finishing the body and neck

 I departed from the kit with a few of the parts. The kit comes with a top loader bridge. From what I have read, it's perfectly fine although with everything people entrench themselves in for/against camps. I could have lived with it, but I was interested in stringing the guitar through the body instead of just the bridge. Just seems like there's more stability that way. 

Of course, this meant drilling holes through the body. Always a challenge without good tools like a proper drill press. I ended up making a little jig to guide the holes, but even then I felt like I was doing way too much eyeballing for precise work. And the results show that. I didn't get perfect alignment. I suppose it is close enough and as long as no one is studying my work closely, it will get by. 

So now I'm putting on the bridge and the pickups and adding the tuners. Easy enough work, but as always I realize how much you can't rush anything 

Finished decal work. The uke has a cooler logo but it didn't translate so well on the dark wood. 

This is straightforward enough although I do always hesitate before drilling into the finished wood. For the kit, I just followed the instructions step by step, but now I wonder if it's better to assemble and fit everything first and finish last, as the term 'finish' suggests. 

Adding a bit of wax to the screws before putting them into the hard maple to prevent any horrifying cracking of the wood. 

Apply clear lacquer, add waterslide decals

 I watched the guy from Northwest guitar do this seamlessly. After several viewings, I was ready to try it. 

Started with some possible decals:

I like the idea of calling this guitar a Tidalcaster since it is a telecaster body. But Tidal Flattercaster, named after my home community of Tidal Flats Housing Co-op, seemed to fit best, so it won. I'm using a font that resembles the traditional Fender font. 

The DS logo was for my ukulele headstock. What I learned about this is when you've got a dark background (walnut coloured headstock), you really need to accentuate the lighter colours. My decals look okay on an amber maple background, not so much on dark walnut. 

This photo shows the two headstocks and the pickguard after a couple of coats of clear lacquer. 

When I look at this picture, I wonder whether I need a full pickguard. I like the woody look with the paisley bridge and switchplate.

That looks pretty good. Except under certain light, you can't see the decal outline. I've wet sanded it after 3 coats of clear gloss lacquer and then added two more coats. I'll repeat the process and then I'll stop. The guitar headstock is in good shape but with the uke I over-sanded it and dug into the logo, so it's less successful. 

Clear lacquer is toxic and pungent, so I am trying to spray outside on our front deck in the early evening when no one seems to be around. So far so good, but I wish I could do this somewhere more secluded. I let the lacquer dry for at least 10 minutes, and then I bring everything inside to dry overnight. I put both instruments by a bedroom window with three fans circulating air throughout the room but nothing directly on the headstocks. There's no lingering smell. 

I also noticed that when the lacquer dried on the pickguard, it rippled the wood veneer anywhere it wasn't fully glued. I'm not keen on that. The pickguard looks awesome but I'm disappointed in that little flaw. 

Starting to come together.

more pickguards

One realized benefit of the full kit is the limited decision making involved in parts. On the other hand, the downside is you have to work with what is provided even if it might not be the best fit or quality. 

Pickguards are a basic example of this. The Stewmac kit provides a nice basic black pickguard with chamftered edges showing black and white layers. It's good but not great but not crap either. 

I thought this might be an area to do some customizing. So I've looked into different materials, including: 

• plastic
• bakelite
• wood
• copper

PART 1

You can go as crazy as you want with this. And if you have some artistic vision, skill and the right tools, you can really go to town. The guy at Flatt Guitars in Tacoma makes super cool pickguards.I love this Ebony Gator pickguard. 

I'm not close to that level of ability, but I wanted something other than the basic colour. At first I was thinking the copper would be a cool look, but I wasn't sure about the tools needed. Apparently, you can get a tool called a nibbler that you can fasten to your drill to shape the metal. 

But I saw a few wooden pickguards that looked cool. I was wondering about shaping the wood, whether I needed a router or a scroll saw, neither of which I have. I did see on YouTube a guy made a pickguard out of wood veneer, which is thin enough to cut with scissors. That's my level of craftsmanship. 

So I bought some walnut veneer at Michaels. Seems overpriced at $15 so I should look for alternatives. 

Here's what it looked like after shaping:

That is a nice woody look, but it doesn't match the guitar body, so I want to darken the wood to something close to black.I sanded this lightly with some 400 grit so it is completely smooth. It is glued to a plastic pickguard that Scott cut on his laser cutter. It is a little bit thicker than the black plastic pickguard that came with the kit. It feels pretty solid.

The glueing was a bit of a gong show. I did not do a good job of this. In general I think I would do this differently. I would glue a veneer blank to my clear plastic pickguard and then cut it out after the glue had dried. The way I've done it here, there are a few places where it doesn't quite line up some I'm missing a sliver of wood. I will try to sand that back. 

PART 2 

I drilled the screw holes.and tried my hand at countersinking the holes for a better set up and to let the kit screws fit. I did that with my cordless drill and a countersink bit. The trick was going through the veneer and then to the plastic/epoxy without tearing out the veneer. 

I seemed to manage with that. Afterwards, I applied a coat of black minwax gel stain. I was persuaded to go with the gel stain instead of the regular stain simply because the gel seems a bit more foolproof. Someone described it as a cross between stain and paint. I wanted to get the wood as dark as possible while keeping the grain visible. The walnut is nice but probably wouldn't work for this particular guitar body.

So below is the set up for drilling and staining. My bench is sitting under an umbrella while it rains lightly outside. 

And then here is the result of a single coat. What a difference!!

I'm pretty happy with the results. One of the holes looks a bit out of place but I guess that doesn't matter too much if I'm only drilling to suit this pickguard. 

Earlier today, I bought a couple of small sheets of birch plywood from DeSerres. (a couple bucks each). I might experiment with cutting another pickguard. I like the idea of using wood as long as I can put a hard clear finish on it after. The interesting thing to note is I could try different colours at some later point to change the look of the guitar. But my preliminary look at the dark stained pickguard suggests this is the right colour. It looks awesome. 

Pickguard

I was very interested in some of the designs online. There are some really nice pick guards for sale by builders, With different materials like wood, metal, and engraved leather, that would make the guitar look even better than it is already. At the moment, it looks pretty good with the standard black pick guard but that comes with the kit. But I saw on YouTube a couple guys making pick guards out of wood veneer. That has some appeal because wood is a more artractive material than plastic and it’s possible to create your own design. Also wood veneer is easy to work with. The Youtubers say it’s cheap and easy to come by, but I did not find that. I found some wood veneer at Michael’s, but it wasn’t as cheap as they had promised. 15 bucks gets you two sheets when really you need 4 to make a pick guard that is thick enough. I bought some walnut veneer, and I want to stain it a dark colour to contrast with The body and the neck. As I mentioned, the basic black looks pretty good, so I am thinking having a wood grain pick guard that is close to black would be pretty cool.

I started by drawing the outline of the body and locating the cavities, so that I could draw a shape that would fit the guitar. This picture shows two potential designs that I was thinking about: the first is a minimalist pick guard that fits in between all the pockets and the electronics; the second is a little bit bigger and I try to go with some nice curves.

I laid it on the guitar body just to see how it would fit. It seems to work well. The current walnut colour doesn’t look very good against the brown body. But I am thinking when it is stained it will look much nicer. 

At the moment, I cut it out so that the grain is opposite of the grain of the body, but I think I would make it go parallel for the official version

Finishing body and neck

After 8 coats of tru oil and buffing by hand

Looks pretty awesome to me....