alysum

It would be nice if WezV could provide some specs on his nice guitar such as the woods uses

hooglebug> how did you manage to get a perfect straight blue stain line before the natural maple binding ? everytime I try something like that the stain likes to sink into the wood and it never achieves a straight line

looks clean and tidy but I am disturbed to see Gibson LP on the headstock..........

some are really nuts !

yeah I know about the MXR phase 90...though I want one similar to the phase 100 with 2 knobs. Ive found a site with some times, just got to work out the costs.

I know I would be wasting time and perhaps spending more money in the end but DIY is a passion just like making guitars for fun and to learn how they work. Building a guitar with a DIY FX inside would be even more satisfying ! I'm looking to adjust the speed with a knob near the volume knob.

G'day, I know this forum is mostly about guitar electronics but don't many people here try to build their own FX pedals ? I've built a guitar and for my next one I'd love to integrate a phaser inside the body so I can play with the phaser speed while playing without having to bend down all the time. Matt Bellamy from Muse has an MXR phaser in his first guitars Anyway reason for starting this topic is to ask for some tips as I don't know much about electronics. And find out if there are any other forums specialized in making FX pedals. Cheers,

I've finally finished the guitar which had a long break between moving back to Australia, then having to look for a job etc...I also realised I got the wrong kind of pickup ring; by default Kent Armstrong sends you a Gibson style one (the one with a sloped bottom) which is odd so I had to order a flat one and figured out a chrome one would look nicer too ! So next was to screw the pickups on. The P90 didn't have any springs to push it up so I put some in. Also screwed on the string retainers. Soldering the components was a pain in the ass ! Not that I had carefully planned out everything in advance, but I just suck at soldering ! Trying to keep still & cool, get some solder on that tiny place etc... I guess it's a good learning curve.... Once it all worked I did the final polishing to the body and strung up properly the guitar. It now looks lovely when finished ! Just have to adjust the action and intonation before I can play properly. Overall I'm happy to have made this. obviously there have been a few minor mistakes such as the pickup cavity, controls cavity, jack socket hole a little too big etc... which I'll learn from but still I cannot believe how much the mahogany has warped, really...so much...thankfully the top is carved so you cannot see it really from the front. have to make sure I dry out the wood longer next time. Here are some photos !

cheers mate. I wonder whether he ever finished it lol cause the lockup looks neat.

i enjoy doing it all manuall with scrapers and sanding :-)

I was looking through my guitar picture archives saved from this forum and I saw this nice mockup and was wondering who made it and whether there is a thread about it with some pics hopefully ! I tried the search engine on "stevocaster" but it didn't help me.

thanks to all for the replies, it's great there is so much information on the net. I didn't know QLD maple was suitable for solid body because "normal" maple is said to be too heavy for a full body. Does this mean the QLD maple is lighter ? A bit like Mahogany ? It looks pretty so I'll keep that in mind for body/neck

G'day to all aussies here, I think there are a couple here :-) Anyway for my second guitar, I'd like to build it all with Aussie wood. I went to the timber place in Marrickville called Anagots and got to see what stuff they have. They seem to have a decent selection of wood, however they are not specialised in guitar making wood so I thought I'd try gather some suggestions here. I liked the Silver Ash a simple pale wood, not too pored and fairly easy to work with I think. It's a bit like poplar and it should look good with blue dye which I plan to use. There was also silky oak that has a darker color but you have to be lucky to find a big plank with the silky texture, still the brown looks nice and perhaps I could use this for the neck ? They also had this maple from queensland but it's not real maple, looks like some kind of pink rosewood. Is this anygood for neck or fingerboard ? Would be difficult finding an aussie grown hardwood for fingerboard I think because ebony, plumb and rosewood are all imported unless I'm wrong? Other woods from the timber place include Coachwood, white beech, blackwood, Jarrah, queensland walnut etc... I don't know anything about those woods. The guy from Anagots also suggested I take a look at the wood stock at Gillets guitar maker at Botany as they apparently get some good selected wood from Anagots. Any suggestions appreciated !

Hello, I know the iron or solder + wet tissue technique to swell up the wood to remove dents. However I was wondering whether it's still safe to do so on my maple top which has 2 nasty dents over the water glass coat and 18+ varnish sprays ? Will it ruin it and go whiter ? Thanks,

Apologies for the delay, I've had 3 weeks vacation :-) The mahogany has been moving again...so it has a slight curve on the back and I had to enlarge the neck pocket and pickup cavities. I can live with it though... I drilled the volume pot hole and selector. Decided to go with no tone pot and have a push-pull on the volume to split the motherbucker. (I broke the push-push pot when trying to pull off the dome, silly me...). I've been trying out hundreds of different stains from black leather to pale blue and trying to do natural maple binding and never got satisfying results (especially on the mahogany); I think it's just too difficult to get a nice maple binding on your first guitar. The stain on the maple top and mahogany wouldn't leave a straight unstained line despite the different finished I applied on a test block of binding. So I decided to go natural and not apply any stain at all. After sanding down everything with 320 grit, I put water glass all over the maple (top and bonding) to raise the figure, sanded with 1500 grit then sprayed 2 coats of clear lacquer then sanded with 2400, then twice 2 more coats then 3600 grit sanding. The neck got the same treatment. It's looking nice but not thick enough I think so I will put on a couple more coats and sand at 4000 before polishing it.

Just tried to varnish the maple binding on a test block with acrylic matte then apply black leather stain, same problem...what a difficult job dealing with maple binding ! I'm wondering whether to stain the mahogany leaving an untouched 0.5 cm gap before the maple and use a black pen instead of stain for the 0.5cm area. Your thoughts ?

cheers Well I'm going on holidays for 2 weeks on the coast so there won't be any progress for a while. And I'm going to take this break to read and think about how to stain the body without staining the maple binding; issue which I have raised on this thread.

Thanks so either lacquer, shellac or vinyl sealer would be a good idea to apply on to the binding only before staining the rest ? Perhaps I should just use water dye all over as that black leather dye is very strong...

G'day, For my first build which you can see here I planned to stain all the mahogany with dark solid black leather dye and the maple top with grey water dye leaving an unfinished maple binding on the edge. However I was informed by my dad that this will be impossible if I want to keep the maple binding unstained. So I did a test on a left over wood from band sawing the body, putting tape over the maple binding and he was right ! (Click for larger photo) We can see the dark black dye builds into the joint and then the maple, especially at the top and bottom of the guitar where the grain is straight. So I was wondering whether there are any alternatives to my project ? Would it be any good if I varnish the maple binding beforehand to stop the black dye from staining it ? Any advice much appreciated,

Top carving Now the fun part; carving the maple top starting with a planer + violin makers planer then a curved cabinet scraper. The thickness on the edge went from 12mm to 6mm. It's not a straight slope but a slightly carved surface just like on my Fender Tele FMT. A closer look at the body after 150 grit sanding. You can see the bridge pickup cavity mess ! Jack socket hole Drilling the hole started well then for some reason the drill bit went crazy and drilled a slightly oval instead of round hole though the round metal socket hides most of it. I can always put a big oval plate in the future. I should also have done this before doing the back edges so I wouldn't have had to drill the maple a bit. Keep learning from mistakes...

Cavities I spent quite a few days last week on learning how to use the router using a bit without a bearing (couldn't find one in my area) and make some templates for the neck pocket + pickup cavities. And I struggled a lot; I believe it takes time to get used to the the router. And I should really look to use a bearing for my next guitar. So I almost only used the router for the controls cavity at the back. But after I messed it up a bit when I chiselled around the cavity to make it flat for the plastic cover I had. If it looks too bad later I will made a new ebony cover a bit bigger. For the neck pocket, I let my dad chisel it as I was too nervous to do it ! Regular checks were made to check the action hence the bridge placed on the photo. Then I drilled the 4 holes with a pillar drill, marking the holes using a template of the bolt on area. I forgot to drill through a piece of wood after drilling through the body; consequently a piece of wood got split on the top left hole as you can see on the pic: This has been repaired with a piece of mahogany. I also made the mistake to sand the edge a bit too much at the top the metal plate. On the picture you can see the body side has been temporally varnished to try stop the cracks in the mahogany. There are about 10 in all... Nevertheless it's lovely to see a neck and body combo for the first time ! The 3 hard tail bridge holes have been drilled after marking out the scale length. Next the bridge cavity routing went wrong when I started and went too far to the top (as can be seen on some pics later) so I switched to chisel. The neck cavity was also carefully done with a chisel too as there is no cover around. Fortunately the bridge cavity routing error will be hidden with the cover.

mmm okay thanks think I'll call it a relic

Yes they are checks. My dad has put some glue and varnish, that's all we can do really. Fortunately the maple will hold it so in the end it's not a disaster. But a good lesson for me ! I suppose the climate change from Paris to Southern France made the wood move.

Hello, I was wondering how the stratocasters are finished ? Of all guitars they seem to have the thickest finish. I suppose it's impossible to do a such thing at home without their huge machines etc...? I'm asking because I have some cracks on my body and so looking for ways to hide them. Cheers

Bit of a setback, there are a couple of big cracks on the mahogany at both ends which is very surprising...looks like the supplier didn't dry it properly So I've been putting hot glue in and storing it in a cooler room.