Flamed Starcaster: Headstock Flair

More work on the Starcaster headstock this week. Since there is no shaping required this time around, as a homage to the original Starcaster look I am creating a whooping swirly thing on the headstock. This 'single piece of flair' will be sprayed black and the now world-famous Turner logo will sit inside it.

Using a frisket sheet I cut out my whooping design and carefully stuck it down on the headstock. I then masked off the rest of the headstock and neck ready for spraying with black acrylic. That  was a few days ago now.

Frisket is on and the headstock is masked. Just needs paper to cover the neck.

First coat of black acrylic spray applied.

After the first couple of coats I got some 2000 grit and wet-sanded the black to smooth it out before adding a couple more coats. I then let it sit and dry for a couple of days.

The masking came off the headstock and neck today. I'm pretty happy with how the single piece of flair came out. I tidied it up just a smidge with the craft blade, and got my acrylic logo stuck on there. Looking good! I followed this up with the first soak coat of Tru-Oil before letting her hang in my extra-special drying room for a few hours. The Tru-Oil is slowly bringing the grain in the neck to life, so hopefully she'll look nice in a month or so's time.

Single piece of Flair is on, with the logo positioned inside it.

I followed this up with the first soak coat of Tru-Oil before letting her hang in my extra-special drying room for a few hours. The Tru-Oil is slowly bringing the grain in the neck to life, so hopefully she'll look nice in a month or so's time.

First Tru-Oil soak coat on and soaking.

That last photo of the headstock is very misleading - the colour is no where near that yellow. The colour is more like what you can see in the photo of the neck above it. Anyway, now for the patient drudgery of multiple Tru-Oil coats on the neck. I'm looking forward to getting it over and done with so I can finally set the neck and have this thing actually looking like a guitar!

Flamed Starcaster: Side Finish

With the burst looking great on the front and back of the Starcaster build, the more I looked at it, the less pleased I was with how the dyed sides looked. It was time to make a tough decision. If you remember from my last update on this project, the dye didn't take on the sides in a number of places where the craftsmanship was exceedingly average. Looking at it again, I decided to apply a solid colour to the sides to cover over these patches. I re-filled the entire surface with Timbermate, applied some primer, and sprayed two coats of MTN94 "RV-99 Marron Glace" over it all. Thankfully my masking was good and none of the primer or colour made it onto the front or back.

Stain would have been better, but MTN94 has covered the bad workmanship.

I'm really glad that I made the decision. The end result is pretty damn good I reckon - much better than the stain over those shoddy patches. I'm really liking how this baby is now shaping up. I'm in a bit of a quandry about what colour to stain the neck, as I usually go with a colour to match the sides. That's not going to happen in this case - there's no way I'm going to spray the neck a solid colour as well. Maybe Amber with a bit of a dirty Tobacco burst, but I'm still thinking.

Flamed Starcaster: Dying the Burst

I have found myself with a little time away from work this week, and therefore with some time for the Starcaster build - sanding the body and getting some Colortone dye onto this beast. With these semi-hollow kits there's usually precious little sanding required for the body. Unfortunately this kit was a second that I picked up in last years Pitbull Guitars birthday sale and with it came some pretty gnarly problem areas on the top veneer and the sides.

The top veneer has some very deep scratches at the bottom of the guitar, something that I can't do anything at all about. They are so deep that I suspect any attempt to sand them out would remove the veneer altogether. I could have done a solid paint job to hide them, but that flame maple veneer is just too damn beautiful to hide, even with the scratches. There were also a few very large glue marks around the edge near the binding, but a couple of applcations of Goof-Off put pay to them.

To test whether I had properly removed the glue, I applied a weak dye solution (Lemon Yellow) to the entire front and back to make sure it was taking colour. Thankfully no remaining glue spots were evident.

Weak Colortone Lemon Yellow shows no glue spots.

On the sides, there are two large areas where the factory has needed to extend the side veneer piece to fit around the entire circumference. Pretty shoddy craftsmanship all told, but that's why it was a second! I sanded the sides with 240 and 320 to try to get rid of as much of the joins in these extensions as I could, and then filled all the remaining grain and join marks with a slurry of Timbermate. After sanding back with 400 grit the surface felt nice and smooth but didn't look any better. In my eagerness to continue with the burst I didn't do a dye test on the sides, something I would rue later on down the track. Naughty, naughty!

I let the body dry over night, wiped it all over with water a final time to remove any remaining dust from the Tmbermate, and got on with creating a burst using Colortone dyes. I actually used 5 colours this time to try to achieve a burst that gradually becomes much darker on the sides than my normal "Honey Burst". I started with Lemon Yellow all over (applied a second time) and then a little further out with a feathered ring of Vintage Amber. This was followed by a further feathered ring of Red Mahogany, and yet again by Tobacco Brown. To darken up the edge even further I got out the Colortone Black and kept applying colour to the edge, all the while blending each transition back towards the centre with the other colours.

All in all I'm pretty stoked with the result, although the aforementioned scratches are standing out vividly down towards the bottom of the body.

5 Colour Burst from Lemon Yellow to Black (sort of)

Unfortunately, when I hit the sides with a combination of Tobacco Brown and Black, my haste in preparation became immediately apparent. In addition to the sections where the wood has been joined (the glue here was never going to adequately take stain) there magically appeared several nasty glue spots around the binding.

Letting the dyed body dry completely overnight, I resolved to fix-in the colour on the front and back of the guitar before trying to fix the glue spots on the sides. I had always planned on giving the dyed guitar several coats of Tru-Oil to really pop the flame and to deepen the chatoyance in the final finish. And so, on to the body went a first soak coat of Tru-Oil and boy did the colour of the dye and the chatoyance in the maple pop. Magic!

First soak coat of Tru-Oil starts to add uber-chatoyance.

The next day I applied a second soak coat of oil to both sides and again hung it to dry. With each coat the grain is looking better and better, but the scratches are looking more and more prominent. Oh well, we can't have everything right? You can easily see the scratches in the front veneer in the photo below.

Second coat of Tru-Oil is on and soaking in.

After a third coat of Tru-Oil, I was satisfied that the dye job was protected enough to be able to tackle the glue spots on the sides of the body. It called for some more Goof-Off and a bit of a roughing up with the wire brushes; slowly working dye into the wood where it once resisted.

You can see what I was up against! In the end I got something I ws happy with, although those join lines really couldn't be hidden - no way they were going take any colour even with the wire brush treatment. Oh well, some Tru-Oil on the sides and thne it will be time for some Acrylic clear coats!

Flamed Starcaster: A New Semi-Hollow Build

With my build queue down to a single (bass) guitar at the moment, it was high time that I dive into the stack and start another! After the Burled 335 turned out to be the sweetest guitar ever, I've been itching to get another semi-hollow build going. Enter the FS-1 Starcaster kit - a kit that Adam from Pitbull Guitars practically gave away at last year's birthday special!

Unboxing the Starcaster. Flame figure is evident!

Unboxing the kit, and doing a simple mock assembly, the kit looks pretty good. The neck fit is nice and tight and the flame veneer on the top of the guitar looks really awesome. There's a few discoloured glue marks around the binding on the back and a few obvious glue spots on the front and sides, but hopefully so,me Goof-Off should take care of these.

Dry fit of the neck is tight and the body looks good.

Gorgeous flame figure just begging to be dyed.

There's a small issue with the neck at the moment, and that's a small gap between the neck and the end of the pocket. This may close up when the neck is clamped, but I'll have a look at the floor of the neck pocket just to make sure there aren't any obvious issues (lumps and bumps) in there.

Gap at the base of the neck. The neck pocket might need a little sanding.

When Adam offered this kit at a bargain basement price last September, it was with the understanding that there were actually a couple of flaws in the body.Those flaws are pretty evident on the side of the body with some patching in the side sheeting and a few deep marks.

Patching in the side sheeting.

Some not so awesome stuff on the side, but I'll cope.

These don't worry me too much. To cover them over I plan to do a dark burst fading to black on the top and back so that the sides can be stained black. If these problem areas don't take the black stain then I'm not above hitting the sides with some black spray acrylic. Whatever it takes!


All in all I'm pretty darn excited about this build. I think I'll be ordering another GFS xTrem and Wilkinson roller bridge for this, as well as GFS pickups of some description. Since I love them so much in my 175 build, I'm thinking of using Nashville Retrotron pickups, but given the bad Aussie dollar I might fallback to Entwistle or Tonerider pickups from Pitbull. Decisions to come!