70's style Jazzmaster on a budget - AKA the Chinamaster - DONE! (04/11/21-Page 4)

[ohm-men]

yes, the neck tint is something else...
Not sure what I will do. But first I want to see how this pans out.
Then, we'll see about the neck

[AWSchmit]

I just pretty much did this same thing, but with a Strat. The only divergence I took was I bought a slightly more speced out MIJ Allparts neck. I'm too picky to buy budget necks unfortunately, because none of them ever seem to be made the way I want them. Otherwise super cheap.. All in I think I have $230 or so in mine. My body wood didn't start near as nice as yours though. Mine was about $35 shipped and was about as soft and pour fills as it could have been. But I made due.

I look forward to seeing out this shapes up!

[ohm-men]

Thanks!

I did some work on the body, more precise the roundover and redid this to vintage spec with the correct router bit.
Turned out the way I wanted.

The black pickguard arrived. Perfect fit, specs of US Fender, thus good for this project. I'll post some pics of this tommorow or so.

Now while investigating the body a bit further, taking all measurement, it's still quiet good imho.
Neck pocket is a tad too deep to my liking tough as are the pu routs. Vintage is 10 mm, this one is more Squier alike, about 17mm...
So I might glue in some Alder and redo the neck pocket to a more apropriate depth. Not sure about how to aproach the pu caveties....

The neck... as much as I like Bees, yellowjackets, etc... The yellow stain of this neck is getting harder on my eyes...
I came across a cheap B&B Maple/Rosewood 21fret neck with truss rod acces on the heel, and bought the thing .
So, I'll keep this one as an alternative.

So now I got 2 options;

- Go with the Maple/Rosewood B&B neck and sell the yellowjacket.
- Strip the yellowjacket's yellowness and redo the stain in a more correct version and use the Maple/Rosewood neck for another project.

On the bright side, my boss asked if I could use some 25+ year old mahogany from a staircase they replaced .... I replied, Yes, Ofcourse....
So, I got plenty of stock to make another Jm or another offset body.... Ofcourse I need to glue the wood, but it's plenty for 2 3 piece bodies and a neck...

For some reason I'm leaning toward a Sherwood green Jm with the black B&B maple neck... (but without the yellow stain...)
The stain does not apear to be to thick, so I might take a shot a stripping it carefully...
I refinned the maple neck on my Bass VI last summer and it went quiet easy...

[ohm-men]

After some thinking about the yellowjacket guitar neck, I decided I could not live with it.
After all, I want to do a 70's B&B maple neck Jazzmaster and the Yellow stain on the neck is not gonna cut it for this one.
If I leave it as is, I will keep bothering me. So, time for some action.

This is how it looked;



I never stripped a maple neck before, so a first time for everything....
A teacher once told me that the best way to remove a finish from a piece of wood without sanding it,
was to scrape of the finish. So I took this advice and used a knife blade.



Quiet a tedious and time consuming job, but it paid of.
I did not use sand paper, just careful scraping.
The damn thing had a thick varnish layer, then the yellow stain and a kind of wood sealer.
The wood sealer turned out to be the saviour of this whole project as it prevented the stain to actually penetrate the wood,
making it easier to remove and leave the bare maple. But in all some five hours of careful scraping later...



Turned out far better then expected. Patience is virtue in this case.
I'm really happy with the result. I was very carful not to scrape of any wood.
So radius or contours were not affected in the process.

I also took the liberty to compare the headstock with my Strat's and Jag's headstocks.
You can see the "scroll" on the maple B&B neck is somewhat undersized.
It also shows how undersized the Squier blocks on the Jag neck actually are.



And this is the goal of the refin;
The neck on the left was refinned last summer with some laquer varnish.
I quiet like it and it's aplied with an air-brush, so it's no thick.
As Nitro is hard to get in the EU (and expensive + deemed inviorment unfriendly by the EU government)
I use laquer these days I can get from the DIY store. The one I use is for Boat decks. So it has that 70's feel to it.



And this is where the project stands at the moment;



I think I'm on the right track to create a nicer looking 70's maple B&B Jazzmaster now.
As the weather is improving and the temperatures are rising again, I can start thinking of actualy get some
paint on the body. But it's been decade since I did a 3 TSB and I don't exactly recall how I mixed my paint back then
But I got some idea of how to aproach it and I've been collecting pictures of early to late 70's Jazzmasters.

[PorkyPrimeCut]

Oh, I feel you regarding the yellow tint on the neck.

I had exactly the same realisation when I bought a B & B neck with a bound rosewood board. The yellow just looked worse & worse every time I looked at it! I didn't have the extra hurdle of a maple fretboard so chose different grades of sandpaper for the back of the neck. I took my time too but was actually shooting for something that looked & felt like my '59 Jazzmaster neck.
I then tinted the neck using linseed oil & Raw Umber oil paint before finishing it with Tru-Oil. If you're interested you can read about it towards the bottom of this page.

Great job with the blade, by the way. Patience is definitely a virtue in situations like these.

[ohm-men]

Oh, I feel you regarding the yellow tint on the neck.

I had exactly the same realisation when I bought a B & B neck with a bound rosewood board. The yellow just looked worse & worse every time I looked at it! I didn't have the extra hurdle of a maple fretboard so chose different grades of sandpaper for the back of the neck. I took my time too but was actually shooting for something that looked & felt like my '59 Jazzmaster neck.
I then tinted the neck using linseed oil & Raw Umber oil paint before finishing it with Tru-Oil. If you're interested you can read about it towards the bottom of this page.

Great job with the blade, by the way. Patience is definitely a virtue in situations like these.

Wow! That looks exellent.... Please feel free to PM me with the specs of the mix you used.
I have linseed and raw umber oil paint. And I think I got a formula to make tru oil as well.
Very tempting to try. (I think that the other B&B neck, rosewood variant, will have the same yellownes, so I'm defenitly interested! )

[PorkyPrimeCut]

The best thing to do would be to read the following few pages of that thread as you'll find out how well the process went & the minor problems I had with Tru-Oil. I really don't remember a particular formula but the linseed oil & Raw Umber part is fairly forgiving. So long as you take your time & apply the tint little by little you'll be fine.
I also go into how I darkened a rosewood fretboard using leather dye. If you're tempted with that too be wary of the effect the dye has on white binding (it shows up every tiny scratch).

[Tumtrah]

And this is the goal of the refin;
The neck on the left was refinned last summer with some laquer varnish.
I quiet like it and it's aplied with an air-brush, so it's no thick.
As Nitro is hard to get in the EU (and expensive + deemed inviorment unfriendly by the EU government)
I use laquer these days I can get from the DIY store. The one I use is for Boat decks. So it has that 70's feel to it.

Great job on the neck!
I bought nitro lacquer for a reasonable price from this company last year and it turned out to be fine:
https://schreinerlacke.de/Cromafix-NC-M ... 07-5-Liter
Don't know if they ship to Belgium.

[marqueemoon]

Amazing work on that neck. Wow.

[ohm-men]

I've been working slowly on this project. It's starting to grow on me.
But first, let's check out the original. There isn't a lot of pictures to be found of the maple B&B Jazzmaster other then this one
(As previously posted)



And that's about it.

But, there is also a Jaguar with the same configuration, made in '72.
There are plenty of pictures of this one, as it was sold by a vintage guitar dealer some time ago.





The finish is somewhat different then on mid 70's black guard 3TSB Jazzmasters, but the '72 Jaguar's 3 TSB is pretty close to the Maple neck Jazzmaster.

So, I'm leaning more to the thinner red band in the latter, then broader bands you find on the mid 70's Black Jazzmasters as can be seen below.



I'm gonna turn my attention to the neck next. The maple neck Jaguar's neck is quiet pale, so I'm gonna try and replicate this on the maple B&B neck I have. Let's see where get...

[ohm-men]

I was able to do some work on this project.

First I refinished the maple neck. I kind of followed the suggestions made here and made my own neck dye using boiled linseed oil and some artists oil paints and sealed it with some clear laquer.

I'm pretty happy how it turned out. I wanted to do the 70's neck colour, which isn't as "amber " as the earlier 60's necks.




Next I prepped the body for the 3TSB. Due to the new EU enviorment regulations, any laquer based paints are getting harder to find. I used to get a very nice laquer wood sealer from a local store, but they no longer sell it. So I had to be somewhat creative.
As the basswood body I had was quiet white, I needed it to be a bit more yellowish. So I got back to the laquer based "boat deck clear" and mixed some yellow laquer paint in it. I aplied this mix in 3 layers with sanding up to # 320 gritt in between. The body grain is now sealed and I got the deisred "base body colour" for the 3 TSB.




The quiet bland looking basswood grain now kind of looks better (still no Alder or Ash grain) but acceptable imho.
Next will be the yellow base coat for the 3 TSB, then the red, followed by black.

But this is where we are now.



The "nicer" grain will be under the yellow, where the area's that have less noticble grain will be covered with the red and black paint. So I think the 3 TSB will look ok on this body.
I also found a piece of tort that is just a bit too small to make a tort Jazzmaster guard out of it, but it looks quiet nice ( a bit lava-ish and reddish) not quiet like the early 70's guard, but the hue of the tort is quiet simelar. So I will try and see if I can make a Jazzmaster guard out of it...

[PorkyPrimeCut]

Great job!

The neck's tinted really nicely & I'll be very interested to see how you get on with the sunburst.

[ohm-men]

Quiet a BIG moment for me...as today I had some time on my hands and I decided to do the 3 TSB on the Basswood body.

I gotta say, this is a quiet scarry finish to apply to a guitar body, especially since I hadn't done this type of finish in since 2013...
But, I just went for it.
I found my old jars of paint that I kept from doing the FIrebird (see page 1) and I was able to use the paint. I filtered the yellow paint as it became quiet thick from sanding on the shelf in the basement.

I used my old Badger air brushes for this.
A model 200 single action for the yellow and red
and a model 150 dual action for the black.

So off we went...
The yellow;




Then I did the red band.... This is really scarry to do....
But here it went anyway....






And then the "moment of truth!" The black band and sides...
Again, quiet scarry to do....






I'm quiet happy with how it looks... A hard edged 3 TSB, not really a "Target Burst" but I think it's ok for what I wanted it to look like.
Ofcourse it still needs a clearcoat, this will give it it's somewhat "shiny" 70's look, or at least I hope it will...

Now I will let the finish cure for a couple of days and then shoot some laquer clear coat or do a bit more red, should it be needed....

[HosaMogami]

Wow, really great job on that burst! I love it, and cant wait to see the next update. Cheers!

[smjenkins]

This is looking amazing. Both the burst and the neck. Can't wait to see this one assembled.