Refinishing a damaged Koa / Mahogany Soloist with Tru-Oil (by a beginner)

[Dazkeirle]

So I should prefix this by saying that I bought this body for a deal, from Australia, just before the Covid stuff started (I'm in the UK).

It took 3 1/2 months and in which time my focus shifted and I made the Dreamsicle / Orange Split Fender / Prs hybrid in this forum.

https://www.unofficialwarmoth.com/index.php?topic=31700.0


So during that build, the soloist body did arrive, but unfortunately it had took some damage to the front horn. I did try a repair, but despite a good start I balls it up. I got a good colour match and fill but the clear nail varnish I used didn't cure properly.

I should prefix this by saying I have no wood working experience or practical experience at all. When I started this I owned a few sheets of sandpaper (no bench, no orbital, no facemask lol).

So, it was either put this in the cupboard or consider something else. Something I’ve always wanted, a nice no-lacquer natural finish guitar.

While I don’t want to use lacquer, I do want to use Tru-oil. I’ve gained a lot of experience using this on my orange Strat’s neck and what I learned is:

- It is easy to get a very glossy, thick hard finish if you do lots of very thin coats
-It gives a lovely lustre to the grain
-It slightly darkens the wood
-It is very repairable, if you ding it, another coat melts into the old

These are all qualities I love about TO, and that I hate about lacquer.

So, I now needed to remove the finish on the guitar, easy right, just get some sand paper. A couple of hours job?..... How wrong could I be?

I started at the horn end, creating enough damage to the finish that I was fully commited. OK on the front here what we appear to have is a layer of lacquer, a layer of paint and then the wood. The back was different, no lacquer - just paint.

I went at it with some sand paper. Yeah I need to do some research. I have absolutely no idea what to do here.

Several hours of youtube and I had a plan. Start with low grit to get the finish off. Then work through the grits (with the grain) to get it all nice and flat. Sounded easy but my god this finish was a lot thicker than I expected.

So After watching a lot more video I decided to invest in a random orbital sander. I got a range of discs and also and interface pad to make it a little less hard.

My initial attempts, even with 80 grit did very little, the sand paper got loaded up very quickly and tbh it just wasn’t doing a good job of removing.

Plus in a couple of areas where I did get through the coat (especially on the back where it was just paint) I appeared to get through to the wood, but then through to the wood but a different colour. What, why is there two different colours to this wood?

This is where I learned that wood is sealed and stained. Shazam. Now I’d accidentally got through this bit in a couple of areas it left me with no option but to remove all sander / sealer. This turned out to be much much harder than the previous steps as I soon learned.

Deflated at how hard this all was I watched more videos and realised that most people using orbitals to finish guitars did not use interface pads, and they also did not use them flat. So with the pad directly on the orbital and using a new angle-grinder, spinning chisel style motion I realised that actually I could be a bit more forceful and I started grinding through the finish fairly quickly, and importantly very evenly. I wasn’t taking chunks out as I expected to and I had a lot more control than I expected.

I spent the next few days working through the many layers of finish front and back and sides, using a variety of common sense techniques and ensuring I didn’t round over.

I purposely left the sealer / finish in the horns to finish by hand as way too risky to use power tools in there, same for the edges.

Day by day I worked away at the finish (always a little worried how rough the front was looking).

As I got to about 95% sealer removed I decided to spice it up a little I’d start working the front back flat, working the swirly marks and scratches out.

I did this by using the same grit paper I had on the orbital, but by working with the grain with both my fingers and pads using a variety of techniques (mostly from Dan on Stewmac, I know the hundreds of hours watching those videos would come in handy).

One final thing I did as I was working through most of the serious refinishing stages was remove what had bugged me in this design, and what I considered to be a flaw. The right horn sweep.

It had become apparent to me that instead of the sweep flowing into the neck pocket, it stops 50mm before it. It just has this kind of lump that doesn’t make any aesthetic sense so with some sand paper wrapped around a white board pen I gradually worked that sweep around tot he pocket and after I was much happier with how this looked.

So this is where I am now, I gotta say I love how this body looks. When I hit it with ethanol I can see the finished colours and it’s gonna be nice. I much prefer the look of mahogany to glossy black paint on the back and I’m far happier about having all the lovely Koa showing on the top instead of being covered by burst.

To anybody that gets here and thinks this doesn't actually look that hard. Trust me, it is incredibly difficult. The areas you need to do by hand require literally hours to work your way through.

I'm enjoying the process of learning how to use tools etc. Mainly as a way of education, but it would be far cheaper and better to buy an unfinished body. However that would have left this body on the scrap heap, instead it's gonna be awesome and it will be all that much better for all the love, spit, sweat, beer and occasionally blood that has no doubt made it's way into it.

Plus getting out in the garage once a day for a few hours with a beer has helped me keep my sanity in this lockdown with two kids. tbh that has been one of my main motivations (but having a cool guitar will be nice too).

 

[Dazkeirle]

This is my current mockup btw, this is kind of what I hope to achieve.

I'm going for dual concentric pots (so each pot does both tone and volume for the respective pickup), and a basic Les Paul style 3 way switch to switch between them.

I'm going to go for PRS pickups again, and am looking at replicating the PRS Tremonti, but with uncovered pickups. So likely to be a Tremonto Treble with a 250 Bass (which is really the same as the Tremonti bass but without a cover).

Bridge is already recessed and posted for a VS100, that'll work for me.

Pickup rings (I know I don't need them but direct mount looks odd to me), I'm tempted with the anomaly pickup rings. They have a kind of PRS 408 style to them.

As for neck, who knows. I think I'll wait to see what colour we have here and how much figure before I commit. It won't be lacquered though. Perhaps ebony or wenge or maybe roasted flame maple again.

 

[stratamania]

None of your images are visible. They show as no entry signs. Probably hosted on Google but permissions are not making them visible.

 

[Dazkeirle]

None of your images are visible. They show as no entry signs. Probably hosted on Google but permissions are not making them visible.

Thank you, how about now? I've uploaded to imgur.

 

[rgand]

You have done a spectacular job of getting this body ready for a finish. All the little changes, like the sweep blending the lower horn into the neck area, have made it better. Nice, so nice. I look forward to seeing more photos as the build progresses.

 

[Dazkeirle]

You have done a spectacular job of getting this body ready for a finish. All the little changes, like the sweep blending the lower horn into the neck area, have made it better. Nice, so nice. I look forward to seeing more photos as the build progresses.

Thanks so much. That really means a lot to me bumbling through this.

Right now it's still covered in scratches and there's still a few bits of sealer in awkward spots but because these are small things I can do them in the house.

Then it's the arduous job of taking it back.

I'm going to go 80 (with grain), then 120, 180 and then 220.

I'm then going to grain fill with Birchwood Casey filler / sealer and sand back to 400, gonna do that until it's entirely flat with no raised grain.

Then I'll start the tru-oil process. I think this will take many weeks.

 

[docteurseb]

Impressive job so far. I dig the much improved horn.

 

[DangerousR6]

Very cool indeed...

 

[PhilHill]

Welcome to the world of the guitar builder. Sometimes this kind of thing is what you deal with, and your doing a fine job especially for someone who hasn't done it before.
I'm impressed, you seem to have a natural bend for it. And most important of all, you realize that patience is the key to good results. My congratulations to you. :icon_thumright: :icon_thumright:

 

[stratamania]

None of your images are visible. They show as no entry signs. Probably hosted on Google but permissions are not making them visible.

Thank you, how about now? I've uploaded to imgur.

All visible now...and you have put some painstaking work into this.

 

[nexrex]

Good work there mate. It all seems to be paying off nicely  :headbang:

 

[Dazkeirle]

Good bit of progress today.

One thing that I did notice on the last few days was that the top, despite looking very uniform had a little bit of waviness to it, I guess where I had used slightly uneven pressure with the sander / paper.

It's the sort of thing nobody would notice, but I could feel it as I caressed it constantly.

I needed some way of making the paper rigid, but not too rigid, soft but not too soft, flat but not too flat. I needed to sand down but only remove the high spots (around a curve while only sanding downwards with grain.)

I actually woke up at 3am with an idea, just use the spare interface pad for the orbital as a hand pad, folded over.

This actually worked really nicely. After an hour or so of very anally retentive sand, brush, caress, sand a bit more, I levelled the several microns of difference around the contours leaving a very level finish. I'd be interested to know the variance in reality because I can't feel anything awry now, which is super because I didn't think I would achieve that.

I used the pad flat elsewhere, all around the outsides and it worked really nice for just being flat enough, but just being soft enough to really make the edges very smooth (even with 100 grit).

There are still some marks / scratches on the front but we're getting there.

 

[PhilHill]

Good idea for the sanding pad. Something I've done that way is to buy a couple cheap flip-flop sandals like the discount stores sell, and cut the soles up into squares or rectangles. They make good flexible sanding blocks.

 

[Dazkeirle]

Good idea for the sanding pad. Something I've done that way is to buy a couple cheap flip-flop sandals like the discount stores sell, and cut the soles up into squares or rectangles. They make good flexible sanding blocks.

Nice idea.

TBH I planned to get some flipflops to cut up for use behind the humbuckers (as I realise when I bought the foam specifically that's all it was), so will order some and now at least I've got something to do with the waste.

 

[rgand]

The sanding pad is a good idea. I have a piece of rubber to use but it's not really big enough for a decent sanding block. I'll remember that.

 

[Dazkeirle]

Small update today, the pots and switch arrived but unfortunately had to be returned.

I bought 2 of the smaller concentric pots but I'll bear honest, they're absolutely rubbish.

Out of 4 pots 2 registered way under 500k, with one at 440 and another at 420!

They were also very rough to turn.

So.. I've ordered some full sizes stacked concentric pots. Cts were out of stock everywhere so I've gone for alpha for now.

Still, gave me the opperunity too see how it would look. Good news is they're smaller than I'd imagined (the knobs) and I really like the setup.

Also, the carve of the body was no issue at all. I'd been worrying over nothing.

However, bit of an issue, the smaller concentric have 9mm of thread, the stacked full size only have 6mm so my days of removing material delicately with a sandling blocking may not be over as I thin out the thickness of the wood.

 

[stratamania]

Why not use a master volume and tone to give yourself more options?

I doubt I could dial things in on the fly like on a Les Paul, so how practical would a pair of concentric pots be to use do you think?

 

[Dazkeirle]

Why not use a master volume and tone to give yourself more options?

I doubt I could dial things in on the fly like on a Les Paul, so how practical would a pair of concentric pots be to use do you think?

This is a good point, absolutely.

On the fly, I'm not sure, but it's not really something I do a lot. I'm more of a setup the sound before a song, I don't really twiddle all that much during, however I do like control and options.

From the orange Strat you can probably tell that I always want the full range of options hypothetically possible, and I like simplicity. I also like problem solving and I like building interesting and curious things.

So this guitar is going to be my hot PRS Warmoth, I will be looking to mimic a Tremonti without having to own a single cut and hopefully without having to compromise any options (and without having to drill more holes).

The SCs like the Les Paul including the Tremonti have 4 independent knobs and a pickup switch, but this body only has the 3 holes so I need to do something with that.

As I explored the options I actually think 2 concentric and a master switch is quite an elegant solution, top for neck and bottom for bridge, inner for volume and outer for tone. It's a fairly original setup but gives every possible option (I want right now) without any limitations. While researching I've noticed this is though quite common on basses.

The other good thing is that it's a really low commitment thing, I can easily change out the pots for normal later on with no real changes to anything but tbh while messing with the smaller concentric while I had them, I really dug the concept.

The other overriding thing though is, I like oddities. I'm even considering the Stewmac Ultra Switch to give some splitting options but that all depends on the number of conductors in the pickups I get.

 

[JPOL007]

You have done a spectacular job of getting this body ready for a finish. All the little changes, like the sweep blending the lower horn into the neck area, have made it better. Nice, so nice. I look forward to seeing more photos as the build progresses.

Thanks so much. That really means a lot to me bumbling through this.

Right now it's still covered in scratches and there's still a few bits of sealer in awkward spots but because these are small things I can do them in the house.

Then it's the arduous job of taking it back.

I'm going to go 80 (with grain), then 120, 180 and then 220.

I'm then going to grain fill with Birchwood Casey filler / sealer and sand back to 400, gonna do that until it's entirely flat with no raised grain.

Then I'll start the tru-oil process. I think this will take many weeks.

You have done an amazing job bringing the beauty of all that grain to light. Love the job on the lower horn contour. I’ve been using abrasive material from StewMac on a build finish and love how it works. I’m not getting the sanding scratches I was getting from sandpaper. It really made a huge difference with the shellac sealing coat. Can't wait to see the final product.

 

[Rick]

:icon_thumright: