Dying to burst onto the music scene ... or ... hoping to scrape by ...

If you got here looking for the Siminoff Lutherie Camp photo essay just click on the 2009 entries link on the left side of this page expand the October entries and you will be jumped to that part of the web log ... or just scroll down and you'll see them ...


The whole business of trying to stain an acceptable sunburst is a bit like making chili ... you throw stuff in the pot, stir, taste, add some more stuff, stir, taste, add some more stuff to counter the last stuff you put in that turned out to be too much, stir, taste, and repeat and repeat and repeat until at some point the magic happens (at least to your satisfaction it happens) and all of a sudden you're finished ... so to speak ... at least that is the way it is for me ... I've only done a few sunburst finishes but it always seems like it's an iterative process of adding stain, removing stain, over and over again until it 'seems right' ...

So I started with the back figuring if I screwed it up completely I could always go for a black back and sides ...

From Lutherie

Once I was satisfied with the back ... I decided to go the "full monty" and plunged ahead with the rest ... the photos below are after all stain was applied and the masking tape was removed ... it is evident that I have NOT done the scraping of the binding ... that is the next step and one I do not look forward to ... BUT I can say doing at least SOME masking of the binding was a huge improvement over not doing it ... next time I will likely spend much more time on the masking step and try to get it all .. I really recommend this!!.

So without further ado ... stained and unmasked ...

From Lutherie

From Lutherie

From Lutherie

From Lutherie

This would be the "butt burst" I suppose ...

From Lutherie

Overall I'm pretty happy with the result so far ... next a lot of scraping and color touch up ... then a coat or two of shellac to seal ... and then the Tru-Oil finish process ... did I mention I hate to scrape binding!!!????

We who are about to dye salute you ... or ... a slacker's confession ...

If you got here looking for the Siminoff Lutherie Camp photo essay just click on the 2009 entries link on the left side of this page expand the October entries and you will be jumped to that part of the web log ... or just scroll down and you'll see them ...

It's true ... it's been about 18 months since my last confession ... errrr ... my last work on the F4 mandolin I started way back in October of 2009 at Roger Siminoff's Lutherie Camp ... what can I say ... I've done lots of other things ... I retired for one ... then took a really extensive vacation with some friends through Great Britain and Ireland ... rebuilt several antiques, built a really nice greenhouse for the wife ... OK OK ... it's true ... I was avoiding the hand work of cutting the binding notch around the scroll ... so shoot me ... I just didn't want to face it ...

But I have ... and it was about as miserable as I remembered ... but just like everything else .. if you just suck it up and face the music ... it can be done ...

Here's a shot of the way I strapped the binding on the top during the glue set ..

From Lutherie

I put several pegs in the scroll opening to pin the binding ... I'm, fortunate on the F4 that there is only a single layer of binding which alleviates the nastiness of getting the miters just right ...

From Lutherie

After the glue has dried and a bit of rough sanding ...

From Lutherie

From Lutherie

The back has some really nice figure in the quilted maple ...

From Lutherie

From Lutherie

So ... I sanded ... and sanded ... and sanded some more ... down to 500 grit ... and then I decided that to avoid as much binding scraping as possible ... because I really hate to scrape binding ... I got some automotive striping tape and masked off as much as I could ... I might have been able to do more but decided that it was a trade off of time spent masking or scraping and stopped at the point I thought it was a toss up ...

From Lutherie

From Lutherie

This whole "hole" (oval sound hole that is ... business with a rosette) has been a real issue for me during this build and I hope this masking job will suffice ... worry worry fret fret ...

From Lutherie

So ... next step is to apply the sunburst dye job ... I've done it before so I am more confident than I probably have a right to be ... this will be a traditional for the F4 "red sunburst" ... as my friend Chris has said ... "a sunburst finish can hide a LOT of mistakes" ... I'm counting on it!!!