As I continue on with my guitar making projects, I have done a lot of sanding. Some of the sanding is using a block (various sizes and shapes) and some of it has been free hand. I sanded everything down to 220 grit starting at 80 grit. Sanding can be very therapeutical though the next steps were anything but.
One of the guitars (remember, I'm making 3) is designated for my youngest (Mitchell, he's 11 right now) who wants to move from playing the piano to the guitar. He really likes green so when he saw a guitar in a musical store that had a painted top, he asked if he could have a green guitar. I'm not ready to explore painted finishes on guitars but I did have a green stain that I thought would work.
Mitchell got to participate in the staining process. Having my kids in my shop is always a thrill and continued to be great.
Mitchell's guitar is actually Guitar 3 and Guitar 2 may go to my brother. I wanted to try staining that guitar too - as much as another finish technique that may "hide" smaller issues with the guitar.
After Mitchell was gone, I applied 2 more coats of stain to darken the color. Here is where it got frustrating. Applying stain or any other kind of liquid finish to an odd shape is hair pulling in it's scope. I'm sure I should have explored the application process before the binding and purfling was installed. Taping off was probably not going to work. I was able to clean up the binding - mostly. I'm not sure I was that frustrated with the guitar finishing process but was rather more fatigued in the overall process of guitar building. Deep breaths! More deep breaths! Patience is what it's about at this point.
After the stain was applied and the bindings cleaned up, it was on to pore filling.
The pore filling is using a thin epoxy layer which gets a lite sanding and maybe a second or third coat. Of course, it's a messy process so I'll be doing a lot of sanding of the sides of the body when the top is satisfactorily done.
Guitar 4 is my guitar and of course, it really get's all the learning from building the other guitars. I'm really liking the natural color (slightly darkened by the epoxy). It's starting to give a great sense of what it will look like when it's all done.
Next is continuing on with the pore filling and sanding and then clean up of the necks followed by many many many coats of shellac. The end is getting closer.
