Norbertocaster, part 13: finishing the body

norbertocaster (build 1)

Started: July 15, 2025 • Ended: September 13, 2025

Let's finish the body

I really wanted the body to have a dark brown finish — in my vision, the white pickguard would contrast nicely against it and tie everything together. So I bought three different wood stains to test on some scrap pieces and ended up choosing dark walnut.

Of course, I didn’t take any photos of the test scraps — but the important lesson here is this: always practice on scrap pieces first, whether it’s drilling, painting, or cutting. You’ll thank yourself later (I certainly did).

Painting the wood turned out to be a tricky process: you want to cover everything at once to avoid uneven spots, but you also can’t touch anything while it’s wet. My solution was to attach a piece of wood to the neck pocket and clamp it to the workbench. That way, I could stain the whole body evenly. I applied three layers to get it as dark as possible. Luckily, the stain I used (alcohol-based, not water-based!) dried quickly, so I was able to finish the entire process in just one day.

So before oiling and waxing the body (the same way I did with the neck), it looked like this with some of the hardware attached:

And now, look at the body with Tru-Oil — it’s absolutely AMAZING. The final effect really exceeded my expectations.

After that, I lined all the cavities with copper tape (the same kind people use to keep snails away). This step helps shield the electronics from unwanted noise and electrostatic interference from nearby devices.

Once that step was done, it was time to solder all the cables, potentiometers, switches, pickups, and so on. I didn’t take many photos of this process — except for one slightly ‘artsy’ shot with dramatic lighting. Since I’d already had some experience soldering guitar electronics, I just grabbed a schematic from the internet for wiring a 3-way switch with volume and tone pots, and followed it step by step.