Refinishing my Ibanez blazer bass

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28th November 2009

At the same time that I had glued the veneer to the guitar the headstock had also been glued. This was quite hard to do becase the contour from the headstock up to the neck is a pretty steep curve. This was done by first putting the glue on, positioned and then I sprayed water on the outer side. Finally a large bag of rice was wedged into the contour and along the headstock with loads of heavy items on top of the bag. It came out quite nicely.

With the first piece of veneer having had several days to dry I trimmed the edges crudely as well as the pickup and neck cavity areas. Next I positioned the second piece of veneer onto the guitar. taped it up to the first piece, spread the glue and again taped it down so that the veneer took the contour on the edge of the guitar. Again it was weighed down and left.

While this was drying I started to trim the veneer to the headstock edges and around the holes for the tuners. Patience is key here. One slip or one snag means you have cracks or tears to deal with in the veneer.

After 10 hours or so I started to trim the veneer on the body closer to the area where the glue was joining it and then using a detail sander (tribase) I sanded it into where it joined. Just to see how it looked I then put the pickup covers, bridge, neck and knobs into position. I was tempted to leave it as it was and just spray the clear at this point because it did look nice. The only thing that made me continue is that being a contoured edge the join between body and veneer is incredibly visible.














30th November 2009

The black dye had been added the night before and with it now being dry I set to work on sanding the highpoints off. Again using P240. The end result was quite nice and I immediately tacked off the dust. The blue dye was added and it looked really dark. I took pictures with and without flash to show the colour better. The without flash is pretty much what you see in reality. The flash is closer to how it looks when you shine daylight (5500K) lights on it.

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