My first Warmoth Build (and the hardships) COMPLETE!

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nickname009

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So I've been interested in the 7/8th teles and haven't found a single person that's owned one, I decided to bite the bullet and build one myself.
Now i'm no luthier, but I have worked in a guitar repair shop for over 3 years so building guitars isn't too difficult, but when it comes to finishing I'm a complete virgin and I wanted to save some money when ordering so I thought it'd be a good experience to finsh a guitar myself. After hours and hours of reading on many different forums and googling etc I decided that I'd go with the simplest method, a colored danish oil finish and hand rubbed. I decided to document all this, just because!

And so the journey begins! Here are the body specs:

Model: 7/8 T-Style
Orientation: Right handed
F-Holes: None
Scale: 24-3/4"
Wood: Swamp Ash
Rout: Top Rout
Pickup Rout: Humbucker (Neck), None (Middle), Humbucker (Brdg)
Controls: None
Bridge: Tele® Bridge
Jack Rout: 7/8" (22mm) Side Jack Hole
Neck Pocket: Strat® Shape
Mounting Holes: Standard 4 Bolt
Contours: Contoured Heel / Tummy Cut / Forearm Contour
Battery Box: No Battery Box Rout

It arrived today in Sydney I immediately began unboxing and began checking the specs, hardware etc.



Upon unboxing, I run into the first small problem:



I ordered it for humbuckers and you can see the dip in bridge route. I emailed warmoth and they said this is normal as the body was originally routed for a tele bridge pickup and since asking for a humbucker routing, this is what's left of it. This was a showcase body. Though I'm sure the hardware will hide it, I think it would've been nice to know ahead of time before ordering it to be routed for a humbucker that this was going to happen instead of having it surprise me like so.

matching the hardware:



not completely aligned, the pickguard may need to be shaved down, hopefully not.

neck plate matches up




bridge is just about right and does cover up the routing dip.



This is where I begin the finishing...




Watco Danish oil RED MAHOGANY. Ordered online, the color of it on the watco site looked great!
And so I put on the first coat, and I do the back only. Just to see what it looks like on swamp ash, no grain filler.



It's alright, but the color isn't what I expected, it's a little bit too maroon/purply for me, I don't mind it but we'll see what happens when I go through everything. No grain filler has also made it a little bit blotchy and uneven, you can see the differences in certain parts of the wood. This is where I decide to sand it down with 220, and reapply with 320 wet sanding, as I've read, this method helps to have the danish oil act as a grain filler.



Looks much better I'd say. Still needs work however, as it still seems a tad blotchy to me, if anybody's got any tips on how to get it smoothed out and more even i'm all ears! I'm letting it dry overnight and will continue in the next day or two. More to come!
 
Whelp, I've never done wood, but the only way I know of to get a close to perfectly flat/even surface, is to keep going up in how fine of grit your sandpaper is. I've done things down to 2000 grit, and even then it still needed to be polished in varying increments to get rid of most imperfections. On metal it normally shows up as pits or scratches, but I'm guessing wood will show up as uneven grain, etc. I think you would need to use a sanding block, and stay away from the edges or you will either cut through the color by mistake, or put a sharp edge on a normally round edge. In the end though, so long as your color is even and acceptable to you, you will prolly have way more luck getting out the unevenness in the clear coat than you will in the color. I've had really good painters tell me the evenness of the surface during color coat doesn't matter as long as the color itself is even. Any pits, valleys, humps, etc., can be taken out in the clear coat.

Take this all with a grain of salt, because I've really only attempted to paint (I mean paint for real, not rattle can) one time seriously, and I had to go back to bare metal 3 times before getting it right.

To me, the color evenness in your last pic looks fine. From there I would start the clear coat, wet sand, clear coat, wet sand, etc., polish phase. Oh, and fwiw, the clear coat would/will prolly make better grain filler than oil would IMO as it prolly won't soak into the wood so much. With metal, (and I'm guessing wood if you're doing a solid color), you normally use primer to "fill" most unevenness or imperfections, (mostly due to cost, and the fact that primer sands more easily than paint and/or clear coat), but that's not horribly realistic using something (oil on wood in this case) that will soak into the surface of what you are wanting to paint.

Also if/when you sand and/or polish the clear coat, don't stay in one spot too long, or you will "melt" the clear causing you to have to let it cure, and start over. If you use a catalyzed clear, you will have a deadline on how long you can realistically wet sand and polish it before it becomes too hard. If you use a rattle can for the clear, then (I believe, so do your own research) the longer it cures before you wet sand/polish, the better chance you have of not cutting through it.

Worst case scenario is that you end up with a fugly finish, and you have to take it all back down to bare wood and start again. Just decide ahead of time how important the finish is to you, and make yourself refuse to move on until it is up to your standard.
 
thanks moronmountain for the advice

I actually planned on it just leaving this in a natural wood finish. So the danish oil is as far as I plan to go. I just don't want it looking like a school project is all. I'll keep at it with wet sanding and applying a few more coats and see if it turns out alright, and maybe top it off with some tung oil in the end
 
nickname009":3heiptap said:
thanks moronmountain for the advice

I actually planned on it just leaving this in a natural wood finish. So the danish oil is as far as I plan to go. I just don't want it looking like a school project is all. I'll keep at it with wet sanding and applying a few more coats and see if it turns out alright, and maybe top it off with some tung oil in the end
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That's cool, but remember that the grit you're using will only even out the surface so much without sanding down the grain as well. I think you will come to a point where you won't be able to get it perfectly flat without using a product that will physically fill in the lows and valleys. When you come to that point, simply decide to be content with the raw finish or not. Good luck! :thumbsup:
 
I've had success by coating/filling the body with FRESH shellac, many coats, and sanding that flat. Then nitro the hell out of it. Not what you are going for but so easy. Proper curing/drying between proceedures is critical as is the humidity/temp. Buffing/wet sanding is an amazing experience! Expensive too.
 
So i let it dry overnight, and I decided to give the front part a go today, I don't know what happened today but everything's comin up NICE!!!!
Here's how the front's lookin so far (still need to wipe off excess)


BADASS!!

Second pass. Definitely lookin great! Gonna leave it like this and let it dry and see what happens!

 
here's a redo of the back I've done today, not touching the front today it's dry but not as dry as I'd like it to be, a tad tacky. Wouldn't hurt to let it dry another day.

 
If you have the contoured heel, which it appears you do...make sure you use 2 different size screws for attaching the neck or you will go all the way through the fretboard.
 
snowdog":22n6sjvz said:
If you have the contoured heel, which it appears you do...make sure you use 2 different size screws for attaching the neck or you will go all the way through the fretboard.
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Right with ya! Bought the set screws from warmoth with 2 short and 2 regular sized ones.
 
welp.. as the days have gone by i've decided that I in fact don't like the look of the guitar as it is and adding more colored danish oil will just make it worse so I've decided to give it a matte black finish that still allows the wood grain to be shown, like the N4 matte black.

Another problem i ran into is sanding it back down just rubbed the danish oil in even more, so I had to scrape with a razor blade which took nearly 3 days and it's STILL not getting everything off, you can still see small specs of purple all over the body.






sanded and prepped, first coat:



 
nickname009":1omm3zn1 said:
I ordered it for humbuckers and you can see the dip in bridge route. I emailed warmoth and they said this is normal as the body was originally routed for a tele bridge pickup and since asking for a humbucker routing, this is what's left of it. ... I think it would've been nice to know ahead of time before ordering it to be routed for a humbucker that this was going to happen instead of having it surprise me like so.
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totally agree.

Warmoth has gotten a lot more impersonal than they used to be. 15 years ago, they said in their catalog, tell us if you're planning to do a clear finish on the body you're ordering, and we will pick out a piece with nice grain for you. 8 years ago, I ordered a body blank and told them clear finish, and got sent one with a knot in it. I emailed; they said they don't pick out pieces any more unless you pay an extra fee for that, like $20 or something. they said I could pay to ship back the blank with the knot, and pay that extra fee, and then they would pick out a nice piece of wood for me.

sheesh. they do make great stuff, but still.
 
_actual time_":1xdnpdq0 said:
...Warmoth has gotten a lot more impersonal than they used to be. 15 years ago, they said in their catalog...
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I hear ya. Years ago, they had a "store front" at their facility. You could walk right in and talk eye-to-eye. Back then if Ken, Steve, or Brian knew you, they'd let you walk thru the stock racks and pick out your own body. They even used to have "garage sales" twice a year in the shop for us locals. They'd set-up tables and tables and tables of bodies and necks. And if you had cash in hand and didn't mind doing a little dancing with Ken, you were rewarded with amazing deals...strat bodies for $35, all rosewood necks for $75.

Those days are long gone. The "store front" is now filled with cubicles of dudes on phones and computers. But IMO, Ken's shop still makes the best bolt-neck guitar parts out there.
 
2nd coat put on earlier this morning. the back's lookin better, the front still needs work.







I will probably do something about that little dip before completing the build.
 
3rd very thin coat, using a cloth and just wiping along the grain.

didn't put much on the back as it's already looking like how i imagined, the front i'm not sure what's happening with it, it's not there yet.





I steel wool inbetween every coat, but I don't sand. I'm thinking I may need to sand to get this all evened out a bit more, the sheen isn't evened out as of yet.. any ideas?
 
No offense, but after all those scrape marks it's suffered I'd seriously consider having someone paint it some solid color...that would maybe fill them and make for a better look.
 
snowdog":1h1w7yv1 said:
No offense, but after all those scrape marks it's suffered I'd seriously consider having someone paint it some solid color...that would maybe fill them and make for a better look.
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i'm beginning to think in that direction, the scuffs and scrapes are from trying to get the original danish oil off. I'm on the edge of giving up and just throwing this in a fire! lol
 
Yeah man, you've gotta get all those deep scrapes and sanding grooves out before you throw any stain or dye on it, or they're gonna really be noticeable. You could probably grain fill it and then paint it a solid color, but that's more work/challenging than just the stain.
 
Man... that thing looks like shit brother :(

Edit: Sorry to be so blunt... I really hope you can get it sorted because it looked gorgeous out of the box... everything you've done hasn't been a positive though, I think you are systematically making it worse...
 
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