Thinning the neck profile on a classical guitar?

[Ned Milburn]

Originally Posted by YamaYairi

I'm starting work on this tonight. For refinishing, are you supposed to apply sanding sealer before or after the stain?

Seal it first for uniformity. Otherwise, you can get differential absorption rates due to more and less absorbent grain swirls, leaving a blotchy look.

[YamaYairi]

Originally Posted by Ned Milburn

Seal it first for uniformity. Otherwise, you can get differential absorption rates due to more and less absorbent grain swirls, leaving a blotchy look.

Great, thanks. I was originally going to finish it with Nitrocellulose Lacquer but I am concerned about the fumes so I will French Polish it instead. After shaping it I'll sand the finish off the whole neck before refinishing so it looks uniform.

[YamaYairi]

As promised, here is a blow by blow description with photos. First, the before pictures. It's kind of hard to see how chunky the neck is but I think you can get an idea of it.




Checking for presence of a truss rod with a neodymium magnet. No truss rod.



I wanted to get an idea of the neck profile. They make fancy gauges for this but I don't have one, so I wrapped a 12 AWG wire around the neck.





Looks pretty decent to me. I don't think I'll take anything off the sides.
I don't trust myself to do this with a scraper and I'm not taking that much off, so I will use 100 grit sandpaper. The first scrape is the hardest. No turning back now! My goal was to end up with a visible, fairly linear taper sanded out of the neck. Here is what it looked like with the sanding done.



Then I sanded it down with progressively lighter grades of sandpaper, down to 220 grit. I decided not to remove all the finish on the neck, I just sanded it with 220 grit to make a uniform surface for the shellac to adhere to, Here's what it looks like now.



Next step is to thoroughly wipe it down with a tack cloth to remove all sawdust, then apply sanding sealer. That's for Saturday. It's 10PM and I'm tired!

[YamaYairi]

I read an article on French Polish technique. According to the article I have to sand the neck down with finer grades of sandpaper and then finishing steel wool before applying finish so that's what I will do tonight.
I also left out one step I did before finish sanding; after thinning the neck, I sanded it more to round out the flat spot I created as much as possible. The back of the neck is still flat near the nut, but comfortably shaped.

[YamaYairi]

Update:
I was able to get a great match for the stain. I did not use a pore filler or sanding sealer because the ones available at my neighborhood hardware store all contained chemicals that cause cancer. As a cancer survivor I try to avoid anything like that. So I am filling the pores with multiple coats of shellac, then sanding it back until the surface is flat. It's going to take a lot longer this way.

[charles Tauber]

Originally Posted by YamaYairi

So I am filling the pores with multiple coats of shellac, then sanding it back until the surface is flat. It's going to take a lot longer this way.

A traditional approach is to fill the pores with pumice, coloured or natural.

[Sperry]

I've seen a guy staining the whole neck then sanding it back down.

The way you are doing it sounds great!

[YamaYairi]

I found that after a week the finish had sunk into the grain a bit. I didn't have time to work on it again until today. There was plenty of finish on it so I just sanded it flat with 1500 sand paper and then 000 steel wool. I left it with a satin finish. I like the feel of it, but I pretty much had to do that because my finishing skills are poo, to be honest. It is very comfortable to play now and looks great, so I accomplished what I set out to do.

[Ned Milburn]

Good stuff, Warren!! Hope you are satisfied with the result.

[YamaYairi]

It came out really nice! After I applied the finish, I found out that Stew Mac sells a really nice non toxic pore filler. Next time I do any finishing I will use this stuff.
http://www.stewmac.com/Materials_and...in_Filler.html
That would have saved me a lot of work.