Working Dogs

PHOTOS
Unfretted Supro neck shows the unusual nut with an ebony shim.
Beautiful 2 piece maple Supro body.
Supro neck fretted.
Kay 592 with frets removed & fingerboard dressed ready for refret.

It has been a huge week for everyone in the Mongrels camp this week. The birthday girl turns seven on the 30th of November and we are racing to complete the '58' Supro in time. Someone had damaged the strap button holes on the lower bout and filled the resulting mess with some kind of plastic filler. We are going to cut the heel off an old Strat copy neck and make a Maple endgrain plug to repair that. Michael is going to French Polish it using golden shellac and he spent much time prepping the body as any timber blemmishes invariably show through. Shellac is a very durable, finish which ages well and is easily maintained. It is also considered to be one of the most tone friendly finishes along with Nitro Cellulose. More modern finishes, such as Polyurethane are very durable and attractive but tend to lock tone into the body and reflect the brittleness of of the finish rather than the true tones offered by the timber.
Ian has reprofiled the fingerboard and finished refretting the neck. He has also almost finished the same job on the 592 neck shown in the prevous blog.
Michael finished his repair of a broken Bass neck and returned it to the happy owner.