Doing Things Wrong

Superfreaky Part IIIa

Laying out the parts to see what it will look like. The body has been finished for a long time. Yesterday I encased the neck in plastic - 4 layers of polyurethane, wet-on-wet. Today I smoothed it out with 320 sandpaper, a gentle touch to remove any remaining wood grain and give a good surface for the final topcoat. It will need a few days to fully cure before then.

I'm using Krylon satin poly. It goes on very nice, and you can get it pretty cheap at Hobby Lobby with their ever-present coupon. It also seems to be less yellow than Minwax or the other one. This Ric is coming together nicely. I've started to pull together parts for another.

Update:

The final coat of poly is on the neck and looks great. I'll give it a week to cure hard before I start installing hardware. I also want to re-polish the fretboard.


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A subject so simple you hardly even consider it, yet really very mysterious. Just what is the roughness of sandpaper, and the relation to the number on the package?

Here's a plot of some numbers I found online: sandpaper "grit" versus actual micron size. Interesting to see what size scratches you are taking out ( or putting in. ) The curve starts at 320, which is the coarsest grit that might be considered part of the finishing process. For final finishing like orange-peel removal, I start with 1500 and work up from there, I find that even 1000 leaves scratches that are difficult to remove.

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