Building a kit guitar

[ImmortalSix]

Re: Building a kit guitar

TDPRI.com
go to the Home Depot section of their forum
Learn

Also check out the '59 les paul build by a dude named Preeb (Gil Yarron)
you will learn a lot!

You just said everything I would say.

Great starting point.

I started building bodies this way - read up on TDPRI, saved up for some basic woodworking tools, and got to it.

Getting my first guitar body blank in the mail was a great day.

 

[Lake Placid Blues]

Re: Building a kit guitar

And you can do grain fill or sanding sealer....there's no need to do both.

With alder yes. But with mahogony I'll bet he will need both. It depends on the porosity of the exact piece though.

 

[Chocklit_Thunda]

Re: Building a kit guitar

With alder yes. But with mahogony I'll bet he will need both. It depends on the porosity of the exact piece though.

Not really. With mahogany, just sealer or filler is fine but the problem is the sealer itself. Normal sanding sealers from the wood section are nitro based sealers that shrink over time and then the grain starts to show through the finish (not in the translucent finish kinda way).
But I agree with you in that its better to do both One way to do it is to mix some sealer with pumice and aniline dye (if you plan on staining the body in traditional LP style) to make a sealer/filler mix. Rub it on, let it dry and sand back to the wood/ dyed wood.

Boom. Ready to finish.

 

[Lake Placid Blues]

Re: Building a kit guitar

If your doing a transparent finish on mahogony I like to use a dark stain in the grain filler to enhance the grain of mahogony. The problen here can be that it could stain the field of the wood instead of just the filled pores. To avoid this you can spray on a sealer first and then fill the grain. The sealer will protect the field of the wood from the stain. But where he's planning on an opaque finish he can just use the filler on the bare wood. (or the sealer I guess). In that case should he use a poly sealer?

 

[Chocklit_Thunda]

Re: Building a kit guitar

I don't think you get poly sealers? I've never seen one locally. For an opaque finish I'd go go with filler or the pumice and sealer mixture where the pumice gets into the large pores and the sealer holds it in place and fills any voids. Then if the sealer shrinks it doesn't shrink into pores which show again through the finish (but this usually takes years and years to happen)

 

[Lake Placid Blues]

Re: Building a kit guitar

I have some poly S&S I got at home depot. I didn't know it was until after I read the fine print. I try to avoid using poly anything because it can get thick fast and its so hard to sand off, but this stuff didn't seem too bad. I used it years ago and it never fell into the pores after time like nitro S&S can though.

 

[GuitarDoc]

Re: Building a kit guitar

I don't think you get poly sealers? I've never seen one locally. For an opaque finish I'd go go with filler or the pumice and sealer mixture where the pumice gets into the large pores and the sealer holds it in place and fills any voids. Then if the sealer shrinks it doesn't shrink into pores which show again through the finish (but this usually takes years and years to happen)

Actually only takes a month or so.

 

[zain]

Re: Building a kit guitar

i think to build a kit guitar, you first have to read some relevant books instead of mere reading the threads

 

[Chocklit_Thunda]

Re: Building a kit guitar

I have some poly S&S I got at home depot. I didn't know it was until after I read the fine print. I try to avoid using poly anything because it can get thick fast and its so hard to sand off, but this stuff didn't seem too bad. I used it years ago and it never fell into the pores after time like nitro S&S can though.

Well I never knew you could get poly SS :-/ but yeah I see how it could get thick and not deep into the pores... I think the nitro SS is a better option.
I use poly to finish my builds. There is a way to get a thin finish but it also takes time which most manufacturers don't have so they just lay it on thick.... You just thin it down loads and then spray on a few coats at a time, sanding with 800 or 1000 as you go along because poly doesn't fuse into itself the way nitro does. But the up side is a rock hard finish


@guitardoc I did not know that. I was told it took time the same way nitro took months to cure enough to buff and sad as opposed to poly finishes

 

[Laughing Kookaburra]

Re: Building a kit guitar

TDPRI.com
go to the Home Depot section of their forum
Learn

Also check out the '59 les paul build by a dude named Preeb (Gil Yarron)
you will learn a lot!

Yes to this resource! Also, Carvin has a section on their forum called the Builders Forum. Specific to Carvin kits for the most part, but there is info for any kit builder.