NGD (also not Jimilee)

[Willybomb]

A friend of mine picked this up and gave it to me as a project gift.  An old Canora superstrat type thing, I'm going to reshape the horns right down and refinish it.  What color or method I'm not too sure, but I do know it's a plywood body so who knows.  I had a plywood guitar floyded and dimarzioed 23 years ago and it was great, right up until it got stolen out of my car.  I don't think I'll floyd this at this stage of things.

[culturejam]

Cool!

What color are you thinking for the refinish? I say you go balls-out and do a clear finish to show off that plywood!

[Willybomb]

My last one was clear, so it's definite on the books. That or a clear dark cherry style

[Willybomb]

A bit of progress..

Planning stage, and after half an hour with a jigsaw and a coarse rasp... next step will be to sand and fill.

[galaxiex]

Yeah! That body shape looks better already! 

Kinda got a bit of an old Teisco or other 60's Japanese vibe to those horns. 

[nzCdog]

Yeah big improvement on the shape!  More pics! 

[jimilee]

I feel like a competition is underway! Great guitar project. My last build was a plywood strat I'm pretty sure, resonates really well, I was really surprised.


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[Willybomb]

Ok, so four years later, one baby, multiple pedal builds, and an interstate move later, I finished sanding this down.  Well, actually, I borrowed the neighbour's heat gun paint stripper.  Whatever the finish was on this, it laughed at chemical stripper back when I started it.

The plan, as it is, is to use a black stain on the edge and cutaways to highlight the layers, and then sand it back a bit.  I'll then use a rosewood stain over that and the rest of the body, then hit it with a clearcoat.

These edges are pretty much open pored, so I'm going to look at tinting watered down PVA or some clear Elmer's glue to fill the gaps, both of which I used to fill and smooth out the glitter paint in my Eeepy Beepy build.

I'll probably cut a black scratchplate for it, HH most likely, black hardware.  Probably a blocked trem as I can't be bothered blocking the trem rout for a fixed plate bridge.  I may or may not sand the headstock.  The neck itself seems pretty good.

[jimilee]

I felt a disturbance in the force, looks like a nice project.


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[Willybomb]

This is not going well.  The rosewood stain was nice and red, the black was very black.  So I put them to get a darker red and ended up with chocolate.  Not good.  I've sanded it back a bit today, and I'll probably get a clear red to go over it again, hopefully to make the paler bits pop. 

The sanded top surface pic is after I wiped it with a wet t-shirt to get rid of some dust and see what was happening with the colour.  Not great.  A yellow stain over all this was suggested, but I'll go with red.

This guitar shall be named "Fugly".

[alanp]

I'm really digging those last pix, actually. With some good gloss or varnish, that could really work.

[Willybomb]

I'm really digging those last pix, actually. With some good gloss or varnish, that could really work.

Yeah, it's growing on me and I think it has some real potential.  I'd really like to have the layers showing.

[MTK]

I don't think I've ever seen a plywood guitar. Is it heavy?

[Willybomb]

I don't think I've ever seen a plywood guitar. Is it heavy?

Not with the horns cut off!

[gordo]

A lot of Epiphones are plywood.  I have one of their nicer double-necks and it's a plywood body and a relatively soft mahogany pair of necks.  Although it's a very nice guitar, over time the hardware all starts to work it's way loose.  I ended up removing everything and using fine dowels to plug all the holes and redrill everything.  Solid as a rock now and stable tuning.