A little bit of work on the body… It’s time to do a little clean-up on the plywood core itself. Recall, this guitar is intended to be a knock-off/homage to the old masonite Danelectro’s, but I do want to improve things where I can. One of these things is the sides of the body. The body is simply cheap pressboard over a cheap plywood core, and the edges of plywood boards are rough and ugly. Danelecto’s solution to this was/is to paint the entire body, then apply a strip of vinyl tape around the sides of the body:
It works, kinda, but I want a cleaner look, including binding the body like I did to the neck. I don’t think the vinyl tape would work with binding, and in any case I can’t find appropriate binding tape for any reasonable price… So instead, I’ll clean up the plywood edges so they’ll look good when painted. I need to use something to fill the rough plywood gaps, and I opt to go with automotive bondo rather than wood filler. It sets up fast, is harder than wood and sands smooth, which is great for painting. This is also in keeping with early electric guitar builders’ techniques – a lot of the old manufacturers would use automotive tools, paints etc when building their early models. If you check out the available colours of Fender’s guitars, for example, you’ll see that they are the same as car colours of the era; this is because they were using auto paints…
Anyways, bondo it is!
I forgot how noxious this stuff is and didn’t have my respirator mask handy. Good thing the weather was nice and a little breezy, as I was able to zip outside and not get all carcinogenic… All ended well, though; the outside edge took the bondo well and I was able to sand most of it away leaving a clean edge for the eventual painting.
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