Stringing the Guitar

Well, I have not finished several things including the final clear coat finish, but I couldn't wait to try it out.  So I went ahead and put the strings on it temporarily.  I mentioned in the last post that I used wood glue on the bridge.  I found out that was not the best choice.  As I tightened the strings almost all the way to where I wanted, there was a loud pop.  I wasn't sure what it was at first, but it turned out to be the bridge-to-body glue bond breaking.  It didn't move a whole lot because the pins were still sticking through the body holding the strings.
So I cleaned the wood glue off and used Gorilla Glue on the retry.  That worked much better.

So after all that, here's how it looks.

I am pretty happy with the way it looks and sounds (mostly).  The finish has some issues and I found that at least one of the frets is too high.  The action is too high as well, but I think I can trim down the saddle to fix that.  I'm going to play with it a little bit and then remove the strings to apply the finish.  All in all, it is close to finally being done and it is not so bad.

Nut and Bridge

Installing the nut was simple.  I bought a man-made ivory nut and installed it with just a little glue.

The bridge was a little more complicated.  I bought this part instead of making it.  It is made of ebony wood and I was able to buy matching pins for it.  I also bought the saddle that installs in the bridge.  I had to file that down to size and shape.

The distance from the nut to the bridge saddle is critical.  In my case, it was to be 25.55 inches according to the book I'm using.  It also has to be perfectly centered, parallel to the nut and perpendicular to the strings.  I glued it on the body with some wood glue.

I still have to drill holes for the pins.  Holes are in the bridge, but not the soundboard.

Staining the Neck

I used the same type of spray stain on the mahogany of the neck as on the rest of the guitar.  This time it was a color called Red Mahogany.  I put on three coats and here's a close up of part of it after staining:

Neck Fret Dots and Filler

Installing the fret dots was pretty straightforward.  Still, I managed to screw up the easy.  Some of my dots are out of line because of poor planning and a wandering bit on my drill press.  In the end, I decided to just go with what I had and not try to fix it because shifting a hole on the fretboard would be even more obvious than a shifted dot.
Here's the front and side views showing the larger dots on the front and the smaller dots on the side.

Before staining the mahogany on the neck, I had to use wood filler as I did on the walnut.  I used a mahogany-colored filler this time.  Here's the neck with the filler applied followed by a picture of the neck after removing the filler.

Head Inlay

I decided to inlay a "W" on the head.  I bought an inlay blank 1"x2" and traced the pattern I wanted.  Then I cut it out using a special blade I bought for my coping saw that is omni-directional.  It was pretty easy to do.

I used an X-acto knife to trace the pattern onto the head and then decided it would be easiest to use the same knife to clean out the space for the inlay.  Most people use a router to route out the space, but this seemed risky to me.  It maybe took a while longer, but it was relatively painless.

Here's the inlay sitting in place before gluing:

To glue it in place, I mixed regular wood glue with dust from the walnut wood, hoping the fill the gaps so that the stain would look good.  I can see the glue in the gaps now so I'm not sure it worked too well.

I used the same wood filler as I did on the walnut back and sides of the body and then stained it with the same stain.  Before staining, I taped off the inlay and the rest of the neck.  Here's the taped step and the stained finish.

Staining the Body

I decided some time ago to have a sunburst finish on the front of the guitar.  I looked up some videos on YouTube about how to apply the finish and it looked pretty easy with the spray finish I chose.  The back and sides I wanted to darken up somewhat, but not change drastically.

I stained the walnut back and sides first.  As with the wood filler, I taped over the inlay on the spine and tail because I did not want them to be stained.  I taped over the binding as well.

The color I used on the walnut was called tobacco brown.  Here's what the back looked like after staining:

You can still see the wood grain but it is a bit darker.  I'm not completely in love with it, but not too bad.

The fun part was staining the front.  I started by staining the entire front with a color called vintage amber.  I taped over the sides and the neck opening before spraying.  I also stuffed some paper in the sound hole to keep from spraying the inside.

Next, I sprayed a red mahogany around the edges.  This is done by spraying to the opposite edge of the face so that you only really hit the edge.  That leaves a gradually thicker spray as you move to the edge.

I sprayed the red in a wider band than the brown I put on top of it.  That leaves a brown-red-yellow sunburst effect.  With the red and brown I covered the rosette as well.

Once the stain was dry, I removed the tape and cleaned off any stain that was on the binding.  For effect, I propped up the neck on the body for this picture:

Some thoughts about this step...

I didn't mention it before, but I used a sanding sealer between the filler and the stain.  Then for some reason, the front looked fine after staining, but the back and sides had some strange spots.  I couldn't make them better by spraying more so I eventually sanded off all the brown and started over.  Various parts of the body, notably around the edges of the front, seemed to have the grain raised up after spraying.  I'm not sure if they got too wet with stain or if I just didn't sand them well enough.  Hopefully, I can fix this after the clear coats.  I'm not overly happy with the vintage amber on the rosette.  I don't know if it would have been better unstained or not because I am also not thrilled with the look of the unstained inlay on the spine and tail.

Wood Grain Filler on Body

Before applying a finish to the body of the guitar, I needed to fill the pores of the walnut with a wood filler.  Walnut is very porous and if you look closely you can see lots of holes in the surface.  The wood filler fills those holes without changing the appearance of the wood too much.  I used a medium brown tinted filler.

I taped off the inlay on the spine and on the tail to protect them from the filler and painted the filler first on the back and then later on the sides.  Here's the before and after on the back.  The blue stripe is the tape over the inlay before the filler was applied.  The second picture was after the back had been scraped and sanded, leaving it much as before, but with the filler in all the holes.

You can see that the appearance did not change much, but you can really tell a difference when you run you hand across the back.  It is much, much smoother now.

I did the same process on the sides.  Here's a picture with the filler applied.

The front is curly maple and it does not need a wood filler.  It is not a porous wood and so I could skip it.