Acoustic Guitar Construction

Hello Everyone,

I am nearing the finishing stages of my second build of a KMG HD28 and am hoping you fine folks can guide me a bit as it pertains to keeping the maple bindings and tail wedge, as well as herringbone purflings light and bright during the pore filling and tru oil finishing stages.

I have perused a lot of forums including this one (which I value the most of all) but I'm just not coming up with a clear direction for my process.

My build has EIR sides and back with maple bindings both front and back, a herringbone back strip and herringbone purfling on the Spruce top. I learned the hard way during my first build that I need to be cautious with Rosewood dust during sanding and wipe downs because it can stain maple (and presumably purfling) deeply.

For that reason this build I did a wash coat on my Spruce top with Zinsser Seal Coat to protect it thus far while sanding the sides and etc.

At this point I have the following finishing plan:

Using the same Zinsser Seal Coat, apply 2-3 coats to the maple areas and to the purfling in order to seal them during the pore filling steps. Then, mask the top and neck-seating areas and proceed to pore fill using the Tru Oil slurry method.

My Tru Oil pore fill I intend to try a bit different approach this time - I will put on 5 coats of Tru Oil and THEN sand it back with 220 grit paper with Tru Oil as a lubricant to create a slurry and push that slurry into the pores. I will wipe off the excess sludge and oil with a paper towel going across the grain. Then I will do 5 more coats of Tru Oil and repeat the pore fill process again. Finally I will do 5 more coats and determine if 1 more pore fill is required.

Do you guys think the above process will protect the bindings and purfling adequately such that they will not be stained dramatically? I have also considered masking those maple areas but during my first build I did not care for the build-up of "stuff" that occurred near the masking tape. In fact, during the first build I ultimately removed the bridge mask and finished over that area and later sanded the finish off under the bridge to get good adhesion.

During my first build I fought long and hard with the Tru Oil pore fill process and learned a lot, but I understand that there is still much to be learned.

What do you folks think?

Thanks,

Rex

Hopefully others will share their Truoil experiences -- I will say that its good to keep the bindings as clean as possible during the sealing filling part of the process, but for me part of the overall process is "scraping" the binding perfectly clean after filler, seal coats etc. I use a single edge razor blade. At the Martin factory they use a piece of band saw blade sharpened into a scaper

I've not used white bindings, and when I do use maple, I like to put TO on them as well - it mutes the whiteness a bit and to my eye it looks better.
Ken's method of scraping etc is the way to go if you want to maintain the whiteness factor.

I think the seal coat will work just fine. I used unwaxed shellac, a couple of wash coats, for this one with sitka top, b/w rope purfling, maple bindings, and EIR. No bleeding between the dark and the light. Finished with nitro, which is more aggressive than TO, I think.

Thanks Ken, Dave and John. I really appreciate your thoughts.

I did scrape the maple on my first build after my unfortunate experience with wiping down the rosewood (with naptha I think?) left what looked to be a nasty stain on the maple bindings. The scraping worked very well to brighten things up, however the initial trauma of what I had done took a while to heal. Thankfully Ken came through with the recovery answer as he often does. I'm sure if I am more careful I can avoid the largest part of the scraping process.

So I will proceed with my plan and look forward to playing this baby soon!

Thanks again. If anyone else has inputs I am still all ears.

Rex

A few pix of a tru-oil high gloss finishes. From the thread at:
http://www.thegearpage.net/board/index. ... sh.711780/

Dave I was reading the thread in the link, sounds like a major labor intense method/process. How long does it take you to complete a guitar using your method? My grand-son in law is building a guitar here in the shop and I was thinking TO would be a pretty quick method -- do I have that wrong?