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I've been working on a head cab for my 5B6 for months. It is slow progress and sat idle for a while. I thought a buddy would help me out by planing to 3/8" thick and cutting to size some stock to fit. It didn't happen for lot's of good reasons.

The new plan took me to a local exotic lumber dealer. My goal was to get what I needed for under $20. He showed me to the "shorts" and I selected a couple of pieces of Hickory, which he planed for me and ripped one good edge. $15.

The picture is of the front. I've got it cut out now and sanded with 100 grit. I know it doesn't match the maple color on the control panel

I never worked with Hickory before. It is very hard and it splinters. For you wood workers, I'm hoping you can answer some questions about finishing the wood.

After 100 grit, what other grits should I be using? It already feels really smooth to the touch. Do I, for example use 220 grit, put on the first coat of finish and then sand with 320 or 400 between coats? I'm looking for some help on how to do this right.

Should I stain it? If so, what color and what type of stain? I'm concerned Hickory may not be very porous and I'll end up wiping off a lot of the color and maybe ruining the look.

I'm leaning towards leaving it natural color but I think it would be nice if I could darken it just a little bit. Is there some sort of wash that can be used?.

Is polyurthane an appropriate finish? Once again, concern about porosity tells me not to use oil or something like that.

Any other advice on finishing?

Many thanks.

Phil

A 5B6 haiku...

Tone and Volume knob
What more does one really need?
I shall go practice

Hickory is very hard, much harder than oak. Its closed grain, and doesn't hold stain easily.

I would not be afraid to use an oil stain or oil based finish, but it msy be a while between coats.

The best thing you can do is experiment on some scraps.

Ive seen some very interesting finish from wire brushing.

John

I'll bet that smells good when it heats up!

I had hickory cabinets at my last house and they were treated with a glaze rather than a stain.

Colossal: A+!

I think when I built it, I said that the knobs don't need labels. If you can't tell them apart, it couldn't be that important.

While I'm asking, what about mounting the front and rear (same)? It requires screws on going through the front of the Hickory into vertical blocks attached to the sides. Flathead screws? Regular nickel ones OK? Something more fancy like in the picture?

It looks like the stuff to use is called TransTint. It's a dye. http://www.homesteadfinishingproducts.c ... nsTint.htm
I wonder how to pick a color. The wood itself is fairly dark for wood, but not like walnut. They show samples on maple ;-(

Phil_S wrote:It looks like the stuff to use is called TransTint. It's a dye. http://www.homesteadfinishingproducts.c ... nsTint.htm
I wonder how to pick a color. The wood itself is fairly dark for wood, but not like walnut. They show samples on maple ;-(

I use something like it only in solvent based. I get it from stewmac or luthiers mercantile. Mix it in my clear and spray it on. Never tried wiping it on. How much you mix in and how many coats you spray determine
color.

Phil! You got the IKEA hardware catalog? What is that?

xtian wrote:Phil! You got the IKEA hardware catalog? What is that?

Google: furniture assembly hardware
This result: https://www.google.com/search?q=furnitu ... 44&bih=731
second row all the way to the right, click on it for the popup, second picture in the popup. Attributed to YAW MIN ENTERPRISE CORP. They probably make them for Ikea and everyone else.

Did you know, if you go to Ikea, into the room near the cashiers, where they have returns, broken items, etc., there is a cabinet full of hardware. The sell it by the bagful. I think it's about $2 for all you can carry. If you care to cherry pick it, you could probably assemble a pre-cut house with a single Allen wrench.

Back to the topic, it's going to cost me $20 for 2 oz of Transtint. That's a non-starter for me. (I might change my mind.) What about an inexpensive can of water-based stain? Any experience with that? I'm gathering oil based stain for hickory is going to be hard to coat evenly and with limited penetration. I don't have a lot of scrap, so testing has to be very limited.

Phil the 5b6 looks great.

I'm going to use push on volume and tone guitar knobs on my next 5b6.

So I am using different style pots to allow use of those push on knobs but that way I don't have to have a faceplate or label anything. There are a lot of choices for guitar knobs out there.

Well, this is probably overkill, but I'd finish the hickory and maple like a guitar - sealer, lacquer, etc. No need to grainfill as those aren't open grained woods. The lacquer will accept shader / toner (dye suspended in lacquer thinner) much more evenly than the raw wood.

Transtint/Transfast dyes are expensive, but that is because they are highly concentrated. I could stain my deck with a bottle of Transfast powderded dye; hard to believe until you see it.

You could probably get by with Rit dye suspended in lacquer thinner or denatured alcohol and use a PreValve sprayer to fog it on. I have experimented with Rit dyes as toners, but never used it in a finish.

I appreciate all the good advice. Extra thanks to Stratovane for some very specific comments about dye or tint products. It sounds like I should skip the color. The front and back panel combined are probably no more than 1 sq ft of surface area. If it was pine or maple, I'd wipe on some stain and move on. The wood not being very porous tells me to polish it with fine grit paper and apply some clear or tinted polyurethane. This project has been a long time coming to conclusion. I'd like to get the finish done while it is still warm enough to work outside and time is growing short. My wife and I both have an intense dislike for the odor that lingers in the house.

I don't have a proper wood shop. I work outside using a 5.5" circular saw and a single speed 25K RPM router. Those panels were very challenging to cut. I messed up a few times and without any spare blanks, I had to work with what I had. I'm going to bare all -- perhaps other amateurs will learn something.

Mistakes on the wood included:
-Panel slippage while the router was running, forcing me to make the upper vent hole wider than planned.
-Same problem on the control panel cutout for the front (too late to swap for the back.) I had to cut the "legs" off the bottom to move the panel down. Then, I had to deal with making a thin strip from the scrap to glue onto the top edge. Who says you can't put it back after you cut it? I used the flush trim bit to make a good clean edge on the scrap. Then I was able to cut a 1/8" strip using the guide fence on the saw. I was surprised this worked the first time.
-The "legs" on the front, though even, did not look even. I found out there is about 1/16" out of square on the box. I used a sharp chisel to make a shim for one of the legs.
-I didn't set the roundover bit correctly for finishing the cutouts. It left an unwanted line around the cutouts. That is when I found out how hard hickory is. It must have taken an hour to sand out that little error by hand with 100 grit paper.

There are mistakes on the tolex, too. A thousand thanks for Taylor's video on how to do this. I continue to think it's the best tutorial I've seen. I was careless with the razor blade -- it can slip so easily -- and knicked the material where it wraps around to the inside. Corners needed more practice than I allowed for. I had trouble trimming the excess on the inside in a straight line. This is all manual skill and muscle memory that you only get with experience. The big error was getting mixed up on what was top and bottom. I managed to put the seam on the top, though I did a very good job with the seam.

When I have it all done, I'll post, including closeups of the warts.

There's more. These are just the headliners. How I wish I had a table saw, a router table, and a drill press. Still, this has been a lot of fun, it's been instructive, and I'm happy with the result so far. Let's see how it goes screwing the panels to the blocks. The challenge there is drilling freehand, plumb and square.

I'd finish it with Tru Oil.

Once you try that stuff, you will never go back to the other wipe finishes.

How many coats do you use, Tom? And do you buff them when done?