Finishing off

Category: Warlock

This weekend I finished off the body sanding (at last!) - with a pass at 12,000 grit micro mesh. It is seriously shiny - it bends the light and reflects like some sort of sci-fi special effect. The finish is mirror like, but still has a fine scratch pattern under full sunlight, when viewed at an angle. I've purchased some car polishing compound to try to get those scratches out - next weekend's job.

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Tuning pegs have been fitted. I tried it with them parallel, but they looked odd due to the top pegs ending up half behind the curve of the head. So in the end I've angled them to follow the curve of the head. Looks a bit odd on the back, but better from the front.

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I attempted making a pick guard out of some black acrylic. It went OK, but a small piece snapped off on one corner. Then when drilling the countersink holes for the screws, managed to snap off a few more bits. So I'm calling this one a practice run, and have ordered some more acrylic to try again. This time I ordered twice as much, so hopefully will have enough to do the pick guard properly, and a back cover.

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I also hammered in the bridge pins. I was a bit worried that this would crack the paint finish, as the pins had fluted edges to dig into the wood. I carefully widened the holes a bit, and sanded the paint back around the edges of the holes. In the end the paint didn't chip... but the wood cracked when the pins went in. One of them has a vertical crack from the pin to the edge, and the other one has a horizontal crack further down. I've pumped some glue into the cracks, and hopefully they will hold up under stress later.

I think it would have been easier to put these pins in before doing the paint spraying. Seems like it would have made things less stressful (but it probably would have still cracked the wood).

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When cleaning out the bridge pin holes, I also fixed up the holes for the pots and switch on the front. The paint job had closed over the holes a bit, and the electronics no longer fit through. Some careful hand sanding with a cylindrical dremel bit did the trick, and the pots and switch now fit through as they should.