Epiphone EB-1 resto-modding.

[Alanko]

Following Basvarken's lead I dyed the body darker, using the back of my Eastman acoustic as a point of reference:



From here on it has been multiple coats of Rustins plastic coating. This is a smelly job and, as I've said elsewhere, this product is either merciless or endlessly forgiving. It has a longer setup period than advised in the instruction manual, but there is a window of opportunity when you can use the stuff. I applied nine coats, usually three to four hours apart. This allows each coat to chemically bond into the previous coat. Leave it too long and you have to wait for the stuff to off-gas and then hope that further coats mechanically bond with previous coats.

At the half way mark I wet-sanded the stuff level. The consensus is that this gives a flatter final coat, but I'm not entirely convinced. The coats are fairly flat anyway, with the exception of a few runs and wiggles here and there, and really I just want to build a thick enough layer that I don't have to worry about sanding through.



The stripes in the wood seem to correspond with hotspots and notspots in how well the wood took the stain. As I move the body the figuring in the wood now moves under the light, which is a far cry from the dark featureless finish that was on there before.


My attention is slowly turning to the neck. I was planning to do a Danish Oil finish on the maple, but I fancy trying the Rustins on this as well. I've never had luck dying maple. Any end grain or grain runout drinks dye. This tends to be in awkward areas of the headstock or around the heel, etc. I will try and tint the Rustins with alcohol-based wood dye (also Rustins, so I'm at least keeping it in the family), and working from there.

[OldManC]

Wow, that beautiful!

[Dave W]

That looks great!

[Basvarken]

Yeah that's beautiful

[clankenstein]

Sure makes the grain pop ,Nice!.

[Rob]

Looking CUSTOM!  The darker stain really worked well.

[Alanko]

Thanks guys!

I've started buffing the finish out. It looks okay from far away, but the 'raw' finish is quite bumpy with lots of dust and other things trapped in it.



I initially wet sanded with 600 grit, but use 400 grit on the most uneven areas. The white dots here are low spots:




After machine polishing I get this:




Quite a glossy dipped-in-plastic look!

[4stringer77]

That cleaned up nicely. Seems the last polish evened out the rough spots in the gloss. Did you mention anything special for the electronics when you button her up?

[Alanko]

Electronics will just be an Artec mudbucker, volume, tone and output. I thought about wiring the tone control like the Peavey T20/40 system; dumping one coil of the pickup to ground when the control is fully turned up. I'm more in favour of simplicity though, and having a small brown bass that really rumbles. I could only find 250 k ohm pots in my spare parts box, so this might just cement the rumble further. 

Since I last posted I've been doing the fiddly wee jobs. I had to level and re-crown the frets as there was quite a lot of roundwound chew on the lowest frets. As a flatwound player I never seem to dish out this abuse on frets, but I've encountered a fair few basses with ground out frets. As such, I wonder if some guy put thousands of hours on this bass, or just had an aggressive technique with lots of vibrato?

I took this photo today, which captures the colour a lot better than the artificially lit photos I've been uploading:




The lacquer has totally stabilised. It has sunk a little into the grain since I last buffed it, but this has countered the 'dipped in plastic' look. If anything it looks a bit like nitro. I've seen Rustins plastic coating described as being somewhere between 2K and nitro, so maybe there is some truth to this.

The body is stuck on the stand here as I'm touching up one small bit where I blew through the lacquer into the wood. No such thing as a free lunch... the apprentice still has a lot to master...




Having done the frets, my attention is now turned to the neck itself. I sanded this back to bare maple, with a view to using an oil finish of some sort. I slowly started to think that this wouldn't look right, pairing a glossy and overtly 'finished' body with a rustic, satin-finish neck. The obvious solution is more Rustins!

This time I've been brave and mixed wood dye into the Rustins to give it a colour. Maple seems to take in dye quite unpredictably and inconsistently, so I figured I might as well add the colour to the lacquer.



After one coat it looked a bit warmer, and less pinky-white, so I was suitably encouraged.




After these photos I added three more coats. I'm going to review these tomorrow before adding more colour coats or simply adding clear Rustins over the top. Unfortunately I've had one run which has given me a darker line. I won't make this mistake the next time!

[Basvarken]

That's coming along nicely   

[Dave W]

You may have more to learn, but that looks great.

[Highlander]

V ... 

[Rob]

Lookin' good!  Pass the popcorn Kenny.

[4stringer77]

The new color on the body is a major improvement over the former finish and much more aligned with the original EBs. Kudos to you.

[godofthunder]

   That looks beautiful! What a great job, you really made something out of that bass.