Help the wood working noob! (With the broken brain)

Hey folks,

First of all I'd like to start by letting everyone know that I've been reading the posts in the Luthier's Corner one after another trying to absorb as much information as possible. The problem with this is my brain doesn't like to comprehend things unless its in a certain order.

Needless to say I'm sure the information I'm going to ask about is right in front of my eyes. If you could point me to the specific threads, in the order I would need to do the processes in, it would save me LOADS of time and possibly a bass body .

Now for the background:

I received a demolished P-Bass from a buddy of mine about 5 years ago. At the time it was something that I had every intention of working on but never got to it. The guy that had it before me had attempted to stain it green, but it didn't work out to his liking, so he gave me the bass including all the hardware (minus pups) for free!

So for this bass my intentions are to stain the body a dark red (black cherry) color, buy a mighty mite neck to replace the hacked up one the dude gave me, buy some new pups, and BAM hopefully have a P-Bass.

I worked with wood once in my life, and that was in shop class in 6th grade (12 years ago).... I remember the word rasps, and I remember how to sand something (because I did more of that then anything), but beyond that I didn't retain a whole lot of what I did.

So far I went out and got some 60, 80, 120, 180, 220 grit sand paper and started going at the body with the 60. The old stain is REALLY deep in the body, so I'm going to be working on the 60 for awhile. After that I know I need to work on it with the 80, the 120, the 180, ect. ect. until its nice and silky smooth all over.... but after that ???????




Would I use clear wood filler at that point for the stain? Do you use wood filler at all with a stain? Do I have to put on a coat of something before the stain? Am I getting way ahead of myself and theres 15 other steps in between I'm not aware of??

I'm so lost! Any help with the steps to get me a stained and completely finished body would be so greatfully appreciated!

EDIT: Edited title 09/07/09 to draw more attention to thread and help others looking to have refinishing questions answered.

I'm reading over that site, I'm pretty sure this will help me out quite a bit. Secondary question: Anyway to tell for sure what type of wood it is? I honestly have no clue.

49sfine said:

FallenAbom: After reading your thread starter I am wondering if something I wrote might not be of some help to you. I wrote a refinishing guide which is geared towards folks who have little experience with wood and need a lot of detail in the description. The thread I started is actually focusing on refinishing a Wishbass, but can be applied to other brands obviously. If you are interested in taking a look, do a search in Talkbass for "WISHBASS REFINISHING GUIDE" and it will pull it up for you. It won't help you achieve your stain goals, but you might find value in all the prep descriptions, and also my list of tools/supplies, etc. Anyway, if it helps, I'm happy! Good luck on your project.

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Wonderful, I'll definately check that out and go through it. I took a look at the re-ranch website, and although it does have a lot of information on it its still not clicking in my head.

At this point I have all the sanding done up to 220 grit, I think I'm going to go over it with 320 now at this point. Theres a few very big open grains in the bass body so I think the next step will be doing an Oil Wood Filler. After a couple coats of that and some sanding I should be ready for the initial stain.

I'll read through that post and see if things start clicking, I plan to post more pictures tomorrow and ask any questions I may have. Am I heading in the right direction so far at this point?

Thanks everyone for your help! I'm enjoying this more and more by the day.

49sfine said:

FallenAbom; You seem to definitely be headed in the right direction. My opinion though about the sandpaper grits is that you have only just begun. I would never put finish on anything that has not been sanded out to at least 600 grit - and 800 grit is better. I take my work out to 2000 grit most of the time, with 1200 grit being my default if I am in a hurry. There are just too many fine scratches and lines that will suddenly appear in/under your finish that you didn't previously see unless you do! Past 800 grit paper, it will feel more like you are polishing the wood than sanding it, by the way. Enjoy it, it's theraputic!

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I've been reading a lot of conflicting info over that subject, some say don't go past 300, other say you better not stop until 2k. I'm probably going to go up to the 2k route as it seems to be a "better safe than sorry" sort of scenario. The problem is I need to find/buy the paper and I just got laid off a few days ago *ouch*, so money's tight.

I found a book that I didn't realize I had called "Guitar Player Repair Guide" by Dan Erlewine. It's got a lot of info on the subject as well, but once again the info is conflicting with a lot of the other stuff I've read *sigh*.

So based off of what I read here is what I'm thinking: Go back over the bass and sand it again, wetting and wiping off in between coats to raise the grain and get as much off as I can. Gonna bring it up to 2k grit this way. The next step is wood filler, I don't think the body NEEDS it per say, but once again it seems a better safe than sorry route.

Ultimately I want to do oil based stained because its going to sink in deeper (although it will be harder to avoid blotching, I'm ok with this though, I want the experience and I'll sand it down if necessary). I want to do a layer of rosewood stain and sand it down so just the grain color stays, then go over it with a really bright cherry red stain and then ultimately seal it up.

So here's my questions at this point if anyone can be so kind as far as best recommendations:

"What type of wood filler would I need to take an oil based stain?"

"What are some of the most commonly used stains in rosewood and bright red that are oil based and are compatible with each other and the wood filler?"

"What type of sealer should I use in this situation to get a high gloss shine over the stains?"

Once again I've read endless amounts of info, but the contradicting info is whats sending me for a loop and making me unsure of myself. From what I've researched I'm leaning towards the wood being Pine, but this is just a guess as well, the grain is pretty tight which would make me think its NOT but everything else points towards it being Pine.

Sorry for all the questions, I just know I'm going to get a straight answer from you lot. Thanks for any further help on the mater, I'm really enjoying doing this and would love to work my way up to a full build.

49sfine said:

FallenAbom; You seem to definitely be headed in the right direction. My opinion though about the sandpaper grits is that you have only just begun. I would never put finish on anything that has not been sanded out to at least 600 grit - and 800 grit is better. I take my work out to 2000 grit most of the time, with 1200 grit being my default if I am in a hurry. There are just too many fine scratches and lines that will suddenly appear in/under your finish that you didn't previously see unless you do! Past 800 grit paper, it will feel more like you are polishing the wood than sanding it, by the way. Enjoy it, it's theraputic!

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BTW, I read through your wishbass guide and the other guide that was added to your thread. They gave me a lot of info and started giving me some great ideas for the future. The only issue of course is it isn't exactly the same procedures since they weren't stained, just oil'd up with Tung. Although now I want to do Tung on another body I have in the house . Thanks!

Just realized I should probably keep an on going build log of this too, may help someone else in the future, so here's what I've done up to now with pictures:

I initially went over the entire body with 60/80/120/220 grit paper and a Black and Decker Mouse. There was still a lot of the left over green stain in the horns, so I went and got a Dremmel unit with some 60 grit sanding drums. The Dremmel caused a lot of gauges (which I was expecting), so after I went over the whole bass again by hand with 60/80/120/220/320 grit.

There were still a few scratches on the body, so I spot sanded (and feathered) the main areas and then went over the whole body again with 80/120/220/320 by hand. I still see a few minor scratches, but I'm going over it again as I'm sure you all saw in my previous posts. Here's the pictures up to now, sorry if its hard to see some things, I have a bad camera and am not a great photographer:

So I've already changed my mind LOL. I'm going to go with a water based stain since everyone and there mother is telling me that it'll be easier for my first run. The good news is I now have some smaller grit paper (only up to 600, but its a start), and I have a can of the rosewood water based stain already in the house! I know necks and bodies don't usually match for wood type, but after looking at the two I'm pretty sure they are the same wood. Since the neck isn't being used for this project anyway I'm going to sand the headstock down to 600, fill it, and try a coat of the rosewood stain just to see what happens.

When I first started this project my main concern was perfection, but after some thought and consideration I'm having so much fun just DOING it that I don't really care what happens. I'm in a headspace to experiment now.

So here's what I have:

* Elmer's Stainable Wood Filler for Interior/Exterior. I haven't seen anyone mention using this, the best part is it almost matches the color of the body right now perfectly. The best way I can describe the color is almost like Coffee Ice Cream.



*Minwax Water-Based Wood Stain: Color Rich Formula (Rosewood)



I have a few chores to take care of, but then I'm going to go at the headstock right away this evening and get at least the filler in tonight. I'll post pics of the step by step process and the products I'm using later this evening.

Feel free to jump in and throw an insight you have along the way! I really hope this can be used as a learning tool for others starting out.

EDIT: Added images of the products

49sfine said:

Here's an example of what TruOil looks like - it's actually not very oil-like IMO, but drys as a clear, shiny coating and can be built up with many coats. Tung "oil" is virtually the same, or at least the results are. This is one of my Wishbasses, by the way, and is the focus of the refinishing guide. I also handmade the bridge piece, the thumbrest and veneered the control cavity cover in walnut. (The first photo shows the original corian bridge piece & the bass without the walnut thumbrest.)

As you can see, the finish is very shiny, quite hard and was easy to apply. It is nothing like the muted look and feel of a true oil and wax finish you see a lot on boutique basses. I want to try that someday on something.

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Thats right, you used TruOil and the other guy used Tung. Sorry about that! The bass looks beautiful by the way. You folks inspire me daily/

Alrighty folks, I made a little bit of progress and am going to document it:


Figured the headstock would be a great thing to test out some combo's on, since I won't be using this neck. I decided to test the back of the headstock and do 3 different combos.

Here's the headstock prior to sanding:



Since I'm just testing things out on this I went a little faster during the sanding process so I could get to the results. I also figured if scratches show up at their worst I'll have a better idea of what to expect if the body does end up having scratches.

I ran out of 60 grit, so I started with 80, then worked up to 120/220/320/400/600. At the beginning, and after each step of sandpaper, I went over the entire headstock with a wet rag, wiped off the excess, and let it dry. I read that doing this will raise the grain of the wood, and let me tell ya, the sanding went a LOT smoother doing it this way. Everything just seemed to fall off with very little effort. I then blew off all the dust and ran over it with a tack cloth. This is an image of the headstock after all sanding had been completed:



Next I took some regular old painters masking tape and sectioned the headstock into three parts:



Top Section: On the top section I used straight wood filler. I rubbed the wood filler in with my fingers (using latex gloves!) and scraped the remaining with a putty knife.

Middle Section: I read in a couple articles about matching wood filler to the stain. So in this section I added a little bit (about a teaspoon) of stain to about 2 tablespoons of wood filler. Once again I smeared it on with my fingers, wiping into the grain. The wood filler was much smoother with this method, and made filling the grains much easier. I'm sure its going to add quite a bit of drying time to it however.

Bottom Section: In this section I'm going to stain the wood first with 2 coats, sand, and then use wood filler. The image shows what it looks like after one coat of stain, added on, wiped off after 3 minutes. I used a small piece of cotton cloth, rolled up into a ball, and then wrapped by another plain sheet of cotton to hold and spread the stain.




Now I've got to wait for things to dry. The wood filler says that minor scratches only take 15 minutes to dry and can then be sanded. Since the middle section has stain as well I'm going to follow the staining guidelines which says to wait 2 hours in between coats. So after 2 hours of wait time (around 5pm central) I'm going to stain the bottom section again, wait another 3 to 4 hours or over night, and then sand all the sections down.

I then will add another layer of wood filler to the top section (2 coats). Stain the middle section (just going to try one coat with the stain/filler mixture). And probably end up staining the bottom section a 3 time to get the grain really nice and dark.

That's all I have for now, stay tuned! If you have any questions please feel free to ask! And if you have comments please pipe in

Added the second coat of stain to the bottom section. Tried adding it right on top initially but it wasn't sinking in very well, so I rubbed down as much as I could and then went over it lightly with 600 grit. I then wet down the wood with some water, dried with a towel lightly, and then went over with the stain again. It took it MUCH better this time. Left it on for 3 minutes and then wiped off. That's probably going to be all for today and I'll sand again tomorrow.

I played around with my camera a bit to try and get some better shots of the grain. Here's the three sections as of this point close up:

Top:


Middle:


Bottom:

jazzyitalian said:

Nice work dude...So far so good. I do have a suggestion. If you are going to clean up a surface to re-apply stain, you might get further using a chemical that is relativly weak and safe. I use Naptha. It's in almost every hardware store. If you use it, be sure to follow the instructions one of which suggests that you use the product outdoors and to keep it away from hot surfaces and flames. It is highly flammable. But its a great cleaner and is very kind on wood.

Here's a couple of shots of a bass we just finished.....

(cleared images to save room)

I think you're off to a good start....
Jazz

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Wow, that bass looks amazing! Very nice! That's sort of the look I'm going for too, dark grain, but a very vibrant color on the surface, with that beautiful shine! If you don't mind me asking what was your refinishing process?

Naptha, huh? I remember reading about that stuff on one of the articles I was looking at, but they never went into detail about it. So that will work well with the water-based stains and the wood filler as well?! Nice! I have to get me some of that. I'll do some reading up on it this evening. Best thing is I wouldn't have to worry about the outdoors part, that's the only place I can do all this stuff for the time being!

Thanks for the advise, and the compliment too!