Problem with cocobolo oil

[Xavier Baron]

Hello everbody,

I've began to built a squareneck spider bridge dobro-style weissenborn, using the same side mold than the one I used to built my tricone.

The sides are already bent but I still don't own the wood for top and back (I ordered black acacia just like for the tricone:

http://www.mimf.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php ... it=tricone

I used the scrap wood I had for the headstock: 2 pieces of curly maple and black acacia scrap wood from the previous top…

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…and, for the fretboard, an old piece of cocobolo I own for several years.

AS it's a squareneck, I did the frets with maple:

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And it looks really nice, but I'm afraid that the cocobolo oils will poor in the maple frets and darken them with years…

I hesitate to remove them with a japanese saw and replace them with MOP frets

Your advice please?

Thank you,

Xavier

[Michael Lewis]

How about just leaving them until discoloration happens, if it does. It might not happen. If ti does THEN you can worry about replacing the frets. I have used aluminum sheet for frets, and have seen plastic binding material used for the "frets" .

[Xavier Baron]

Thanks Michael.
The problem is that it will really be uneasy to remove the frets when the fretboard will be bound...

[Mark Swanson]

They might darken a bit, but so will the cocobolo and you'll always be able to see them. I wouldn't worry about it- it looks great, just finish it up and by the time it's done you'll forget about this.

[Alan Carruth]

Sometimes flooding the surface of the maple with CA can seal the pores enough to keep them from looking so dirty. Since you'll be playing it with a slide you probably won't wear through the clear coat.

[Xavier Baron]

Thank you guys.
I may use some CA glue or epoxy as sealer… good idea?

[Mario Proulx]

Use thin CA. You want it to wick into the maple as far as possible, so use then thinnest you have, and NO accelerator.

That said, I've bound dozens of cocobolo guitar bodies with maple and have never seen or have heard a report of, color bleeding...

[Xavier Baron]

Thank you Mario.
Any problem expected when rubing acetone before glueing ?

[Mark Swanson]

That's a myth. Wiping with acetone actually hurts rather than helps. What you want is a clean and new surface on the cocobolo.

[Xavier Baron]

OK Mark, thank you

[Mario Proulx]

What Mark said! That urban myth(wiping with acetone, or any solvent for that matter) needs to die...

[Xavier Baron]

Can I use white glue to glue the cocobolo fretboard on the black acacia top instead of the traditional epoxy? I'd like to glue the fretboard after the finish is applied on the body, as I proceeded for my tricone, because I want to be able to remove glue excess from the angle between fretboard and body, and wiping epoxy excess is not so easy...

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[Clay Schaeffer]

I tape the edge of the body where it meets the fingerboard and wait until the epoxy "squeeze out" starts to set up, then remove the tape and excess epoxy. Makes clean up a bit easier.

[Mark Swanson]

Using the white glue is fine for holding the end of the fingerboard to the top. It releases easily when you have to do a neck reset. Just make sure you scrape the finish off the spruce.

[Nate Scott]

Wish I'd known that the acetone thing was a myth before! I had a 2 year old cocobolo back seam open up about half its length a few months ago.

[Clay Schaeffer]

Hi Nate,
Did you have a back graft on that seam?

[Nate Scott]

I had a spruce reinforcement inside the guitar, but no decorative inlay along the joint. The spruce stayed attached to half of the back.

The real culprit in my case was probably humidity, which I didn't think too much about until this happened. I apparently glued it up in a too damp state, and then it got pulled apart during a low humidity event over the winter. There was also a fracture a couple inched long with the grain on one of the back plates. Hard lesson to learn, and it has led to my efforts to get control of my shop humidity discussed on another thread. Not to mention humidification of finished instruments.

[Alan Carruth]

Acetone or alcohol will remove epoxy that has not hardened.

[Xavier Baron]

Thanks for your help.

I finished the fretboard with CA glue, applied with the tip of the ginger, and sanded/polished like a varnish:

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