Klein Copy: Part IX

The finish is now complete on the Klein. Ultimately, I’m happy with it, but in the grand scheme of things I’d rate it as a C- (or if you’re a Futurama fan a C minus-minus).

The last step was the wet sanding. I have a neat micro mesh kit that goes from a 1500 grit to 12000. I really like that it’s reusable; this is my fifth project to use it and there’s still a lot of life left in it. This really made the finish smooth as glass.

Though difficult to capture with my camera, the discoloration in the middle is the wood showing through.

Unfortunately there were about nine places on the guitar where this sanded right through the clear coat *and* stain. All of which were close to an edge. This tells me that I didn’t do near enough sanding on the body (pre-finish), and that the clear coat wasn’t near as thick as I had thought. I could take the time to sand, restain, and fix the clear coat, but I’m not going to. I still like the way the guitar looks and I bought it to be functional not aesthetically perfect.

I also didn’t do a great job of scuffing the clear coat in between layers. I should have moved to a higher grit through the process, but I pretty much just stuck to 400 the whole time. Had I gone to 600, 800, and 1000 the micro-mesh would have removed ~100% of the lines & scuff marks. Hind sight, right?

Anyway, transparent white, satin finish is pretty much exactly what I was going for. Even though I can pick it apart, I still really like it.