Guitar Players: Show us yours!

[Ulu]

I’m still working on the Silvertone bobcat and there’s a lot of damage to the body.

The top veneer had separated from the core over 40% of its area and I had to glue that all back down. I tried to pull it all up and re-glue the whole thing but it wasn’t possible.

Maybe if I heated it up with a heat gun, but it had previously had about a 25% separation, and somebody had re-glued it with epoxy, which did not level down correctly.

Anyhow, there is no way that I’m going to refinish the entire body. This is an antique asking to stay an antique. What I did in fact is antique it a little further, because I wanted to disguise the repair work where I could.

All these areas on the body had delamination but the blue area was an old repair and I could not do anything to make this flatter.

Unless I could get the whole top veneer off and repair or replace it, the only other thing I could do is block sand the entire top and refinish the Sunburst pattern.

But the back is very nice still and I don’t wanna end up having the thing mismatched because of refinishing. I will just live with the relic look.

 

[dimples]

I’m afraid that what you see in that photograph is how I received the car five years ago.

It ran OK too once I cleaned out the carburetor and rewired it.

But the problem was this thing had a bent, patched, weak, rusted out chassis, and mostly my thread is about rebuilding that chassis.

I started reading through your thread last night, you have a lot of work on your hands. Worth every minute when you get to take it out for a spin with the knowledge the chassis isn't going to fall apart beneath you. I'm following your thread, it's inspiring to see your dedication to the project

I finished my pickguard, but it took me a couple tries to make a good one.
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There, I’m singing a song I wrote to celebrate my wife’s 69th birthday.


I was using guitar picks to spread the crack between the veneer and the core on that Bobcat. Somehow, one slipped into the crack unnoticed. It wasn’t seen until I unclamped the body days later.

So I had to spread it open again and dig that pick out. Then I re-glued the body. I will unclamp it today for a look.

Meanwhile, I bought some pieces of bone, to replace the nuts on the Speed Demon, the Bobcat, and the Stratocaster clone. The clone had a chipped nut, but the other two have the original molded plastic nuts.

I only got the first one done so far.
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That’s the Speed Demon.
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I made this custom truss rod cover for the Bobcat to replace the boring (broken) stock cover. It mimics the shape of the headstock in miniature.

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That's a great touch, really nice idea

 

[Ulu]

So the bobcat Guitar was finished in lacquer, and then shellac. I bought my first can of shellac ever…

I was shooting shellac in the garage when my wife came home early and put up the door. My insulated 70°F garage went to 50°F in about 10 seconds.

I got a lot of orange peel in the finish and I’m probably going to live with a lot of it, although it can be rubbed out.

Also there was stuff in the grain of the veneer that came out into the varnish, so it’s going to have lots of flaws.

The top had flaws in some spots that allowed stuff to seep into the grain over the years, and what goes in often comes out.

Of course there was all the delamination around the edges that I had sealed up, and mostly what I was going for here is to seal everything back up solid, so it would not delaminate again. It’s gonna have a road worn finish covered in shellac.

Anyhow I cannot begin to address this guitar further until it has dried and cured and so I put it up for at least a week.

Shellac dries in minutes, but not when you put on this much. There’s going to be sanding and rubbing involved and then I’m going to shoot the back and let it dry for another week.