Everything is Brown!

Ready for my closeup Mr. Lucas

The body has been scraped, sanded, and prepped.  My dyes and shellacs have been mixed.  And I've done my test color strips.  I guess it's now or never...

Let's finish this sucker!

One odd note:  After I sand the body to 400 grit - I usually brush off all the sawdust with a large brush, then wipe the body down with mineral spirits to get off all the dust on the surface and in the wood pores. Finally, I use a tack cloth as a final way of getting all of the dust off the body - so it doesn't get trapped under the finish.  For some reason the tack cloth left a sticky residue on the cocobolo strip in the middle. It was bad enough that I had to remove it with acetone.  I'm not sure what happened - but if you are playing the Luthier Home game - it's something to look out for.

Pictured: "Practical" effects

I taped off the sides of the body with painter's tape so that I would keep the dye to just the top.

Yeah, if you've ever used painter's tape when painting a room - you know how effective it is.

I had mixed up the brown dye earlier in the day.  Again, I'm using TransTint concentrated dye with denatured alcohol as the solvent.  I rubbed the dye on using an old cotton rag - going with the grain.

"Think it'll work?"
"It would take a miracle"
"Bye-bye!"

The dye is really wonderful to work with.  It goes on great, dries quickly, and looks fantastic

"You look marvelous!"

The dye dried remarkably fast (a plus over water-based dyes).  Like all of my test strips the color seems to be less vibrant once it drys.  But when I hit it with the shellac it should come right back to life.

Pictured:  Mostly dead (which is slightly alive)

I didn't take any pictures of it but the dye did spill over the top and run down the sides in a couple of places.  I had to drop back to 220 sandpaper to get rid of the blemishes on the sides of the guitar (then work my way back up to 400 to match the rest of the body).  I'm not saying that taping the body off doesn't work - it does.  Just don't use painter's tape.  It's pretty useless.  When I did the second coat of stain I used plain old masking tape to tape/mask off the body and it worked much better.  It has a higher tack which keeps it adhered to the body.  Just be careful - if I had used the masking tape directly on the maple - it probably would have pulled away some of the wood when I removed it.

Round 2: Fight!

After the first pass had dried I sanded it down a bit and hit it a second time.  The color is good.
So, I'm not going to go for a third pass.  It's time to put a coat of shellac on this puppy.

I'm using shellac for three things:  1) To add depth to the color and flame of the maple.  2) To seal the cocobolo (which doesn't take a finish well but does take shellac well - and I can add a finish over that). 3) To act as a sanding sealer - which helps fill the wood pores and seal off the color/dye from the finish.

Now that the top is stained I am going to shellac the whole body (then spray the whole body) so now is a good time to mount the guitar on a spray stick.  This will make it easy to get at the whole body all at once and allow me to hang the body for drying.  It's also useful for mounting the body in my bench vise.  So, handy all around!

On a stick...

One other note about finishing:  After I put on a coat or two of shellac - I'm going to use a true pore filler to flatten out the top (which will require more sanding to even it out) then I will finally be able to spray the Nitrocellulose Lacquer on the body - which is my top coat.

"That's some funky lemonade you got going there baby"

There are a few ways to apply shellac: with a brush, with a sponge/rag, or using a pad (for when you are doing a french polish).  I started out using a foam brush.  It's supposed to cut down on visible brush strokes and give you a smooth result.  Well, that was not my experience...

That's not...
...right?

I was, in fact, kind of disheartened by how bad this first coat of shellac looked.  I thought it kind of ruined the color - making it a greenish-yellow.  Or to call a spade a spade - babyshit brown.
A few things were going on here:

1. The shellac wasn't fully dry when I took the above photo.  
2. I put WAAAAY too much on - the coat was very thick.  
3. I went over my mistakes as they were drying - which you shouldn't do with shellac.  You should wait until it's dry before applying more shellac.

Once the first coat was dry I switched to a rag and applied the shellac a bit thinner.  I was able to even out the look, color, and thickness of the shellac with the second coat - and it looks better.

One of the great things about shellac is that it dissolves itself - so when you put on a second or third coat - it is melting into the previous coat.  This helps cover up boo boos.  And I'm good at making the boo boos - so anything that helps cover them up is appreciated.

Much more better!

What you can't see is how uneven the shellac really is still.  The back has drips and streaks and the cocobolo has a gummy film of shellac that needs to be dealt with.  My next task is to sand the shellac a bit to even it out (but not too much) and apply a third coat.

Oh, look... More Binding...

That'll buff right out...

Now that the body has most of the holes routed/drilled it's time to start fixing my earlier mistakes.
When I left off with this build (seven years ago!) the binding was incomplete and in the intervening years it has developed a few additional - oh let's call them "issues."

Looks fine (if you turn your head and squint a bit).

A piece fell off around the smaller horn (and that broken piece is long gone), a couple of cracks have been there all along, a section came unglued, and I never did the bend around the bigger horn properly in the first place.  So!  There's much to do.

Don't be so picky. 

The answer to all my problems.

This binding (unlike the plastic binding I used on the Les Paul build) is made of Cocobolo.  A fabulous wood that is dense, oily, aromatic, and water resistant.  If you have ever tried to bend wood before then you know water is usually an important part of the process.  Not so much with Cocobolo. This stuff is so dense and oily it's one of the few wood types in the world that doesn't float.  You pretty much just use heat to bend cocobolo.  In this case - the same heat gun we used for the Les Paul binding.

Feelin' Hot, Hot, Hot!

Also, because Cocobolo is so naturally oily you have to "degrease" it before you glue it.  So keep some Acetone on hand prior to gluing. Wipe all of the cocobolo pieces down with a rag dipped in acetone. Again, this stuff isn't the best thing in the world for you (according to the State of California) - so don't bathe in it.

Look! I found my Special-purpose!

I can't speak for other woods but with Cocobolo you really have to "listen" to the wood while you're bending it.  I usually use a stethoscope...

I'm sure there is a joke in here somewhere about men "listening" so I'll just let you fill in the blanks.

But seriously, as you apply the heat the wood will very quickly go from stiff to pliable.  It's not a specific amount of time (or heat) but usually it's less than a minute of direct heat before it starts to bend.  If you see the wood turning black or the wood resins bubbling you've gone too far - ease back on the heat.  You want it JUST before that point.

The thing about heating and bending wood this way is that you really need a third hand.  One hand to hold the heat gun, one hand to bend/reshape the wood and a third hand to tape it down.

A fourth hand to photograph it all wouldn't hurt either

If you don't tape the binding down immediately - as it cools it will start to go back to it's original shape.  It won't completely go back to it's original shape but you will lose a lot of those lovely curves you just created.

Quick tip: Don't use foil duct tape (or actual duct tape) like in the picture.  Use low tack masking tape or painters tape.

Like with plastic binding - you can use a bunch of different things to glue the binding down with.  On this particular evening I used medium viscosity super glue.  Since this is a wood binding being glued to a wood guitar body - you could use PVA (Wood) glue and it would give you more working time.
I wanted to scrape and sand the body in the same night as gluing the binding down - so I chose superglue.  Also - it's supposed to work better with cocobolo.   I'll let you know.

Remember to use just enough to glue your fingers together but not enough to glue what you actually wanted adhered.

Mmmmm... Toasty

So, remember when I said use enough heat to bend the binding but not enough to cook it?
Yeah, "Do as I say.  Not as I do."  This is a little cooked.  I'm hopeful the charred parts will scrap off.
Patience is a virtue.  Just not one of mine.

The glue on the above piece of binding has dried and this little section is ready to be cleaned up.
You use a similar process as you would for plastic binding: scrape the sides with a card scraper (or small plane) and sand smooth.  One thing that is different about using cocobolo is that the oils can stain adjacent wood while you are sanding (which it did for me).  I also used a utility razor blade as a card scraper as it is good for detail work.

Pictured: A lack of virtues

You may be able to see that in the picture above the bit on the end is broken.  I tried to force the cocobolo to bend too much too soon.  Take your time and this won't happen.

Oh look!  New problems.

One of the things that you learn working with wood bindings is that if you heat up an old section of previously glued binding for too long - it may come UN-glued.  I'm not sure how you would avoid this (tape the old binding down?) but thankfully it's an easy fix - and in this case not completely unhelpful.  I plan on trimming the two pieces of binding until the meet in the middle. Having them free like this let's me test the fit as I trim them to the correct size.

In process...

 I was able to clean up quite a few of the binding issues but not all of them.
...and I was starting to get sloppy - so I stopped for the night partway through the process.

I'll be honest - probably the most valuable lesson I've learned from building guitars is knowing when to just stop for the night and pick it up the next day.

There is more fiddly work to be done but this body is one step closer to being a guitar than it was yesterday.

Not quite there yet...

Lessons learned?  For those playing the Luthier Home Game (or anyone who works with wood) some people find the sawdust of Cocobolo irritating to their sinuses.  I did. Wearing a mask when using it is probably a good idea.

Cocobolo is still one of my favorite woods to look at.  Maybe not one of my favorites to make bindings from.  But as it's the only wood binding I've tried so far - I have no basis for comparison.
Still, it cleans up real nice.

Getting purdy.