OOO-28 underway

[kencierp]

"Usually" you can get the white mineral specks to actually disappear by wiping the Rosewood with a rag wet with a good amount Acetone. The solvent pulls out the resins and minute dust particles which creates a natural stain, this dyes the white minerals dark. Take extreme care near your bindings/trim and sound baord or they will get dyed as well.

[rhagen]

Thanks Ken, I'll give that a try! BTW your bridge setter works like a charm, I can't imagine it being any easier.

Rick

[rhagen]

Are these splotches on my back resin? I thought so, and that I could get them off with a scraper, but I am having no luck so far. It is like a stain on the wood that goes in pretty deep.

[Tony_in_NYC]

It could be the natural coloring of the wood. I had something similar on the black walnut guitar I made. There was this darker stain like I had spilled something on it. I hadn't. Its just something that happens in some wood. Like this:

[rhagen]

Well, I worked over the back with the scraper and sandpaper again and I can't get those blotches off. Guess I'll have to write them off as the character of the wood and move on.

I masked off my top to protect it from rosewood dust and sanded the back and sides with 220 grit in prep to start the finishing process. In doing so, my white plastic binding now has fine scratches in it with embedded rosewood dust. Is there a way I could have avoided this? How can I deal with it? Scraper again?

Rick

[Ken Hundley]

Very lightly scrape them immediately before coating. You could mask them during the sanding process, then scrape them clean at the last moment. As good as light binding looks, I dislike using it for that very reason. I have a few that are using flamed maple binding....try keeping that clean on a padauk guitar. That red wood dust literally stains everything, and rarely comes out.

[rhagen]

I'm very annoyed. Thought I had a 3-day weekend to get stuff done on this guitar, but now realize that I can't use Ken's suggestion of acetone to color the mineral deposits. It works, but it will eat up my plastic binding. I should have scraped and finish sanded the back and sides before routing the binding. Then I could have done the acetone before gluing in the binding. I tried alcohol, which tinted the deposits a bit, but not enough.

Now I don't know what to do. Guess I'll have to make a trip to Woodcraft next week and get some pore-o-pac and something to tint it dark and go that route. I'm starting to wonder if even that will cover up the deposits. If they don't form lows then it won't. Maybe I can pick them out with the point of an exacto and a magnifying glass, then pore fill the holes.

Rick

[rmolsonguitars]

Well, after asking a bunch of questions (thanks for the help guys), I started building this past week.

So far I've glued in the rosette and scraped it down, fit the sides in the mold, and glued in the tail and neck blocks.

Tonight my daughter (age 11) and I glued the kerfing. We're making it for her, she's picked up playing pretty fast, but my D-18 and D-35 are just too big for her to handle comfortably. This OOO-28 should fit her better.

Rick

This is absolutely GREAT! My dad built guitars and helped me build two from scratch... that was 45 years ago.

Teaching me to use my hands to create was the best thing my dad ever gave me... besides his love.

[Darryl Young]

I'm very annoyed. Thought I had a 3-day weekend to get stuff done on this guitar, but now realize that I can't use Ken's suggestion of acetone to color the mineral deposits. It works, but it will eat up my plastic binding. I should have scraped and finish sanded the back and sides before routing the binding. Then I could have done the acetone before gluing in the binding. I tried alcohol, which tinted the deposits a bit, but not enough.

Now I don't know what to do. Guess I'll have to make a trip to Woodcraft next week and get some pore-o-pac and something to tint it dark and go that route. I'm starting to wonder if even that will cover up the deposits. If they don't form lows then it won't. Maybe I can pick them out with the point of an exacto and a magnifying glass, then pore fill the holes.

Rick

Rick, something acidic may work........like vinegar or lemon juice. Of course, test on scrap first to make sure it doesn't discolor. Search on the OLF for mineral stains. There was a fairly recent post on this topic and some acidic stuff was recommended (can't recall exactly what they recommended) and it worked well. I think you still have options.

On the stain on the plastic binding, I had this issue with Ivaroid binding. I cleaned the all the rosewood off dust I could with mineral spirits. Then I wiped very lightly with a rag dampened with acetone and it removed about all of it. Scraping removed the little bit left. Don't press hard on the binding with the acetone else you it will soften the binding too much and your rag will "dig in". It takes scraping to remove the sanding marks. AS others mentioned, you don't want to go through this procedure twice (wastes time and you can thin the binding more than you wanted) so plan when you do this procedure........like right at the very end before you start finishing.

[rhagen]

Wow, haven't updated in a while.

It took me a while to settle on how I was going to apply the finish and to get up the nerve to actually do it. I was going to brush on WB shellac and EM6000 WB lacquer from Target Coatings, but decided I'd give spraying a shot in spite of my doubts about the capacity of my compressor. I bought a gravity-feed HVLP gun from the local auto parts store, some extra air hose and a line filter, built a spray booth and went at it this weekend.

I thought I'd mucked it up when the first coats of lacquer went on and looked all orange-peely, but after a few minutes it all flowed together nicely. I'm up to 9 coats so far, will do another this evening, then do some drop filling, as I can see that my pore filling left a lot to be desired.

Rick