Yoda Finishing

Well.  Its been a bit since I posted, but I have been working on Yoda.  I have it assembled except for the fretboard.  I have it stained and its a good match.  I had installed several frets, but have removed them and am starting over.  This time, I will install the fretboard and its binding, then install the frets so that the fret board is totally flat to the neck and the frets can overhang the binding properly.  I have learned that I need to pre-bend the frets and notch them around the binding, so the ones I installed are too short.  I ordered more fret wire and it came within a day--Stew-Mac is very good in this regard.

I removed the frets and sanded the fretboard smooth (again).  I filled some of the divots from the fret removal (again) with a different filler--no better than the first.  I stained it all ebony (again).  The stain did not soak into the filler (again).  I am dis-satisfied (again).

So I switched to sealing the guitar, since this has to be done before I mount the fretboard (the fretboard will have no sealer on it).  Although I think catalyzed lacquer is the right product to use, the elf at the PRO Sherwin Williams store told me that the existing finish looked like polyurethane and convinced me that  water based poly will be just as good if not better than lacquer, and I wont have to worry about compatibility. 

So I bought the product he recommended.  I got a new gravity feed spray gun from the China Depot and set about the process.  I was very careful to read everything I could about the product.  I found nothing specific about its spray-ability, but the SW elf assured me it is spray-able.  I set up a test board and spent a considerable amount of time adjusting to get what I imagined was the best spray pattern.  I had read several articles about spraying, but never actually did it, so I wasn't sure what I was looking for.  I talked to some people who had what they considered to be great success with far less fussiness than I was investing, so I expected stellar results.  Finally, though with some trepidation, I hung the guitar from my garage door track with a piece of ought copper ground wire through one of the tuner peg holes.  And I sprayed.

It did not go well.  There was a lot of orange peel.  A lot.  I hoped it would flow out, but it wasn't flowing.  I didn't know what to do.  Using gambler's logic, I sprayed more, hoping that more material would increase the flow.  It did.  I now had very substantial runs.  And orange peel.  I stopped and waited about 2 hours for it to dry.  While I was waiting, I went to Lowes and bought some 220 and 400 grit sandpaper.  And I then sanded the entire thing by hand.  This removed a lot of the urethane, and some stain.  It was getting ugly.

Note:  I, like many others, have always assumed that sandpaper, like metal files, lasted far longer than it actually does.  The 3M sandpaper I bought surprised the Hell out of me.  Even at 220 grit, I found it too aggressive for this stage.  My experience with sandpaper in the past has not yielded this type of cutting power.  I don't know if its the 3M brand or what, but it is impressive.

I re-stained the bare spots and got what I thought was a decent blend, but not as good as the original job.  After waiting for it to dry (it was about 88 degrees in the shop, but the humidity was only about 55%) and reading some more, I set up to spray the urethane again.  Based on an article in Fine Woodworking, I cut the urethane first 10%, then 20% to get it to thin so it would atomize better.  I had already tried upping the pressure to nearly 50PSI to get atomization, which by all accounts is the outer limits for a gravity feed gun.   I fussed with everything I could think of for about a half hour, then decided to spray it laying down this time (the guitar, not me).  It was horrible.  With more faulty logic, I decided to try to "save" it by brushing out the orange peel and adding urethane by hand.  I now had brush strokes you could loose a jeep in.  The stuff would not flow.

At this point, I don't know what the problem is.  It could be the cheap spray gun, though I doubt it--there is not a lot that could malfunction and it does actually spray.  It could be the product just being inappropriate for this application--I was not enthusiastic about it in the first place.  It could be my inexperience with the application and the product, though all indications are that inexperience leads to extra work, not total failure.  I'm not yet sure what I'm going to do, but one thing is clear--I will have to sand the entire thing down to bare wood and start over again at this point.  Dammit.

Yoda, at Last

Saturday was sucked up by the hitch adapter, mowing the lawn, and the heat/humidity being just ridiculous.  But Sunday was a beautiful day to spend in the garage-shop and Yoda beckoned.  I got consensus from the family that we would think about God while we proceeded with our day instead of spending a couple hours visiting with his flock.  So I got an early start, read the paper, had some breakfast with the family, sent a letter to congress [read: shat], and was hard at "work"  before 9AM.  What a great start.

I had already glued the two mahogany blanks into one piece for the back, so I was ready to cut the back into the dreadnought shape and inlay the back strip.  I had also previously made an MDF template from the original damaged back, so it was simply a matter of setting up a piloted flush cut bit in the router table, double stick taping the template to the new back, and routing it out.  Just to be safe, I ran a test piece from a leftover cabinet back panel and it worked perfectly.  I was a little concerned because I had cut the template free hand with a jig saw then sanded it down to shape with a drum sander in the drill press.  This actually yielded a good result, but there were very slight variations in the surface that I was concerned would telegraph into the finished piece.  Fortunately, this did not happen on the test piece, so I went ahead and cut the actual back.

Next, I used a jig that I had previously made to guide the router for cutting dadoes to set up the back strip inlay.  I had also used this jig as a clamping cawl when I glued the back blanks together.  The back strip was 11/64" wide and all I had that small was an 1/8" bit, so I would have to make the groove in two passes.  I set up the groove to be 1/16" deep, as the back was roughly 1/8" thick.  Although this operation was rife with opportunities to ruin the most expensive part of this endeavor, amazingly, it went smoothly.  I taped off either side of the groove so that I didn't get glue on the adjacent back which would cause it to not accept stain, and then glued in the back strip.  Of course the back strip was about 1/16" proud of the back, so I planed it down to about 1/32 to sand down the rest of the way.  And of course, I managed to take a gouge out of the back with the plane.  And there you go.  The last time I ground the plane iron with my half-assed grinder, I managed to get the iron bevel skewed so that it is no longer straight and cannot be made parallel to the sole. Building a better tool grinder will undoubtedly be my next distraction.  I was able to fill the gouge and this will require some delicate sanding, but it is not unfix-able--just irritating.

The next step was to glue the bracing to the inside of the back.  I had salvaged the bracing from the original, so the arch would be formed by the arch carved into the original braces.  This did present a glue-up puzzle, though.  I am sometimes asked by well-wishers what I would like as a gift for a birthday, or Christmas, or Father's day.  I always reply that I wish for nothing.  But when pressed, I usually say "clamps".  I just never seem to have enough clamps.  You can see from the picture that I had to improvise with various cawls to try to get uniform clamping pressure across the braces in order to form the arch into the back.  But in the end, it worked out OK.

While the glue was setting on the back, I worked on the fretboard and head stock.  I had filled all the dings and divots in the fretboard and neck and had everything pretty much sanded down.  The wood filler I am using is a little pink and it looked really pink against the rosewood fretboard, but I'm hoping it will stain OK.    I cut a piece of cherry veneer from some scrap and planed it down to 1/8".  With it double stick taped to the headstock, I routed it to shape, then drilled, reamed to 1 degree taper, and lapped the tuner holes.  This was probably overkill, but they are nice looking holes (and what else would I do with a 1 degree reamer and a box of lapping tools).  In order to rout the access hole for the truss rod accurately, I clamped the headstock into the mill vise using tapered maple blocks that I made last week for my bench vise in order to clamp the neck for sanding.  This worked out reasonably well and I was able to have good control of the cut with the mill.  This will be covered by the original tortoise shell plastic plate, but the hole still had to look precise in case anybody ever adjusted the rod and got a look at the hole.  The cherry is going to stain up and look very nice, though oddly similar to the original paper veneer that I had removed.  I might end up doing an inlay or something to set it apart.  We'll see how the rest of the project goes.

The back turned out pretty nice, though its a shame about the gouge.  It won't be detectable, but I hate that it happened.  That hand plane has always bothered me--I really need to get the iron straightened out and get more comfortable with it.  You can see in the picture where I still have some more sanding to do.  Dammit. Shame on me for using a hand tool.  I am very pleased with the grain pattern that we lucked into.  Its almost a shame to put such a nice piece of wood on such an ill-fated instrument.  Oh well, luck of the draw.

Preparing to install the top next weekend, I cleaned up all the machine tuners and the pickup for re-installation.  They cleaned up well enough, but still pretty dinged up.  I soldered a new input jack to the pickup and then installed them, only to find that the jack was not deep enough to fit through the repaired hole.  I had installed a thin veneer piece to the inside of the blown out hole and the made a nice round plate for the exterior side in order to reinforce the area against the trauma of plugging/unplugging.  The threaded end of the jack is not long enough to extend through even the original wood, let alone the two additional pieces.  So I guess a trip to Radio Shack is in my future.  Sadly, my local Shack is in a strip center next to a restaurant that apparently barbecues road kill in a secret fermented horse urine sauce.  At least that's what it smells like.  But I just can't justify a trip to Mendelson's for a simple $2 item.  Maybe the hardware store will have one.....

Anyhow, next week, I should be installing the back and working on installing frets and maybe setting the neck.  It's getting closer.

Yoda

I finally got around to taking a closer look at the Alvarez guitar my friend gave me to take a "crack" at repairing.  Several weeks ago, I began to disassemble what was left to disassemble.  I took off the strings, which were the only thing holding the neck and body together.  I tried to compare the low E to a piece of field fence I dug up out of the back yard, but without a microscope I couldn't make any claims for certain.  The neck was broken off the body through the heel, so I planned to remove the rest of the heel from the dovetail and glue it back together.  I stripped the hardware off the neck to clean it up.  I used mineral spirits to try to get years of grime off the fretboard--this thing has been sitting in a garage for a long time.  I ended up taking a chisel to the fretboard to scrape across the grain against each fret.  This was not a great idea and yielded poor results.

So this weekend, I decided I would re-fret the thing, since the top three frets were badly grooved.  The fret board itself is also worn in the top three frets--from long fingernails I guess.  So I removed all of the frets and sanded the entire neck to original wood--it looks much better already.  I removed the fake wood headstock cover--it was very disappointing--actual paper printed with fake wood grain and the logo--no inlay at all. I'll make a new real wood cover.  I removed the plastic binding and the plastic nut so I can profile the neck properly.  I thought about sanding the grooves out, but that would take too much material off.  I could just replace the fretboard at this point, but I think I want to keep as much of the original parts as possible; and, not tie too much money into this thing. I will fill the divots with epoxy filler, which should blend well enough.  I plan to replace the nut with bone, just for fun.  I'll make it from a piece of cow bone--I think I may have a chew toy laying around somewhere from my dear old departed canine.  It should machine like wood.

I removed the neck heel from the dovetail by heating it with a heat gun and using a bar clamp to "press" it out of the joint.  This was a bit tenuous as it involved a lot of heat and pressure, both of which threatened to reduce the parts of this instrument to ash and splinters.  Ultimately, it popped out nicely and I learned that removing a dovetail neck is not too big a deal.  I glued the heel back together with the neck and I expect the neck will go back together with the body with minimal trouble.

Now for the major damage.  The cracked back looked like I may be able to press the crack back together and glue it up.  I made a clamping block and got most of the crack to fit back together, but I just wasn't satisfied that this was going to be adequate.  I decided to replace the entire back.  It came apart with a fair amount of effort and patience.  Unbelievably, of all the tooling at my disposal, a cheap pocket knife worked the best.  Although the binding will have to be replaced as well, as it melted from the heat gun and was severely damage by the pocket knife, the sides are very serviceable and I expect no trouble mating a new back and re-binding.  I would like to make new wood binding, but since I am not re-binding the entire guitar, I will have to match the existing white plastic on the front.  There is real danger of making a silk purse from a sow's ear.

So now I have the thing disassembled and ready for new parts and re-finishing and re-assembly.  This week I will acquire the new fret wire and decide if I'm going to buy blanks for the back or make the back from lumber I have laying around. I am trying to keep the front completely untouched.  It is the essence of "character" and if it were mine, I would want it untouched.  I will clean it up a little, because I simply can't stand the grime.  The pickup should be easy to fix--it just needs to be cleaned and re-soldered to a new PL55 jack.

I'm looking forward to finishing this thing.  I'm particularly interested in seeing how the glue holds up on the neck.

Guitar Gyro

A friend of mine played for years on the local rock band circuit.  At some point in a performance to which  I was not witness, he apparently channeled Pete Townsend and the result was that his well worn Alvarez guitar received new ventilation in its back.  I had briefly seen the guitar before the incident and, for some reason, I recalled that this was a "Yairi" model, meaning that it was a high-end instrument, hand-made in a sequestered village shop in the mountains of Japan.  Yes--a Japanese Master named Yairi in a small village workshop--the stuff of movies.

Although the band since disbanded, I had recently heard that my friend was thinking of returning to the scene (music scene, not crime scene), and it made me think of the ill-fated instrument.  Not having seen it since its brush with death, I did not know the extent of the damage.  But I figured that rather than let it languish in his garage and eventually get  thrown away, it might be worth a try for me to at least dissect it and learn a little about lutherie, with the possible outcome of resurrecting the instrument.  After all, if it was a Yairi, the woods alone were undoubtedly worth trying to salvage.

Well, I got my hands on the poor thing yesterday.  Clearly, my friend had not been playing Guitar Gyro, but Guitar Grinder.  I did not expect to receive it in two pieces, one of which has a nice rattle when you shake it.  This should be quite a challenge.

Since I made no promises regarding actual success in repairing this thing, or a time-line, I'm under no pressure.  And, it turns out, to the best of my internet research enhanced knowledge, it is not a Yairi.  But I must admit that I am nonetheless both excited to get started, and baffled as to where to begin.  This should be fun.