I'm Stijn, i'm 32 and live in Belgium. I started woodworking in 2020 during the lockdown. I assume i'm not alone in this. I have no background with any manual labour but have been playing guitar for 15 years. I planned on started woodworking about 10 years ago and bought a circular saw and ijgsaw but never did anything with them, since 2020 my tool collection grew exponentially.

I started making some furniture for in the house and other things like a tablefootballtable and recently finally made my first guitar and speaker cabinet. If interested you can check out my Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sawworx/>

First guitar build

The guitar is inspired by Danish Pete his Telecaster from Andertons. It has an alder body I made from a blank with royal purple metallic nitro finish and original Fender roasted maple neck.

GGO Build

For the GGBO build i'm planning on making a mahagony jazzmaster body from scratch, the neck i'll purchase from Warmoth. I'll paint it white and make a gold anodised or copper scratchplate so it's very pretty and shiny and then dump an active EMG pickup set in it and tune it to drop B.

For me it's a tribute build to three guitars I owned and sold to fund my woodworking. A Rutters Telemaster, a competely white Gretsch Corvette and a Ibanez RG.

Full specs:

• Body: Mahagony blank -> Jazzmaster body
• Neck: Warmoth reverse telecaster with stratocaster heel - maple + rosewood fretboard - 10/16 compound radius - Jumbo frets - wizard profile
• Body + neck colour: Olympic white - Scrachplate: gold/copper - Hardware: black
• Pickups: EMG 60/81 - 2 volume 1 tone
• Bridge: Hipshot hardtail
• Tuners: Planet waves locking tuners

First question

Warmoth suggests a 'hard finish' on the maple neck so should I paint the neck and body with polyurethane instead of nitrocellulose? I haven't done a poly finish before. Do you prefer a whipe on poly or to spray it? Or what finish do you suggest for the neck? I really would like the back white instead of clear coated.