Due to many many things I've not been able to get around to my dad's place very much to continue helping the build, but he's soldiered on and it was strung up this past weekend.
So you remember where we ended off?
rikus wrote
Now the tricky part starts, the finishing. We managed to find a water based lacquer that is the same as LMII’s water based lacquer (KTM9). The lacquer is now being built up layer by layer. Once it’s thick enough you can buff and polish it to a nice shine (we hope). The photo doesn’t do the finish justice really, it looks great so far. We’re holding thumbs for the end result.
That pretty much ended in disaster...
It just didn't adhere to the wood... back to square one. We ended up biting the bullet and ordering LMII's finishing kit.
The LMII kit comes with a epoxy for doing the grain filling called z-poxy. You mix a couple of millilitres together and you spread it over and into the wood with a squeegee. Three coats of z-poxy with light sanding in between resulted in this.
Next up was the actual finish, proper KTM9 this time. This is the result of 6 coats of KTM9 over 2 days. After that it was 2 weeks for the finish to cure.
This on half of the back after being flatted to 3000 grit.
The back after polishing. We used a little cordless ryobi polisher
For the neck we decided to try and go for a smoother matt finish using Danish Oil. We wet sanded the first 2 coats of the neck with the danish oil to make a slurry to fill the pores. After that a couple of more layer of oil and some sanding to 3000 grit and we achieved a lovely smooth matt finish.
My dad made this very simple tool to help place the bridge on the top.
Aligned to the top of the fretboard like so.
We could then accurately place the bridge for gluing.
Bridge clamps in place.
Once the bridge was glued the moment arrived and she was strung up for the first time!
The little uke has a lovely warm tone and lots of sustain. We are over the moon with the result!
To say we learned tons in the process is an understatement. My dad decided to build another one, which is at finishing stage already, and it went together much much easier We are super glad that we went this route and will save us loads of trouble down the line. We've still got lots of planning to do, but I can't wait to get stuck into our guitars!
