Assemble before paint?

[Audiowonderland]

Do you assemble the instrument before doing finish work? Would having the bridge inserts in the body before finish be an issue?

 

[ragamuffin]

Finish first, then assemble.

 

[Rick]

I always finish first. 

 

[TBurst Std]

As has been said, finish first.
That said, if you want to install inserts 1st.  That’s ok
Tape them off

End result is you’ll be scraping finish of the inserts or removing finish from the inserts holes.  Both are a job.  Which would you prefer to do?

 

[stratamania]

It depends. If you know everything is going to fit together, intonate correctly etc then finishing can be done first. If not an assembly followed by disassembly is a good idea when building from scratch.

If a body from Warmoth has inserts in it, finishing then assembling is not really a problem as they can be covered as already suggested.

I always dry fit everything to check things prior to assembly in any case.

 

[phatstats]

It depends. If you know everything is going to fit together, intonate correctly etc then finishing can be done first. If not an assembly followed by disassembly is a good idea when building from scratch.

If a body from Warmoth has inserts in it, finishing then assembling is not really a problem as they can be covered as already suggested.

I always dry fit everything to check things prior to assembly in any case.

This. I had my whole instrument strung up and tuned before finishing to make sure I was comfortable with it, since there's no easy "undo" after finishing is done. I actually despised the 24 fret access on my neck and ended up disassembling and then grinding out a quite deep bevel on the body, which added a ton in my opinion primarily playability but also aesthetically, so very glad I had dry assembled to know that this was a big problem for me ahead of time.

 

[PhilHill]

It depends. If you know everything is going to fit together, intonate correctly etc then finishing can be done first. If not an assembly followed by disassembly is a good idea when building from scratch.

If a body from Warmoth has inserts in it, finishing then assembling is not really a problem as they can be covered as already suggested.

I always dry fit everything to check things prior to assembly in any case.

. I agree. This has always been SOP when building custom cars, bikes, and many other types of building. You get all your parts together, assemble everything to check fit and alignment. Then you disassemble it all and paint and finish, then do final build keeping in mind that the paint and chrome add thickness and may require some slight mods to allow final assembly............ :icon_thumright:

 

[Audiowonderland]

The neck, body and hardware all came from warmoth so I am not too concerned about things fitting together

 

[stratamania]

The neck, body and hardware all came from warmoth so I am not too concerned about things fitting together

They usually will but you never know and it is still worth checking, if you have not already done so, that the parts do fit.