12 String Telecaster: Fucking Glue Spots

Ok, did I say that the 12 String Telecaster kit had no obvious glue spots? Well, I was wrong. I got the kit out today to do some more sanding and to hunt for possible glue spots on the flame maple veneer (just in case :o). I'm leaning towards a trans black finish on the top, so I applied a weak wash of black dye to start to pop the grain and as a pre-colour just in case there's any glue spots to uncover.

A weak wash of black dye to highlight any glue spots.

The flame started to pop alright, but unfortunately I uncovered glue-a-plenty on the veneer. There's big gloops of glue around the binding near the neck pickup route, and it continues around most of the top half of the guitar. How the hell do you spill so much glue getting the binding on there and not clean it up?

A real mess around the binding

I'm pretty pissed off to be honest. These factories will build a kit with the thinnest of thin veneers to save money, but will then slather glue all over it to make finishing said veneer next to impossible. I don't know how I'm going to clean this glue up without sanding right through the veneer. I might try a few rounds of Goof-off Adhesive Remover on there to see if it helps, but I'm not holding out much hope. At this rate my nice flame maple 12 string is going to be covered with a solid colour finish. Not happy Jan!!

Black Ash Telecaster: Trace Dye & Glue Spots

Having finally sanded the body of the Black Ash Telecaster with 180, 240 and 360 grit, she was ready to accept some colour. And so, without further ado, it was on with the first pass of black Colortone dye.

In general the colour looked great and was showcasing the grain nicely, but a couple of areas required immediate attention. These amounted to glue spots and other irregularities that just weren't accepting colour. The glue spots could be sanded out quite easily with 180 grit paper.

However, those lines on the front (photo 3) didn't seem to be glue. Do be honest I dont know what they were. They kinda following the grain and have proven to be very stubborn. No amount of sanding could budge them! I'm thinking that I might hit these with a little dye mixed with the Tru-Oil when it comes time for the clear coats. Did you know you could mix Colortone dye with Tru-Oil?? Well you can, but that's for the next installment!

Burley 335: Sanding the Figure

I started sanding the top of my 335 with the Birdseye burl maple top today. Man what a bitch!! I started with 240 grit and quickly realised that this was too coarse - the grit quickly scored deep scratches all over the veneer. This stuff has grain going all over the place so it's very difficult to 'sand with the grain'. I'm sanding top-to bottom like I always do, but this stuff is more like end grain to sand than anything else!

Anyway, I quickly skipped to 360 grit, and this has made things much better - I've been able to remove most of the original scratches from the veneer and the top is slowly getting smooth. One of the big issues I'm now facing is glue spots. I am thinking now that I might like to dye the top veneer, but large patches of glue exist in and around each of the burls. The factory has quite kindly filled the burls with some kind of bog to give the veneer a much flatter surface. Unfortunately, in doing so the area surrounding each burl is one large glue spot (or so it seems).

I'm slowly going around each patch of glue and sanding it out. It's very slow going with 360 grit I can tell you. Here's a couple of patches that I've cleaned up.

I reckon it's going to take me a week just to get the 360 grit done. Still, that's what I signed up for with this guitar building lark, so nothing to do but to revel in it and savour every new piece of wet and dry! It will all be worth it in the end. I'm thinking a darker wood tone for this one now, maybe a caramel or red mahogany with some kind of burst. I'm looking around the interweb for examples to inspire me..