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Hey Guys,
I received my Martin Jumbo Acoustic Kit today. I'm really excited to do my first acoustic build. I was about to to get started on it, but then I discovered that there were a lot of water stains on the mahogany sides. Is this normal? What do I do to get rid of them? sand them, etc... Should i return it and get a new kit? I've attached photos. Thanks!
Photos are here:
http://www.tdpri.com/forum/acoustic-hea ... ormal.html

yes that is normal
there is no sense to sand them until the box is together, you will see they will sand off pretty easily.

tippie53 wrote:yes that is normal
there is no sense to sand them until the box is together, you will see they will sand off pretty easily.

+1 - Some sort of staining always happens and readily comes off during the finishing process. I seen some way worse than that and they turned out just fine.

If this is your first kit I would suggest you click on the Bill Cory's building kit acoustic guitar link on the side of this page. He has a book just for Martin kit guitars. It will go from start to finish in an organized way. Another option is to download a copy the Steward MacDonald kit plans. (stewmac.com) The Martin instructions for their kits are rather thin. There is lots of info on the web including John Hall's videos for each of the processes you need to do or even look at some of the build blogs on this site. But without some sort of step by step guide to know what to look for you will miss important steps.