As mentioned previously, I’m finishing the neck with Tru-Oil. The mahogany responded beautifully to the same approach that I’d used before – sanding the oil in with progressively finer grit paper and polishing off with a coffee filter. However I simply could not get a decent finish on the rosewood headplate. No matter how much I tried, I simply couldn’t get a couple of grain lines to fill – on the left hand edge of the headstock:
I abandoned the sanding approach here, and just kept coating the headplate with Tru-Oil. After a dozen or more coats, I think it’s pretty much there now. (I might give it a light flatting and another coat.)
While I was messing with the headplate, I managed to ding the back of the neck quite badly
It steamed out OK, but frustrating, none the less!
The neck still had the fingerboard masked off, and when I took the masking tape off, it left a noticeable ridge in the finish (I should have taken it off sooner, I think).
I had to carefully scrape this back and gave the neck another couple of coats of Tru Oil and it all came good.
I’m really looking forward to putting this together.
