll be worth your effort.

[Hellion]

You could still try to fix that old body just for the experience. Or put spare parts on it and have a beater.

[panoramic]

if you want a real old body let me know, I can pick one up cheaply

[drteeth]

after more coats of sanding sealer, and several level sands, we moved on to the colour coats. we mixed up some lacquer, white pigment and a few drops of yellow, brown and red to make our blonde finish.

the colour came out a bit too white and thin, so we will be doing a third coat, with some more red and yellow pigment, but here it is after 2 coats:




i couldn't resist a test fit


because of the toggle switch my father had put in, there will be a hole in the pickguard, i don't think there is much i can do about it other than to replace it. i kinda like this one, so i'm leaning towards leaving it as is.


i'll be taking some pics of the 3rd coat tonight, and hopefully posting an update soon.

[edouglaspratt]

Wow, you've made some serious progress. It can be very frustrating, making a few mistakes and having to go back and resand and reapply...but you've got a great result there.

I also like that pickguard and wonder if you can't find a scrap of tortiose to plug that hole...?

Doug

[theworkoffire]

Wow, you've made some serious progress. It can be very frustrating, making a few mistakes and having to go back and resand and reapply...but you've got a great result there.

I also like that pickguard and wonder if you can't find a scrap of tortiose to plug that hole...?

Doug

I was just about to suggest the same thing. Annoyingly, I found a scrap of cellulkose tort the other day that would have worked. I'll see if I can dig out any more. A circle of that could probably be carefully melted into place with some acetone/cellulose thinners. I'll get in touch if I can find some tomorrow.

[MattK]

I think you got the blonde colour right - put it in the sun for a few days and it will warm up.

[AWSchmit]

Just out of curiosity, why do people mask off the control cavities? I can understand masking off a neck pocket if its a tight fit before you paint it, but other than that, I don't see the point.

[secndshft]

I personally would leave the finish as is right now. As suggested, stick it in the sun if you want. That paint job is sweet.

[hotrodperlmutter]

i'd route for a 3 way switch.

looks great though. what happened to the old body?