Hey Freeman and other builders

[Dan Hall]

True Oil finish. Birchwood Casey True Oil. It's actually a varnish. I'm finally starting my guitar build. (Tele) Ever done this?

http://falcon.jmu.edu/~dehartcg/finish.htm

 

I just had a tele body made from a piece of sitka spruce that one of the Fender licensees had laying around. He got it from a well known high end luthier who builds classical guitars. The piece was about 2 feet square and 4" thick. The reason the classical builder didn't want it was it has ever so little grain runout, (quarter sawn but with the grain twisting from vertical at one end of the board to tilted and slightly angled at the other) making it not quite perfect for your average $10K guitar but one heck of a fine sprucecaster. The best part is that the piece was milled and stickered in 1957!!!!. Stamped right on the side of the blank. I got my old wood, but in a new guitar!

[Freeman Keller]

Hey, Dan, pretty cool. I hope you've been taking some pictures. In answer to your question about True Oil - I have not personally used it but it is one of the popular home finished used but quite a few builders. Here is the "finish" page from the Kitguitar forum - you will see Tru Oil mentioned a lot.

 

http://www.kitguitarsforum.com/forum/forum.php?which=finishforum

 

Reading the link you attached sounds pretty much like the right steps - a couple of wash coats to seal the wood, pore filling for open grained wood (you don't pore fill spruce but rosewood and mahogany both need it), staining if you are going to do that (I stain my mahogany necks to be the same color as the rosewood), and then many thin coats with sanding in between.

 

I have used two finishes on mine - rattle cans of nitrocellulose lacquer and water based lacquer (shot with a little home air compressor and a detail gun). Your link comments on one thing that is very important - each coat of lacquer will soften the previous ones and "melt" in to form one layer, while waterbased and Tru Oil do not. This means that if you sand through one coat into the previous one you will get a little "witness line" - and there is almost no way to make them go away. The author of your link talks about that happening if you get a drip - I had it in a couple of places on my mandolin like some of the volutes.

 

When I built mine I wanted to stay as close as possible to "traditional" finishes and the rattle cans work pretty well. They are nasty - both to your health and the environment and not all that safe - I built a little spray booth out of an old guitar shipping box but you want to be very careful about both ventilation and sparks. The waterbase is much more environmentally friendly and is somewhat better for your health, plus you can clean up with warm water. The big downside is that you need a compressor (altho I have heard of people brushing it) and it does leave witness lines when you sand.

 

Tru Oil is probably the next best finish, and for the home build, might be the one to use. You might want to e-mail Bill Cory, the mod of the kit forum - I know he has a lot of information about finishes (I'll PM his addy to you).

 

Good luck, I'm looking forward to seeing your Tele

[knockwood]

Hey Dan,

 

Maybe EastCoastPlayah will chime in on this one as well. Not sure my memory is accurate, but I believe he used Tru Oil on his first build - which came out looking pretty freakin' hot.

 

Congrats on starting your build! I'm envious. Hope you will post some pics.