Hey baby, where you been?

I've been right here, fool!

For the last couple of months I've been giving the guitar body on this build all the love.  What about the neck?  I guess it's time to see where we're at.

I bought this neck from Warmoth soon after I started this build - back in 2010.
It was then (and is now) ridiculously expensive.  I would never spend that much on a neck ever again.  But at the time - it made sense.  I was unsure of my abilities as a builder and had precious little experience.  Plus, the mechanics of a twelve string seemed to be overwhelming.
How strong did it need to be to carry the strain of twelve guitar strings tuned to pitch?  I had no idea.

Waiting on your sorry ass...

So, I bought the neck and other than installing the tuning keys and putting a finish on it - it needed nothing.  That certainly is one upside.  The build for this was done by professionals - so it looks good and it functions well.  No arguments there.  But I did want to personalize it a bit.  And of course that's where I got into trouble.  Back in 2010 I added the black stripe and the Irish 5 penny coin..  I was new to these things and as such - it didn't go as well as I would have liked.  Knowing what I know now I would do things a little different.but since fixing these errors would take a looooong time and I'm not sure the coin could be fixed (it's epoxied in there) I'm going to move forward and accept that the headstock won't be perfect.

...to finish what you started.

So, what are we doing?  I'm adding some color to the face of the headstock.  The neck is made of maple (the fingerboard is ebony) which is the same wood as the guitar top.  The difference is that the maple of the body is figured/flamed and the neck is not.  Also, the neck is quarter-sawn wood whereas the guitar top is plain-sawn wood, and finally, the two maples were of different colors - as happens when taking wood from two different trees.  So, my goal is not to match the two woods but rather put them in the same ballpark (I'd be happy with the same zip codes to be honest).

Shellac in esse

To put the headstock in the same color palate I needed to dye the headstock with the same dye and also use shellac.  It became clear to me that the shellac added a lot to the color.  So, I mixed up a small batch of dye and shellac.  You may have noticed in the above photos that I also taped up the neck and filled the tuning peg holes with paper towels to keep the dye/shellac to one area - the face of the headstock.  I'm going to spray the whole neck with nitrocellulose lacquer but I just want color on the face.

Shellac in potentia

I tried to grind up the shellac flakes as fine as I could - to minimize the time it took to dissolve in alcohol but there is no substitute for making this stuff 8 to 12 hours ahead of time.  Next time I will do so.  One other thing that you can't see here is that I added a little dye directly to the shellac to darken it up.  It worked a bit to deepen the color of the shellac - which was good as the neck didn't soak the dye up like the guitar top did.

Wad

Wet

Repeat

After a few coats of dye and about four coats of shellac I was left with...

Whatcha gonna do now?

A slightly brown face.  And all of my mistakes highlighted by the dye.  Oh, goody!
In these last few pictures you can see where my chisel slipped, where the black strip was chipped, and basically everything that isn't quite right.  Ah well...

1970 Irish 5 penny coin

To help things out I used some pore filler to even out the rough spots.  As I wait for that to dry I'll do some soul searching to see if I want to try fixing some of these "beauty marks."

Hmmm...

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.

Guitar Chemistry

Anyone for a cocktail?

It's time to start mixing up some liquids in the lab!  

It's funny - if you are doing all the steps yourself - Luthiery includes Math, Chemistry, Woodworking, Electronics, Music, Art, History and a dash of Engineering.  It's like an entire high school curriculum in one.

There are many ways to finish a guitar: varnish, mineral oils, shellacs, lacquers, etc...

And those are just the top coats - the protectants for after you've dyed, stained, or painted your guitar.

The list goes on and on.  

I am planning on dying the top (the maple parts) and using shellac and nitrocellulose lacquer on the rest of the guitar.  The shellac will deepen the color I dye the maple, really make the wood figure of the butternut "pop," and it will also allow the nitrocellulose lacquer to bond to the cocobolo (and it will make the cocobolo look good too).  The Nitro will protect the wood from temperature and humidity changes while also protecting the wood from impact damages and my bodily secretions...

...get your mind out of the gutter.  My sweat!  Sweat and skin cells can stain wood all kinds of weird colors.  So, we protect the wood.  How?  Let's start with the Shellac.

Flaky

Shellac is a natural substance that comes from lac bugs.  I want to know what madman first realized you could take what looks like a bug cocoon and mix it with alcohol to make wood varnish.  You'll note the word "alcohol" is in that sentence...

Anywho, shellac comes as a pre-made liquid (in cans and sprays) but it also comes as raw flakes.
You add denatured alcohol to the flakes to make your own mixture.
I won't go into excruciating detail but the amount of flakes you add to the alcohol changes the strength or "cut" of it.  For this Guitar I am using a 2 pound cut.  If I was not going to use nitro over the shellac I would use a 3 or 4 pound cut - essentially adding more flakes to make a more viscous shellac.  But I'm essentially using the shellac as a colorant and grain enhancer and not the top coat - so it can be thinner.

Shiny, Captain

I like to use a sealable jar as I won't be using the shellac right away and it does take a while for the flakes to completely dissolve in the alcohol.  Also, seeing as the major solvent in shellac (alcohol) evaporates kinda easy - it just makes sense to me to cover it when I'm not using it.

Uh, muddy, Captain

I'll let this mixture sit for a day or two to fully dissolve the flakes and by the time I'm ready to use it - it'll be ready to go.  A few thoughts:  All kidding aside - don't use vodka to dissolve the shellac flakes.

Use denatured alcohol.   Stir, shake, or mix the shellac every now and then to help the process along.

Finally, I'm running the mixture through a paint strainer before using it on the guitar.  This stuff comes from nature (tree bark, dirt, and bug body parts included).  Any paint store will have strainers.

So, let's let the shellac sit for a bit and move on to dyes.

Should I be making a Trans joke?
Nope, I should not.

Because I'm going to be dying the maple on the top of the guitar and not staining it (and I have no idea what exact tint I should use) I'm going to make my own hue.  Or is it shade? Art class was so long ago.

For those of you wondering what the difference is between using a wood stain and using a wood dye we turn to Alan Noel, wood worker and teacher.  Quoth Alan, "Very simply put, stains are very thin paints and dyes are why your socks are red out of the washer. With stains, the pigment tends to remain on the surface of the wood and lodge in the pores, while dyes penetrate deeply and color the wood from within."

I'm using TransTint dyes for this project.  TransTint is super super concentrated dye in a liquid form. TransTint is neat stuff because it can be mixed with water, alcohol or even mixed with shellac or nitro - it's pretty versatile. Since this is my first time out with it I am doing some test strips.  I have two colors to work with: Black and Coffee Brown.

Mmmmmm.  Coffee...

In my last post I talked about trying to use real coffee to stain/dye the maple.  It didn't work out that well. One of the biggest issues being that it dries too light and because it's water based it raised the grain every time I applied a new coat of color.  So, I scrapped that idea but I still wanted the coffee color for the guitar.  The dye will go on darker and because I'm using alcohol as the solvent - it won't raise the wood grain.  The reason why I bought the black pigment is to make the color richer - but probably not how you think...

The above picture is a mixture of probably an 1/8 to a 1/4 of a cup of alcohol and maybe 4 or 5 drops of the Black TransTint dye.  Like I said - super concentrated.

I feel so naked...

I still had a scrap of maple that came from the same board the guitar top is made from.  I sanded it down with 220 grit sandpaper and hit it with one coat of the dye.

Thank you, that's much better.

It looks a little purple in this photo but it dried gray (grey?).  You can see some of the maple "flame" in the above picture.  The dye sticks to the flame more than the non-flamed parts of the wood.  That'll be important later.  I wasn't satisfied with this - so I hit it a few more times with the black dye.

Too far!  Now I'm overdressed.

The flame or figure is pretty hidden right now.  Although a good coat of shellac would still probably make it pop quite a bit.

Everything is Brown!

Then I turned the scrap over and did the same thing but with the Brown dye.  This time the camera made it look a bit more red than it is - but I have mixed lighting in my workshop - so who knows what's going on.  Then after all this coloring we act like a 1st grader and erase everything and start over.

Black - Naked but unafraid

The key here is to remove all of the dye except the stuff that's in the "flame" or figured part of the wood.  So I sanded the color most of the way off on the Black side...

Brown - feelin' worn down

And the Brown side.

Then I mixed up a 1/4 cup of the brown dye again and hit both sides of the scrap.  

And this is what we have:

First coat Black, second coat Brown

First coat Brown, second coat Brown

...and that's pretty frickin' subtle...

Did that even work?

Okay full disclosure - there's more going on here than at first glance.  After I did the second coat of dye I let them dry and hit them both with a coat of the Shellac (remember the shellac we made all the way at the beginning of this post?).  The shellac is making them both look fabulous but they are also pretty shiny and hard to photograph.  Since it's not easy to see - what's supposed to happen is the black gives the flame more depth - making it look more three dimensional.  And it does...

...a bit

...but only when you tilt the wood back and forth

...which is hard to show with a picture.

...maybe it's time to switch to video...

But really, they both look pretty sexy - and this is just scrap that I haven't sanded (or photographed well). If I had chosen a lighter brown (or any lighter color, really) the flame would probably pop a bit more because of the black.  I'm going to lightly "finish" sand them both and see what looks better.  But I think either process would work for what I want.  So, I guess this was a successful test.  I now know that either will work well.  Time will tell which will work out better.