Squire Soloist Project - Day 3

Today i gave a primer coat on the back of the guitar, tomorrow i will do the front. It's tough work but its starting to look real good. After that i will sand and refill scuffs and dents and smooth out the neck curve. It feels great and makes the lower frets a lot more accessible.

Squire Soloist Project - Day 2

More neck work



Looking good, I'm happy with how its going so far.

on the neck as you can see i have removed the plate on the back.

i bored the holes with a bore bit i found and hand drill, luckily i managed to found 4 screws to do the job - that neck is stronger than it was before.

Work left for day 2:

1) Re-fill holes an cover up screws with filler.
2) If time and if filler has set, sand to a smooth finish.

Tomorrow = Re-sand - clean - coat of primer - sand - fill unseen holes - sand - primer.

Squire Soloist Project - Day 1

My latest project is turning my roughed up, unusable squire stratocaster into a custom, functional - one of a kind guitar.

Here is what it looked like in pristine shop condition:

Work done so far:

1) Removed parts (already partly done)
2) with chisel, worked neck joint and rounded it to an ergonomic shape (after a bit'o google work i don't think its been done before)
3) sanded whole guitar and took top gloss layer off (and wrecked my lunges breathing it in)
4) with wood filler, filled and sanded dents, dings, scratches etc. Then sanded flush with body.
5) masking taped neck to protect Rosewood fretboard to save it from paint.
sanded back of neck to sort out dings and dents from leaning it against desks and junk and remove lacquer coating.
6) applied Titebond III wood glue to joint then screwed it tight together.
7) cleaned up vast quantities of excess glue that came out the side of the joint upon compression.
8) ordered parts (£100 down :S)
9) waiting for glue to dry and took pictures.

tomorrow dependant on whether my acrylic primer arrives will give a coat of that.

Pictures of work done at end of day 1:


at the moment i am having to use the webcam on my acer 5920 so the pics are not great, but pretty good for a 0.3mp webcam.