CURSED OBJECTS

I’m aware that I’m essentially breaking every rule in the book here by not adding any photographs, maybe I’ll look up some cat.gif stuff and post that to make up for it? 

Anyhow, how is everyone? It’s been a little while and I’ve got a few things I’m working away at, mostly this delicious bagel, but also some guitar related things… Mostly the bagel is all I’m about right now. 

The Bootstang - Oh well where to start? I spent a little more time than I expected on the sealer coat. As I’ve in the past been guilty of rushing the process I’ve had to deal with the fallout later on down the track and I so very badly want to play this thing that I decided to be very patient this time. The pine body was actually pretty tight grained in appearance but I am all too aware that it can be a thirsty timber so I put on 4 coats of sealer sanded it to a smooth surface and sealed once more for good measure. A final sand later and I was as ready as I was ever going to be to start painting.

Just a quick note, if you are planing on finishing a guitar or even refinishing a guitar from bare timber, put away a lot of time to get it right. The quickest way to find yourself with a project you started 10 years earlier sitting in a corner looking out at you with it’s sad half finished eyes (couldn’t think of a better analogy), is to rush the prep work before painting!  

Once it was sealed and hanging by a rather precariously placed coat hanger, I decided it was time. Now, I’m using rattle cans for my finish and I fully believe that this is not optimal, I get it, it’s making life harder than it should be, I’ve done it before and until I buy an air compressor, I’ll probably be doing it again. Worse still is in Australia we are rather limited to the products and ingredients we have available. There are a number of ecological reasons in place that I fully understand, however I would very much love to have access to Nitro-cellulose in a can. So I’m using Acrylic on this one. It’s fine to use in my opinion as long as you have sealed properly and have an even surface for it to bond to. And again the patience for it is paramount. This stuff in the past has taken what felt like an eternity to “cure”. The drying time depends on a few factors like, how many coats you have applied, how much air dry time you have left in between coats, and where you are going to store it to dry. There are more factors but this is getting long! 

For all that is good and holy, and unholy… do not under any circumstances assume that because something is touch dry that it means you can begin to wet sand and begin to polish and buff. You might get away with the wet sanding, but if it’s still drying out, the moment you begin to buff away, creating heat, you will find yourself in bat country. 

Sorry, I am getting carried away.

I’ve gone with a generic blackest I could find black colour coat because, well I like black, I like green also, and other things, but this time it’s getting the Robert Smith goes for a walk on the beach colour code. Black, by the way is not the easiest of colours to work with. It is notorious for showing each and every little mistake you have made along the way and will show the “orange peel” effect as you are finishing so much so that you will think, what the hell have I gotten myself into? But I’ve made my bed (figuratively, because honestly my bedroom is a mess right now) and now I must sleep in it. Is that the saying? Sheesh, trying to sound ‘clever’ is hard work. 

I kept the colour coats rather thin, probably about 3-4 passes in total, this is due to the Acrylic paint being a fairly dense product, it atomises okay from the can but it can be heavy. Also I wanted to be able to build up a decent amount of clear coats to deal with the inevitable orange peel effect during wet sanding. I’m halfway through the clear coats right now and I’m doing my best not to rush things, letting each coat air dry enough before applying the next to minimise the chances of sag. At this stage, I know I could have spent more time with the sealer and sanding of it! The moment I put on the first coat of black I could see that there were some grain patterns that would be a slight issue but I was already committed, and as much as I preach the whole patience thing, I just really needed to keep going. It’s honestly not all that bad, I’ve seen American Standard Telecasters with the same amount of grain lines showing through the clear coat, and to be clear it’s not that you can see the colour of timber, it’s the texture of grain that is slightly apparent, noticeable for the most part only on the sides of the body.

So I’ve been waiting patiently for my previous coat of clear to become stable enough to add another, shouldn’t be long now, and in the meantime I’ll try and get some photo’s up. I just, well I’ll be honest - was too lazy to grab a camera and get some up right now!  

If anyone needs me I’ll be making another bagel.