Stripping and oiling a mahogany neck?

[toejam]

Just got this two weeks ago. It's been played and has scratches and slight battle scars/natural relicing on it. There's a couple tiny dents/dings on the back of the neck, not through to the wood, but I can feel them when playing. Been thinking about maybe stripping just the back of the neck and maybe going with some gunstock oil, or maybe just doing a satin finish. It's a USA Hamer, so it's got a pretty stable three-piece mahogany neck anyway. How easy/hard would this be to do? Or maybe I should just leave it alone?

[dg]

Lots of options. You can strip & oil it, but some aren't fond of the open grain feel of an oiled mahogany neck, me included. It's not as slick of a feel as maple.

You might be able to do a drop fill of the dings, depending on how big they are, then you could just do the old steel wool thing to the back of the neck for a satin feel. That would be a pretty quick & easy way to go. Make sure you find out what kind of finish it has before drop filling. I know you can use super glue on poly, not sure what's best if it's lacquer.

[toejam]

Thanks. I don't mind the feel of raw mahogany, but maybe I should do the matte satin instead of fully stripping it.
What about the old damp cloth and iron trick; would that get raise the dings up quick? They're not real big at all.

[slowhand66]

A good idea. Start with (fine) steel wool and take some of the hard coat off to a "satin" feel. Not sticky at all, and you might like it.

If not, then use a heavier steel wool. 320 grit paper works well, or go lightly with 220 at first. Use a good backing on the paper (like the material of a mouse pad) to give the paper an equal support and smooth application. Mahogany is more grainy than maple, but I like it too.

[Jack The Riffer]

I love it when you talk about stripping your wood Joe.

[toejam]

LOL Thanks! I don't want any steel wool or grit paper in the hole, though.

[CharvelRocker]

Tried this once on a neck through Epiphone.... it can turn into a nightmare if finish you don't want touched gets touched, and generally can be hard to keep the profile of the neck doing a total strip of the finish. Good luck with it though!

[toejam]

Yeah, I'll probably try one of those Scotch-Brite pads first instead of the steel wool.

[metalchurch79]

Thats what I'd do too.

You can try some super glue in your control cavity first to see how it reacts to your paint before you do any drop filling.
Make sure it's a place that has clear coat so it's the same finish as your neck obviously.

With some 800 or 1500 after drop filling and the 0000 steel wool I think you will have your problemt solved.
Being it's such a nice guitar I'd avoid stripping it just now, but then again I cant stand painted/finished necks myself, so I'd probably strip it

[slowhand66]

You should tape off any areas you don't want "unfinished". This keeps things under control.

[toddstaples]

Chuckracer and I did my 2 Les Pauls 3 or 4 years ago. Started with 80 grit. Went pretty quickly......

[Bengal65]

Joe, for the soldering iron/damp cloth trick, it works great. But, you have to remove the finish where the dents are. So, if you do any stripping, it will work fine for getting the dents out back to factory new!

[sully]

i'm with toddstaples! i'm doing that very thing to the les paul that i'm resurrecting. i have to keep the back of the headstock painted (to hide the break), so i figured i'd make a stinger. i also like what jackson does with the transition between color and raw wood, so i was going to recreate that.

i first scraped the area where the headstock meets the neck, taped it off with vynl stripe tape to make the stinger, and shot some sanding sealer, then clear (4-5 coats). once that was done, i had the perimeter laid out. i then masked off some of the clear coated wood (to create the no color, just cleared wood border), and shot the touch up color that i needed to use (joe, get some reranch gibson black). i then removed the second mask (to reveal the masked off clear coat border) and started laying on the clear coat again.

to do the same thing with the body/neck joint, i scraped away the paint super carefully along the body/neck joint area, masked off the rest of the neck, and laid a bunch of clear on the body, neck joint (and then all over the body again).

the clear has to cure for a few weeks, but when it's done, i'll take some 80 grit to the back of the neck, and gunstock oil the raw wood.

i did a lousy job of explaining it, but here's how it looks now:



joe, you could do this pretty easily on that hamer if you wanted to.

sully

[Grandturk]

Now you guys got me thinking about doing this to mine... its a 78 with a 3 piece maple neck.

[toejam]

Joe, for the soldering iron/damp cloth trick, it works great. But, you have to remove the finish where the dents are. So, if you do any stripping, it will work fine for getting the dents out back to factory new!

Ah, cool. Thanks!