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Not Quite A Tele...


ScottR

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When I finished the Domestic Singlecut, I did a little traveling and then I came home and cleaned the garage....a little. Then I did some yard work and then put off a bunch more....and generally wandered around like a lost soul because I was not working on a build.

I kept noticing a glued up mess that I'd made during the Stripy Doublecut build. I had bookmatched some Zebra wood and the lower bearings on my blade had loosened up and I had some terrible blade wander. I glued the thing up anyway, and then decided there was no way I was going to use it on that build.

So to stop the wandering around I pulled it out and leveled both sides. Between the horrible cuts and the cupping, I lost more than a third of the thickness. But it was still a little thicker than a drop top and that made me think it might work for a tele. Except I don't like to do pure replicas. I decided this would have a tele silhouette, and my own contours and stuff. So I cut a body out of some leftover ash. And I remembered really likeing the feel of the osage orange in the neck of the domestic singlecut, so I got some of that and some katalox to make a neck out of.

I now I have a build to work on and make me happy!:D

I did not take my usual pile of lumber and prep work pics, so we start with an ash body and the zebrano top....and neck lumber.

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I cut up and prepped the neck lumber and can provide this proof of clamps picture.

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I sliced off a piece of leftover ebony and trued it up and cut some fret slots in it. while the neck was in the clamps.

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And then I trued up the neck bland and cut the headstock angle.

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And cleaned that up and routed a truss rod slot.

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SR

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I stuck the offcut form the neck angle under the headstock to give somewhat parallel surfaces to hold clamps and stuck some cut off brads in to hold the headstock cap in place during glue up.

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Proof of clamps.

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Added some brads for the fretboard too. Note the trussrod is covered with a trimmed strip of scotch tape.

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I see I didn't give a proof of fretboard shot....but here's proof of clamping it.

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While that glue was drying I trimmed the zebrano to a tele shape and finished truing up the gluing surface. There was a lot of work involved with this, so I did some thinking. And experimenting. What I learned was one way to avoid chipping while planing interlocking wood like zebrano is to wet the top and plane across the grain.

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And it works.

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And now you are caught up to where I'm at in this build.

And I'm happy as a clam.:)

SR

 

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I like to drill the tuner holes before cuttint the headstock to shape, so that everything I do to it cleans it up.

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Sanding the headstock cap will clean up the top of the drill holes and cutting it to shape will clean of the bottom of the drill holes.

Then I cut the neck out of that chunk of laminated wood.

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And did some carving on it....

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SR

 

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9 hours ago, ScottR said:

I like to drill the tuner holes before cuttint the headstock to shape, so that everything I do to it cleans it up.

C01800.jpg

 

C01801.jpg

Sanding the headstock cap will clean up the top of the drill holes and cutting it to shape will clean of the bottom of the drill holes.

Then I cut the neck out of that chunk of laminated wood.

C01802.jpg

C01803.jpg

C01804.jpg

And did some carving on it....

C01805.jpg

SR

 

Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes :) I can feel another intricately carved volute coming on!

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7 hours ago, ScottR said:

While I'm not quite ready to carve my logo into the volute, I did clean it up a considerable amount.

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SR

The curves are gorgeous.  Recently visited the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.  Cut this off at the 12th fret, stick it upright on a plinth and you'd have a crowd around it :)

 

Not that I'm necessarily suggesting you do that...

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5 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

The curves are gorgeous.  Recently visited the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.  Cut this off at the 12th fret, stick it upright on a plinth and you'd have a crowd around it :)

Thanks Andy.

This particular headstock wanted to modify what I normally do at the upper end. When the wood speaks to me I try to listen, as it usually knows what it is talking about. This time it certainly did. I'm really pleased with the way that came out and will by adopting that modification in future builds.:)

SR

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5 hours ago, Norris said:

Wow - that's some gorgeous shine! Is that your micromesh? 

Indeed. That stuff really makes bare wood look amazing. It doesn't take long either. After running through the grits up to 400 with my regular 3M sandpaper, I went through the micromesh grits, averaging less than 5 minutes each. It is truly fine stuff!

SR

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not sure if you did that little 'bendback' on the end of your headstock on the last one... if you did i missed it.  that is a really nice touch and full disclosure I'm so doing that on my next build!  excellent idea.  really is a nice touch and probably strengthens the stock. 

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3 hours ago, mistermikev said:

not sure if you did that little 'bendback' on the end of your headstock on the last one... if you did i missed it.  that is a really nice touch and full disclosure I'm so doing that on my next build!  excellent idea.  really is a nice touch and probably strengthens the stock. 

I normally add a curve or hooked end at the top that has a recurve on the underside. It ends up looking a bit lit a whale tail. This is definitely more elegant.

SR

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