Welcome back to another entry on this build. After taking some deserved vacations from my more than 3 years posting without a miss, I came back to share the only kind of content that does not bore me, my workshop builds. Today, we are on the stage of finish. For this build there was not much of photos during the process of this thing. It tends to be messy and dirty. That is why we need to keep the camera a bit far from it.
Let's get to it!
Sanding
This is one of the last bits of sanding that goes over the surface of the naked wood. It serves to prepared the surface for the finish that goes over the rest of the instrument. To start, we go over 100-grit sandpaper to level any spots on the instrument. We need to let the paper do its work. We do not need to apply too much pressure. We are also using the electric sander to help us do a lot of this work faster. You know how the saying goes, work smarter, not harder.
The process goes in stages. We need to sand and use a damp cloth to get all the splinter up. This is to avoid having any of them ruin the finish coats. It does not end until we can pass the cloth and no splinters rise. Then we can change to another finer grit and repeat this process over.
It is necessary to get no further than 220-grit. Until that paper, we are working on the smooth surface without buffing it. If we were to buff the wood, the finish could have a hard time sticking to the wood. This happens because on finer grits, the sawdust becomes so fine that it gets stuck in the grain of the wood. And it gets stuck. This works for some other types of finish, but for the 2 layers we are applying, it will not suffice.
Heel Cap
We are adding the heel cap to the back of the instrument. We are using a piece of oak from the same cut used for the fretboard. This will keep its vibrant color longer than any other woods. First, we cut the cap that is part of the back piece. Then we take the measures to cut our piece of wood and create our heel cap.
The cap is not completed before gluing it in place. We finish it after it has been glued up on the back of the instrument. Getting to the right shape is done with a file and sandpaper. When the heel cap resembles the heel, we are done with it and can get a look at our work.
Finish
We were working on 3 instruments at the same time. The finish was done for all of them at the same time. We did all the work of preparing the layers of sealer and sanding them once they dried up. This took around a week to get all the instruments prepared. Coat after coat goes in until the grain of the wood is filled.
Then it took a while to get the material to created the next layer. We used the same material we had tried before. The transparent acrylic used for cars. The good part of this is that the material is quire resistant and does not require too many coats to get a nice finish. It also resists scratches pretty well.
We prepared the mixture with its catalyst and took off one afternoon to complete all the coats of the instruments one at a time. Working with this material is a race against the clock since the catalyst makes this dry up quite fast. However, taking the time to go over the instruments with a lot of care is key to get the coats done properly and finish with all the mix we made for the session.
And with this we are done with the coats of finish for this instruments. Next time, we will get on the last bits of work. Making the bridge, buffing and getting the bridge in place.
Thanks a lot for reading. Hopefully, you did not miss this content too much during my vacations.
| Entry | Name | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The 19th Venezuelan Cuatro | |
| 2 | Heel and Bars | |
| 3 | Head Stock and Carve | |
| 4 | Fretboard | |
| 5 | Back, Bars, Strum Guard | |
| 6 | Assembly Starts! | |
| 7 | Lid On | |
| 8 | Half-baked Instrument | |
| 9 | Completing the Neck |
Photos 📷: Redmi Note 13
Thumbnail 🖼️: Canva.
Editing 🎬:Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.
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