Orange!

The neck is looking good so far - time to get some colour on the headstock and refinish the back. The back was easy once the sanding was completed. A layer of Danish oil, let it dry for a day and then apply a layer of wax. Once this is fully rubbed in it is impressively smooth.

The headstock was degreased and treated to 2 coats of grey primer from a spray can. Once dry (a few hours) this was gently rubbed down with the 2500 grit wet&dry before a coat of Ford Focus Electric Orange was applied. I had used this for the front panel of the valve amplifier and it is a great colour.

My wife Nicky had to break the sad news to me that my orange paint was in fact now gold. Perhaps it doesn't last for 18months in a cold wet garage. Maybe all the juicy orangey bits had gone mouldy? But the end result was not orange and therefore was not going to be staying. Another wander off to Halfords and I came back with a can of fluorescent orange paint. Even being *slightly* colourblind I knew I was on to a winner as it had orange written in big letters down the side. I also discovered spray glitter. I now knew what had to be done!

The previous gold was sanded back a little and 3 coats of the solid bright orange paint were added. Again, this was allowed to dry for a few hours before a light sand and a couple of glitter coats added before another 5 coats of clear lacquer were applied.

This was allowed to dry overnight before a further light sanding (to remove the bobbly finish from spray can painting) and then the T-cut was used to buff to a shine. Photos just don't do it justice. The paint is toooo bright for the ageing camera ;-)

Body Work

Now the neck is done apart from fitting a nut at some point, my attention turned to the body. I spent some time looking into hardwoods that combine a decent amount of strength and machinability and it boiled down to good ol' maple. I found a decent plank 2m x 22mm x 220mm at the local timber merchant for less than £20.

The tricky part of the body is the bottom section. This is mostly because there is no top section (see earlier sketch) and this has to take the full string tension whilst looking like a micrometer. I am going to use a stainless steel bolted sandwich style re-inforcing technique which I have mulled over with a few other engineers (thanks Robin / Chris)

To get the strengthening to fit together properly I'm going for a constant radius for the lower section. I borrowed a router (thanks again Chris!) and swapped the parallel fence for a pice of bent rod and this allowed me to cut out several semi-circles. There will be three glued together (with the steel in the middle one) eventually before it will be shaped to a round cross-section.

I need to draw out the shapes for the top horn and the pickup holding section too before I start getting the glue out in earnest. I can see this is not going to be a light guitar, but if it is rigid enough such that tuning one string doesn't mess up the other three then I'm happy!