HKG-SEC Coverage

This entry will be about two types of coverage. One of which is much more visually interesting than the other.

The guitar body is unsealed wood. Since I am going to paint it, I need to seal it. There are several ways to do this, and I decided to use a simple method: clear lacquer. I have some, it’s easy to do, and it takes only a few minutes.

Here’s the body as I received it:

Notice the REJECTED and the arrow written in pencil as well as the circle to the right of the hole for the volume pot. I made the circle, but some QC person at the Washburn factory wrote that word.

For that matter, the sticker in the rear pickup cavity is from some music store who were selling this guitar body for US$250. So I guess at $31, I got a pretty good deal.

Rejected though it may have been.

I needed to sand the body for a few reasons. One, some edges were still very sharp. The reason you have to round these off is so that paint will stick to them. If the corner’s too sharp, it can’t stick.

The other reason is that I needed to get rid of the pencil marks. Graphite is resistant to paint, and the only way to be sure its not going to mess up a paint job is to get rid of it!

So I sanded the whole body, though I did a pretty quick job of it. Because I would be using paint, I don’t have to be as painstaking as I would with a clear finish.

In addition to sanding, I needed to fill the factory hole for the volume pot and repair the split that caused this body to be rejected.

I used a ‘plug cutter’ bit in the drill press to cut out a piece of wood to fit into the the hole. I used a drill bit of the same size to make the hole in the guitar the same size as the plug:

The reason you want to use a plug cutter instead of a dowel is that the grain direction in a plug is the same as the guitar. A dowel’s grain would have been 90 degrees different, and harder to work with.

So I glued the plug in place and let it dry. Then I cut it off with a flush cut saw.

This saw is flexible and allows you to cut off the wood very close to flush. It makes for a lot less work, and it finishes off much nicer than if you use a dowel.

You can see where I used super glue to repair the crack and to reinforce the plug. It stains the wood, but this guitar will be painted so no harm done.

You can also see where I marked out the center line of the guitar in pencil. I need this line for making the neck.

When I put lacquer on the guitar, I didn’t cover the line. After the neck is made, I will go back and erase the line and finish lacquering the body.

So that’s one type of coverage. The other type was a bit more complicated, but also more interesting.

I needed to make covers for the cavities on the back of the guitar:

The smallest one is the toggle switch cavity, the larger one is the control cavity, and the rectangular one is the vibrato cavity.

That one was the easiest to do. I measured the sides of the rectangle, then cut a piece of plastic to the right width (in this case the narrower dimension) on the table saw:

Then I used the mitre saw to cut the length:

I carefully rounded the corners of the piece, and it fit.

Not bad for 5 minutes work.

The other cavities weren’t going to be so simple.

But I had paper.

I taped the paper in place and used a pencil to figure out the shape of the cavities.

I took the paper and glued it onto 5/8″ thick MDF stock that I had ‘liberated’ from the loading dock.

This allowed me to make templates for the cavity covers:

These are useful for production; if I ever needed to make a bunch of them, I could use double-stick tape to put the plastic material onto the template, then use a small router to cut the pieces flush with the template. This allows for ‘repeatability.’ It also gives me something to use if I ever need new ones.

But I didn’t use that method for these covers, I admit. I just used the templates to drawthe shapes onto the paper covering the plastic, then cut and sanded them to shape:

Speaking of sanding…

A year or so ago, I bought a belt/disc sander. It’s a small but very useful machine to have, because it allows me to do a lot of things. And I’ve done a lot of things with it.

So many, in fact, that I had to replace the sandpaper on the disc. Which was not easy.

I had to strip off the old paper, which was glued to the disc face.

Then I had to re-glue a new piece of sandpaper, making sure I lined it up correctly. Luckily, I did.

So that when I made the templates, and later the covers, I could sand them quickly and easily:

Pretty soon I had all three covers fitted into their spots:

But I still needed to drill holes in them in the places where there are small ‘platforms’ to hold the screws. You can see them in this photo:

So with the covers off, I measured from where I wanted the screws to be back outside the cavities.

Then I put the covers on and, using the same measurements, marked the spots for the screw holes.

That’s not a good explanation, so I hope this photo helps make it clearer:

That way I could line up the holes on the covers and be sure they were in the correct place. I drilled them on the marks, going through the cover and into the wood. This ensures that the covers will be exactly where I need them to be.

So after a couple hours’ of work, I had all the coverage I’d need for this guitar.

The color of the covers should tell you that I’ve decided on a color for the guitar.