Tim Crain's J185

[TonyinNYC]

Beautiful job on the sunburst. I really like it!

[Kevin in California]

Nice and uniform, looks really good.

[tim crain 54]

I made my self a turn table which made shooting the burst much easier. Holding the guitar with one hand while shooting with the other is really difficult, any little movement shows up as a BIG change in the width of the shading. Having the guitar staying in place eliminates a big part of that problem. I had asked in an earlier post about strap buttons and got no responses. I had mentioned that I want buttons on mine and had gone to the finished gallery to see what others had done and noticed that all that I looked at did not have strap buttons. I am jumping between doing the tapered end pin or fabricating a nice version of the screw on type. Any thoughts would be appreciated and thanks for the encouraging comments on the finish. I should be able to spray the last coats of clear this weekend then the long wait until wet sand and rub out. Thanks again, Tim

[Lonnie B]

Tim I think you've done a great job. Whatever you decide on the strap buttons I'm sure will be done with class. The end pin is more traditional.

[Kevin in California]

Tim, All my guitars have strap buttons, or end pin jacks. I do the tapered push in pin, I believe ulitmatley it will be stronger.
If you are doing a button on the neck, of course you will need to do a screw in. If you are sure the guitar will never be hung around a neck, then leave them off, but its nice to have the versatility. You don't usually see them on a classical

[tim crain 54]

Thanks for the input on the strap buttons. I think I will go with the traditional tapered pin.........hummmm, probably should have done that before we shot the finish. I still have some more coats of clear so I will fit that before the final spraying. I think I should be able to finish the spraying this week end so just need to do the inlay on the bridge to mask the placement pin holes, build a truss rod cover, rough out the nut then rub out, polish and put it all together. Looks like we should have this one wrapped up in a few more weeks...... now what am I going to build?? Thanks for all the help along the way, this forum really saved me a lot of learning from mistakes.

[tim crain 54]

Just wanted to post an update on my J185 project. The weather was great yesterday so I was able to wet sand and buff out the finish. A couple of minor things to fix but all in all I am very pleased. I still need to polish, the finish looks really nice. I took it down to 2000 during the sanding which make the rub out very easy. I will need to cut around the bridge mask with a razor (I'm sweating that part, any words of wisdom?) then remove the mask, glue on the bridge, string up and do the set up. It has been a long road but I can see the end now. I'll keep posting till we hit the finish line.