Raymondo and Betty Blue - Getting On With It

The Raymond One - Gagging for some Mojo

Well, in between peeping thru the curtains to see whether Old Honey had happened to just be left on the doorstep by the courier, I thought I should do something productive to keep me going yesterday.

Young Marcy Mojo is sending the Wide Ranger Humbucker and wired control plate to arrive tomorrow, so I figured it would make sense to have The Raymond One ready to go.

So as you can hopefully see, Raymondo now has a neck attached, strap pins - I remembered the strap pins - yeah - and a rather fine Wilkinson Strat trem with a solid steel block and a lovely little grub screw that let me tighten the hole that the trem arm pushes into so that it doesn't fall out and I don't cross thread it. Some people think of everything, don't they?

Removed the clamps - then had to prize my 'caul' off

And there we are - ready to go.

Well, nearly. I noticed yesterday that there is one slight issue with the body that has escaped me thus far, which is that somebody seems to have forgotten to drill a hole for the jack socket to sit in.

And more to the point, somebody a lot closer to home didn't notice this before covering the body with paisley , grain filler, and lots of lacquer.

So one last job on that and we'll be clover-based.



Other than that, I took my life in my hands earlier and unclamped The Betty Blue One to see how the veneering had turned out.

It is one of those odd occasions where I was dreading the idea that it had worked too well, as of course the idea is for it to be ragged so that the corrosion of the bronze beneath is partially visible.

Roughly trimmed the veneer away

And horror of horrors, it turned out well. It was a little neat but I can soon fix that sort of bobbins, so I'm really quite pleased.

From there I removed the excessive veneer and generally hacked around the edges and introduced a couple of minor splits and scrapes.

Once that was done I sanded it back and generally got it how I wanted it.

Power, that is. Power.

I had an idea that it would be nice to have the veneer not quite reaching the edge, but to sand it so that the corroded bronze was removed and the nice blue beneath would show thru as a faux binding.

So that was what I did and amazingly it looks how I imagined it, which is most odd. If things start looking how I imagine them we may all be in trouble. Especially Gideon George Osbourne. Not pretty at all.

Bit more of a twin

So the paint is peeping thru the bronze which is peeping thru the veneer which is going to be covered in lacquer.

I'm liking this better, the more I think about it.

Anyway, I'll finish the sanding and then lacquer it to death later on. There is no real panic on this as I haven't got any of the other parts yet and Mr Mojo is doing me a P90 Tele pup for it, and that will take a while as it involves different magnets or something technical like that. Wrong kind of magnets, can cause havoc with your winding apparently.

**** Interlude ****

Edges sanded for a 'faux binding' and lacquered to death

Time moved on, so I just finished the sanding and started the lacquering and the walnut burr just comes to life. I think this is going to turn out pretty good, if I say so meself.

And then of course it had dried before I posted this. So you can see for yourself what I meant.

Obviously, I'd appreciate it if you kept all these details to yourself, as I know Paul Reed Smith often pops in to try and nick my veneering technique so that they can get away from that Doctors-and-Lawyers reputation, and get down with the kids like me. I try to distract him, but he is getting sneakier all the time.


La la laaa

Loving the corrosion peeping thru...