Bareknuckle Super Strat - Grain Filling & Colour

I found an hour today while the wife walked to dog to actually get some building done in a makeshift man-cave that I've set up. There's no lighting, but I've got some rubber mats and some carpet down on a temporary bench.  I got the body sanded down to 360 grit, with a few water wipes to raise the grain and 400-grit cutting back. Pretty happy with the smoothness - this is a nice piece of wood! With the surface prepared, and time running out (is that the patter of dog feet I hear?) I slapped on a slurry of ebony timbermate to fill the grain.

Ebony Timbermate applied. Just gotta let it dry completely.

Fast forwad one weekend hence, and it was time to sand the Timbermate back and get some colour on. After agonising over the flames idea, I've turfed it into the too-hard basket and decided to go with straight black stain. I sanded off the Timbermate with 400 grit, and the body is now smooth as a baby's wossname. It might be even too smooth to take colour. Hmm.

Timbermate sanded off, and grain filled nicely.

I got out the Colortone black dye and applied a first stain coat. I've been tossing around colours for the last fortnight, but trans black finally won out. I'm certainly a creature of habit! The stain is drying as I type and soon I'll be able to apply a second round. It's starting to look good, although there's a couple of spots where the dye hasn't taken as well as I'd like. Always seems to happen with black dye (well mine anyway). Too much sanding I'll wager. I may need to hit these with a stronger dye soluton, or add some Colortone to the Tru-Oil when the time comes.

First coat of Colortone Black dye

Bareknuckle Super-Strat

Well, it's a couple of weeks since the man-cave fire incident. I dried my tears, collected together a few tools, and have managed to clean out a spot in the shed to create a new workspace, I bought a replacement electric drill and I'm now in a position to actually start building again.

A week after the accident, I found a box on my doorstep - an Ash super strat kit sent to me by Andy in the Pitbull Guitars forum as a pick-me-up after all the fire hassles. It was an amazing act, completely unexpected, and really choked me up. They really are an amazing bunch of guys and gals over there in the forum. The kit is actually a special order (not an off-the-shelf kit by any means), with no front cavity and only pickup and bridge routes.

A Pitbull Guitars Special-Order, Ash Super-Strat

Since it arrived I've been itching to get going on the kit, and today I managed to get a simple mock build together. I loosely positioned the bridge, ran the outside strings to test for neck straightness, and used my new electric drill to bolt the neck into place.

Neck looks straight in the pocket.

It all took less than 10 minutes with the new drill. Do you know I've never tightened neck bolts with the drill until today? Such a time saving, and no stripped screws! Anyway she's looking pretty sweet.

Neck bolted into place and looking good.

Given that the top of the guitar is so clean, I'm planning on leaving her a bare-knuckle build with no rings around the pickups and just bare wood as far as the eye can see. A real no-nonsense shredder.

The Ash grain on this 2 piece body is pretty good and should look great with some grain filling and stain. For a finish I was thinking ebony or walnut Timbermate in the grain, and a trans-black dye job over the top. I was also thinking it might be cool to add some "natural wood colour" hot-rod flames. As with my previous builds sporting hot-rod flames, the idea would be to mask off the flame sections with artists frisket. Then the stain would be applied, hoping that the masked off wood remains clean and untouched. Another option might be to mask off everything *except* the flames and seal those up good with Tru-Oil before trying to stain the rest of the body. Hmm, as this is completely new territory, I might have to actually spend some time testing these techniques!

First draft - hotrod flames.

Anyway, as you can, see I dummied up some flames to try to get a feel for how it would look on the body. I think the black/natural contrast could really work with this design and I'm really excited to give it a try. I must say, I do like how the flames look on the body. Time to start some testing while I get the body sanded and the grain filled. Stay tuned for test results!