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Yes, black is somewhat of a standard at least for some builders and since you said you have plenty of scrap pieces for testing it's good to see how it turns out. With dark purple it might work well, with something like fire engine red brown would work better. With purple black/brown might also work since there's red in both colours. But I also strongly suggest you to try black/purple or even black/blue, with the blue being on the purple side instead of green. So Prussian Blue is not as recommendable as Ultramarine. If you're not familiar with various common blues this little video might help understanding the nature of some variables: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYH6zA3atfg

Thanks again for the -as usual- golden advice. I was also hesitant. I watched quite a few BigD guitars video and went back and forth, looking at my "gold standard" again, and I decided on black for my first try. I really want to enhance the figuring in the purple and try to make the contrast in the non purple part almost over the top. I figured black would be a good start. I am not ruling out other options such as a brown or brown/black base if my first try doesn't end up conclusive. I would like to avoid more advanced mixing techniques for now because hey it's my first stain and I basically have no clue what I am doing Yep! I have both left over TruOil and some sample cosmo for this exact reason. I am hoping it won't be too bad on the purple, I don't want to go acrylic finish. My piece of maple for the top is actually very whitish (even more so than my test plates) so I am hoping it won't be too drastic. Cheers!

Now that was quite a rant! In a good way, though. It's very true that anything that is dedicated to any hobby or other special use gets a higher price tag. Luthier and gunsmith are good examples but it applies to every imaginable group. Even if we're talking about aids for handicapped people: A 50"x40" piece of non slip mat for car rooftop bags or a carpet underlay of 80"x80" is about a tenner and even that has the extra price for dedicated usage. Guess they make them in huge rolls for retailers to cut. Cut that same mat into 5"x5" pieces and you can ask a tenner for a pair as they now have become jar opening aids for people with reduced strength! For me that would be a little too warm but each to their own. Enough of that side track. Speaking about metals shrinking and expanding, even if you could keep the room at that temperature using the tools would change their dimensions as soon as they get involved with your body temperature. After all they're very small compared to your body mass. Thus the optimal room temperature for hand measuring tools would be 98 degrees F. Then again, that would also change the properties of the pieces to be measured. Not to mention that working in such conditions isn't healthy. Fortunately in luthiery we don't have to measure things that accurately. Inexpensive tools are good enough as the only measurement that requires high accuracy is the scale length which is both adjustable and dependent on sevaral variables like the quality and gauge of the string wire as well as the pitch. And of course positioning the frets which is a compromise in any case despite the improved ways to calculate it.

Using tape for marking the facets is ingenious! A pencil line will smudge way too easily and requires both good eyesight and lighting. And a marker may get too deep and stain spots permanently. And carving half a dozen necks out of cheap wood... That is something every budding luthier should do! Regarding staining, I highly recommend you to try other than black for enhancing the figuration. Black as such often can look dirty and smudged whereas a dark brown may belong to the natural colour palette of almost any wood, even the palest ones. That said, since you're going for purple I'm a bit hesitant to recommend brown as it may blend with the main colour and the result may end up looking shit - literally. Instead I'd try with elements of purple like blue, red or even pink. Although the figuration often is made using a dark colour, I've seen it made with a lighter hue as well with great results. But it requires proper testing. So maybe starting with pink, sanding back, applying dark blue and sanding back and finally applying the purple might be very vibrant. Speaking of brown hues potentially making purple look dirty, do some testing with the finishes as well. Both TruOil and clear Osmo have a brown hue which can change the final colour. It's not only because of the colour within them, it's also about how they highlight the similar colours of the wood. Even though maple is pale, the real colour often actually is a very light brown. Neutral white maple is a rarity. For flat pieces a random orbital is a great tool as it doesn't seem to leave marks. Your idea of sanding up to 400P with it and then raising the fibres and lightly hand sanding the fibres along the grain sounds very good.

Yesterday evening was neck shaping day! Both my favorite -it feels like you go from woodworking to luthery and there is a guitar emerging- and most hated day -it's really a make or break kinda work-. But it was overall a good day in the shop After finalizing the headstock shape with a bit of hand sanding, I started by flush sanding fretboard and neck. I was a bit timid with the router and a little glue was still visible. So I just took my leveling beam, glued on some 240 and went for it. All went well and I could even remove the "mishap" I had the other day. So just a matter of removing the bulk of the neck with a bandsaw before moving on. And now it's just about the facetting method. I went for a D shape (19.5mm at 1st and 21 at 12th approx) and took my time. I wanted to be precise with it. Step 1: Step 2: Step 3: Step3: St Step done with the faceting (the lightning makes it look asymetrical, it's not though): Hand for scale: I am really glad I did like 8 neck on pine before to optimize the workflow and feel more spontaneous on it. So even though this is only my second guitar, it's more or less my 10th neck. The big difference is that holy crap noone told me how both hard rosewood was, and how nice it was to work with as it reacts great with every tool. As long as you wear a face mask, it's a joy. And in case anyone is curious about the workflow: - draw line - tape line with thin masking tape - remove what's between the lines with, in that order: Shinto the bulk, thin rasp till almost hitting the tape, sanding beam until hitting the tape, card scrapper to make the face flat. I am very happy with how it turned out. The piece of rosewood is very nice too as it has purple hues (yay for theme build) and somehow has a lighter stripe along the middle spline. I am going to let the neck rest a week or two to let it get any potential tension out before I fine tune everything and make the volute. The heel will wait until the body is ready. Bonus shot: first try with Angelus stain on figured maple. I sanded the piece to 320/400, then raised grain, then 400, then applied a good coat of black dye. I let it dry overnight then went at it with a random orbit sander with 240P. I think it looks mostly ok, but there is a bit of unevenness. This I think comes from the fact that the piece is not perfectly flat so the sanding is not homogeneous. The white line at the top is some vinyl masking tape I was trying out for this which seems to be perfect. I think it's not a bad first try, and I am hitting exactly the contract I wanted: it goes from almost black still to natural maple, which should be a hint darker once the finish is on it. I think that beside a flat piece, improvements could be made by lowering the grit on the orbital sander to 320 to have better control. I am also wondering if I can maybe prepare the entire piece with the random orbital sander to 400P (and only hand sand with 400P lightly after raising the grain to knock the fibers off) to have a more homogeneous preparation. Tips welcome for this. I will try the color on in the next few days and it will be tricky and likely a bit ugly to most of you but hey, my build

The last StewMac calipers I used were rebranded I Gauging calipers. All of these cheap Chinese made calipers are of adequate quality for measuring but they are a long ways from being a truly high quality instrument for measuring anything very critical. They also eat batteries at an alarming rate too. The measuring part never really turns off. Only the LCD display actually turns off. A milliammeter will show current drain when the calipers are supposedly turned off. Mitutoyo calipers show zero current drain when they are turned off, but those are $250-$6200 calipers. I have the 8 inch carbide anvil Mitutoyo calipers which are about $500. They measure in .01mm and .ooo5" increments. I like having the 1/128th or 1/64th or 1/32nd or 1/16th or 1/8th or 1/4, or 1/2 of an inch measurements! Mitutoyo does not offer that feature in the carbide anvil sets. You have to re-zero any caliper set, any micrometer and especially dial gauges every time you go to use them. Changes in temperature make the metal expand and contract enough to throw the measurements off, especially with dial gauges. We have an old wind up 8 day clock. In the summer it needs to be readjusted or it runs slow. In the winter it needs to be readjusted or it runs fast. What happens is the pendulum expands with the higher temp in summer making it longer so the weight takes longer to swing back and forth. In winter it contracts and the pendulum swings back and forth faster because that pendulum rod is shorter. My dial gauges' racks can grow or shrink by 50-200 1/10,000ths of an inch with seasonal temperature changes. I wish I could keep every part of room in the house at 74 degrees F, but it ain't ever gonna happen. And yes, that Ames Waltham dial gauge measures down to 5/100,000 of an inch and it is repeatable to 1/10,000 of an inch or 10x more repeatable and 20x more accurate than most micrometers and calipers. Waltham also made fine American watches. For calipers that measure in fractions of an inch, I am using I Gauging. I also use I Gauging straight edges. For a while StewMac's straight edges were I Gauging's rejects. They were about 1/2 as accurate as an I Gauging straight edge but still accurate enough for luthrie, I guess. The I Gauging straight edges cost about 45-60% less too. I'd buy two 36 inch straight edges and cut them into pieces, so I had 6 inch, 12 inch 18 inch, 24 inch, and a 30 inch and some odds and ends pieces. I have a hand scraped Starette of two that are accurate to 1/1000th per 3 feet. Those are $3500+, and used for very fine machine work, like decking the heads on a Rolls Royce Merlin engine. I do NOT buy calipers, dial gauges, straight edges or micrometer from StewMac. I can get better quality stuff, even if it's Chinese made, non Mitutoyo stuff, cheaper elsewhere and the quality is almost always better that StewMac stuff, by a factor of 100%. These tools are NOT luthrie exclusive tools. Put the words "luthrie" or "gunsmith" in front of any tool's name and the price always goes way up.

I had a quick session yesterday, I wanted to finishing trimming the fretboard and shape the headstock. So I took the router out to flush cut the fretboard: This went without major issues. I just had a very slight tilt when routing around the 3rd fret bass side which made a "dent" into the fretboard. This will be mostly sanded flush and shaped when I do the neck carve and radiusing, and further fixed when I glue + wood dust the fret ends (it's at the 3rd fret slot). I also had minimal tear out at the 22nd fret (see picture below). This will be gone by the time I am done radiusing and rolling off the fretboard. I am happy the nut side has no damage at all, I was scared of that. The only issue was that there is an overhand for the fretboard past the 24th fret. Which I obviously couldn't flush cut with a flush bit. The file was starting to irritate me but I found my best friend just hiding behind the neck! It made short work of it. Now I could go back to the file and round up the corners: I then shaped the headstock using a spindle sander mostly. The very fine and last details will be done a bit later on. Since I was at that stage, I went for the tuner holes. 10mm diameter, easy enough, even though the pillar drill we have has a slight wiggle. No tear out, except a very very little piece on the top left of that image. Will be covered entirely by the tuner so no big deal. I could finally check how it was all looking and if the fretboard didn't move during glue up. As it stands, it's close to perfect. Not enough to see any tilt. In the little time I had left, I went to the laser cutter to make a humbucker template: And a test for my side project: Now I really need to find some clamps to glue to top onto the body properly...

I know this is an old thread, but I'm back with an answer. For the FRS and a 26.125" scale (note this is different than mentioned above) the distance from the nut to the center of the pivots should be ~25.55" (649mm) with 9-42 gauge strings. Here are a couple of photos of my measurement fixture. The neck joint and body are 3D printed and bolted to a 2x6 to allow adjustability. I was able to adjust the intonation error to with 1 cent and all saddle bolts are in the center hole. I've attached a model of the "body" as well (there's a .step file inside the zip archive), I don't see any issues with the route, there's lots of room for the string clamping bolts to clear at the back (even if the saddles were adjusted further away from the nut) and the leading edge clears. The trem was setup floating for this test. I hope this helps someone else in the future. FRS Route.zip

Thanks for the advice. Is this what you mean and if so, what size do you use? Also, do you not use a magnet but get the sensor very close to the screw? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/115335128825?itmmeta=01HWTSZC5HBBG9E5KA41WW2QMG&hash=item1ada8266f9:g:8bIAAOSwNrViUS56&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAA8AviJmALaN4vosyJ0l6h6QZkNxxXb6GjQW5hoqjCc%2FcbYRHPZrQwTYifuer9%2FHrdd%2B%2BawEG1YrboceTu0wAQzWv7zMyQNpUGV3VplPPLveabPLjqBSJkpAkrpho3NXG9QPqR3vT4MrNjaUTsyc8iMdy1FsJ8Ph5rT4FMyRA6a6AwnC673KpdEk5zT0XZiWfoBp%2BqXi8ACF8Pb0lG0D11WNK9WFzQiEEdRlvF1J3ljgG1VANvhsqq3Uu%2Fnl1d%2FQswy8a%2Fsji80CKp%2BDTwIaL8Rsqne6G6LRJY%2FWDnMSdRK4iOmzJ7WUa2Xe%2BTj9tnIP%2BTLg%3D%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR47D_dnmYw

Oh my lord yes! Count me in that group. It's pretty much an unwritten rule that one of the best measures of the quality of a luthier is how good he is at repairing all the stupid crap he allows to happen to his build. SR

I am fully enamored with this saying

I would vouch ALL of us

the site is unavailable, tho. I am currently searching for cad files for a 27 inch scale guitar neck, that i want to put on a telecaster custom body. does anyone have some cad files that could be helpful?

hola, tengo una Saturn 63, hopf, original, es totalmente hueca, si querés escribime mi mail es leonardopi@hotmail.com,

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You do know that the finishing stretch takes about 80% of the time, don't you? That applies to first timers as well as to retiring life long professionals. Sanding through the clearcoat is very common as it's very hard to guesstimate the thickness when the lacquer is wet. A textured result makes it even harder. That's one of the several reasons to use a light hand when sanding, removing the dust both from the paper and the workpiece after every few strokes allows you to keep an eye on the surface before you go too far. The curing/drying time is another thing that keeps surprising builders. The surface is definitely dust and touch dry, yet it will copy the texture of anything that touches it for a quarter of an hour or even less. Wrapped loosely in a towel for taking it home from the workshop or just laying it on the sofa for the time to hang up your overcoat will create a nice canvas pattern... Every time, every build! Lastly, I had my most ambitious build over 2 m high. The cupboard door handle it was hanging from turned open and the guitar fell on the floor headstock first. Fortunately the finish I was using (Crimson Guitar Finishing Oil) can easily be patched so after fixing the bruises there was no evidence left from the accident. I'm sure other builders here have tons of similar stories. Yet we all have finished most of our builds, they very rarely end up trashed after an incident or three. As the modernized old Finnish saying tells, "Chin down and head towards new disappointments!"

Sad day, major screw ups all around. The first domino that fell and screwed me over was the fact that I sanded through the 2k and through the stain. Then, I did some patch work, but then the guitar stuck to some plastic while still wet with 2k, so now it has this marvelous texture. Finally, it fell off the ceiling and hit the floor. Lots of fun in the finishing stretch, wish I could just quit, but I've put too much time and energy to stop here.... Very sad..

if you're spraying lightly/not wet then you are way more likely to get orange peel, smaller amount of paint is drying faster and not levelling out on the surface. My experience with 2k is limited but I would spray one light coat and then spray wet coats after that - the downside of that is you're more likely to get a run, but runs can be scrape down before level sanding.

For 2k I was taught to spray a light coat and sand it level to matte, down to the bottom of the texturing. The second layer was advised to spray a thicker layer "wet on wet", meaning several layers with short enough intervals so that the poly doesn't build a skin but has solidified enough not to run. That is supposed to be the final layer, thick enough to be sanded level and polished. But if you let it dry before getting the desired thickness you'll have to let it dry properly and sand it level to matte again as at stage one. The idea of creating a thick layer is to allow leveling. Several thin layers are too easy to sand through to the previous layer which will cause "contour lines". As for the texture, spraying is a combination of distance, temperature and viscosity, plus pressure. If you spray thick paint from far away in a high temperature the paint droplets will partially dry before hitting the surface which will show as texture. Similarly if you spray thin paint from near in a lower temperature you will easily get runs. As you're using rattle cans you can't adjust the pressure. Pro painters often test the flow and coverage on a piece of cardboard to adjust to the current conditions before attacking the actual workpiece. That's their secret for getting a level surface without runs or orange peel texture.

Thanks guys I do have a question, I'm not sure I have put enough clear or as I'm spraying it somewhat lightly without being super wet. Am I supposed to get it more wet, or is 4 layers of overlapped spray enough? It has a bit of texturing and is not flat on the surface so I was not sure..

Really like how it is turning out!

Looks great!

My ghetto spray rig haha... 4 coats of 2k applied, not sure how long I need to wait before sanding, but I was gonna give it a few days..

Hi babe. Glue up went well. Everything is where it should be and alignment seems close to perfect. I will know more when everything is cleaned up and routed but I have no reason to worry (yet). The neck is now resting in my guitar room, intimately getting to know the fretboard while it all finishes to dry in a proper environment (if that's what you call german weather right now). Can't wait for the next steps!