Protecting an ash neck from grime and such

I was planning on filling the grain of this ash neck with epoxy and then sanding it down to the flat wood again, followed by regular finish approach. After some thought I realized that my next step was boiled linseed oil over the whole thing (body, neck, headstock) and I'm guessing that the epoxy in the grain might interfere with absorption of the oil, leading to some funky looking/textured neck. If I'm wrong, please correct me.

I'm not necessarily looking for a super-smooth finish that grain filling will give me, but rather protecting the wood from building up any sort of grime in the pores from normal use. In other words, I'm not dead-set on filling the grain with epoxy: just wanting to prevent the grain from filling up with hand gunk.

An alternative would be to build up a finish...sand in some oil, use multi coats of tru oil (had a lot of luck with that in the past), or multi coats of urethane (General Finishes Arm-r-Seal) with some sanding in between to encourage a build up in the grain.

At any rate, I'm looking for suggestions as to finishing that would help prevent the mentioned gunk. If it takes filling the grain, I'd probably go with epoxy and then urethane...any foresight into the feasibility of this? Oh, and by the way: if I wet sanded with tru oil, what would be a good thinner to cut it with? All the times I've used tru oil it's been pretty thick.

Thanks guys

 

Will it build up to a point where it will (at least somewhat) fill the grain, after multi coats and sanding?

 

I was thinking about doing a few wash coats of shellac...maybe that or Seal-a-Cell (another General product) and then go from there.