Greetings all, I have a question for you wood experts that I'm not sure quite how to categorize, so General Woodworking it is.
I currently have no room for a shop as my half of the garage is filled with the corpse of a 1973 MGB Roadster. All the tools are in boxes and under tables, and on shelves in the basement. (The MG is probably leaving soon, so I'll be back).
What I have been doing is bottom feeding that auction site that must not be named and buying old beat up guitars and refinishing them. I had lunch today with a friend of mine who snagged this for $59.
The body for a 1957 Guyatone guitar from japan, which was cracked and broken. He asked me to do the refin and repair. I had to break it into four pieces to be able to reasonably glue it back together. Glue, many clamps, a few passes through my dad's planer, and more sanding than I care to remember and I'm here.
It needs some grain filling and needs some work to fill and flatten the cracks, but it's now a 52 year old piece of Mahogany that resonates like crazy when you tap on it, it should make one heck of a guitar. My friend has chose a vintage white color that should match what you see left in the pickup routes.
So, with that in mind I've become a real junkie for the poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free that litter that auction site if you only know where to look.
A few weeks back, I saw something that I simply had to have and was willing to pay whatever it took to make it mine.
A 1968 Gibson Melody Maker bass. Solid Mahogany body and neck, with brazillian rosewood fingerboard (which, in case you don't know, brazillian rosewood is the holy grail for guitarists if for no other reason than it's illegal to export now).
What, you ask, does this have to do with SMC? Glad you asked.
Fire damage.
That's rock and roll right there. Funk as Puck as a friend of mine would say. People pay large money to make new guitars look old. And I mean five figures large for the Fender custom shop to make a brand new guitar look like something dragged behind the band's bus during their 1973 tour. It's called "relicing". This bass has mojo, like it played every two bit bar between dallas and abilene.
The corners of the headstock are rounded over and the curves are mostly brittle charcoal. I could remove the worst, but I'd rather not.
Near as I can tell, it was laying on a table or bench face down and somehow was over the top of something that burnt. The damage is all on the face of the headstock and the fretboard down to about the second fret.
I bought it to refinish to new state, but after receiving it I decided it was perfect as is, it needs to be played. It's stable, straight and very structurally sound. There's absolutely no reason that I shouldn't just throw some strings on it and go.
Well, except for this:
It's a bit sooty. So the question I pose to you is, how do I stabilize burnt wood without removing it entirely?
My first thought was to soak the charcoal-ey bits in CA and then finish with a flat lacquer. I also did a bit of google and found something called Polycril which I can't link to here withough posting a commercial link.
I'd imagine this will be similar to stabilizing burl and spalted wood for turning. All I want is it to be fairly stable and not turn my hands black.
Any ideas?
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