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djobson101

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Everything posted by djobson101

  1. Wow! Thanks for linking that thread @pan_kara. There really is so much great material on this forum, I've only seen such a small fraction of it!
  2. I do remember reading that there should be a slight offset there, which I did forget. I will probably redrill this post since I'm still at a good point to hack this guitar up a little more I'm currently struggling with getting the ferrule holes on the back properly drilled as well. They came out fine on the front but I didn't prepare a good system for aligning them the 2nd time around and they came out pretty lousy and uneven The front ones that I bought required an 11/64" hole so.. I think the plan is to clamp a piece of wood/wood box to the drill press big enough to allow the bit to sit decently flush within it, drill the 11/64 hole in that, and then use the end of the bit that goes in the chuck as a locating pin to drop the front of the guitar onto when drilling the larger 3/8" holes for the back ferrules.
  3. Very nice details from end to end on this build just to jump back a little, how did you go about working with the brass nut in terms of tools? I have never played anything with a brass nut but I have heard they are a joy and can increase the sustain of the instrument.
  4. You know... The cavity cover is one of those things I've been overlooking since the beginning... using walnut there would certainly even things out and look cool. I think it has been decided Now if I can just catch a break from painting houses, I might be able to get some more much needed time back in the shop!
  5. Enjoying this a ton As for super gluing the fret ends, how does one go about trying to cleanly wick the glue in there? I'll be attempting to install frets soon for the first time, I definitely want to use glue to secure them, but that as well as the rest of the process seems daunting
  6. Thanks Scott! I am thrilled with them and definitely will feel better about tackling them in the future. But I regrettably now have discovered that I messed things up on the LP. Since I was lazy in making a new template for the 24.75" fretboard and just "wung" it by using frets 2-24 of the 27" scale from the other build - I ended up with a ~24" length... Putting my bridge post location right inside the bridge humbucker cavity that was supposed to be 3/4" from the bridge Looks like it's gonna be shelved for awhile. Just a small update on the semi hollow. I did some more neck carving, during the process I noticed that while having the body clamped to the table and the neck free, there was a lot more movement than I was comfortable with.. I am thinking I removed too much material with that heel cutaway thing. Glued in a piece of walnut to try and stabilize things more, then gave it the pass with the round nose bit and a little carving. I don't know how effective it'll be but next time I won't remove as much wood. So now I have this weird transition area (wiped everything with spirits for inspiration): I have no recollection of where that hole near the scarfed joint came from, but it appeared so there it is That's it for now. Hoping next week to tackle the nut, tuning machines and ferrules! Thanks for checking out.
  7. Great work on those! I enjoy the look of the no inlay fretboard personally on your N3, I think it can in some cases add to the overall appearance of a guitar. Kind of utilitarian in a way. Though in my case I'll be going without front inlays, not by design as much as in virtue still have to finish *one* guitar before I even think about trying it. Some nice inlay though with that top you're using right next to it will look fantastic I'm sure!
  8. Slotted this piece that I've been saving for the fretboard. I am going to have to do some math to place the bridge... I used my 27" template but started at the 2nd fret because it measured that it would fit into the old fretboard area, and I still got 22 frets. So I have no idea what the scale length is. I will need to go back to the scale length calculator I used on stewmac and subtract whatever the 2nd fret value is from 27... Sound right? Dug out some old epiphone humbuckers (that I won't be using for this) to do a mockup. The only work that was from tonight was starting the nut slot & radiusing the fretboard: I'm going with a 20" radius, so hopefully it shouldn't be too much of a PITA to glue. We shall see.
  9. Managed to find some time to get back to the LP project. I'm going to just link to the old thread instead of updating the threads individually: I am happy to report that the second time using the drill press routing for f-holes, it turned out much better. I used the same template from the other guitar. Finally got the top glued on, and cleaned it up on the spindle sander. Ran a cove bit around and drilled/routed for electronics. Randomly decided that it will have independent volumes & master tone. So you can still do the "on-off-cool-les paul-thing", but I don't care for 2 tones. And mini toggles for coil tapping: Don't ask about that horrendous truss rod channel... lol. Never will I ever attempt to make that cut on a neck that's shaped already, I just didn't have a choice and the old impatient gremlins were at it again. Couldn't keep a template on it for anything and for what this guitar is, I'm just going to live with it. Did some carving on the top. I forgot to take during pictures but came up with this: I want to soften the line some more at the top of the cove. Will have to get back to that soon.
  10. One bad habit I keep repeating is jumping around to different jobs before completing them. I definitely feel like it is somewhat detrimental to work flow, but sometimes when I only have a short time in the evening to work on the guitar I'll hop around out of just plain old impatience. Routed for humbuckers: Then decided to drill the bridge post holes, and ack did that bit wander! As for the band aids: Decided to invest in some nicer brad tip bits for the second attempt. Happier test fit than last time! So I am going to need to get a router bit with a longer shank to complete the humbucker cavities. Can't cruise the router around the body at the neck position with that fretboard glued on... Maybe a written list of processes is in order for next time!
  11. I started to play with shaping up the back of the headstock and some neck carving. I still have a ways to go because I was very apprehensive about removing too much material from the neck. And for good measure wiped some mineral spirits on. I am beginning to see why people like doing this! It's still rough with scratches but now I'm really excited to get further along.
  12. @KnightroExpress it is indeed quite Languedoc inspired I should say, at least leaning in that direction. I can't imagine how many hours that guy put into making some of those guitars, especially getting into all that crazy binding and inlay. Thanks for the reference too, I'll be getting a set of those ferrules on order asap. @Pariahrob thanks! I'm definitely discovering my learning curve on it. Probably my biggest setback is learning to plan more and be patient before cutting wood. I guess I will have to employ this philosophy on the next build
  13. I particularly like the way that ta28 guitar is looking That Bridgeport is a seriously cool machine! That's not in your home shop space is it..?
  14. Before gluing, shaped the end of the fretboard to the same template that I had used to take the body down for the top to slide on. Kind of starting to visualize that the strings are gonna be higher off the body than I would've liked - in terms of the combined height of the fretboard and the bit of the neck that is peeking out mistakes were made when I was removing material to allow for the top to sit on there. It may come down ever so slightly when radiusing the fretboard I guess. Will have to wait and see.. Dun dun dun! Trimmed up: That's about where I'm at for now. I'm really hoping to make some good progress this next week in a couple different areas. Going to want to start carving the neck soon. I have all the hardware now, so have to figure out how to start tackling the bridge & nut placement. Tuner holes Figure out the electronics cavity and hope that I don't tear out massive chunks that you can see through the f-holes (perhaps should've started some kind of opening before the back was glued on. Oh well) At this point, I couldn't wait any longer to do a mockup: One last thing I should ask - I have 2 sets of ferrules like these. Is that proper usage of the hardware, or do they make a different style ferrule for where the string goes through the body like this?
  15. After much deliberation, I decided to make a slotting jig with the table saw blade they sell on LMII. Basically just cut a little MDF "pin" to recess into a sled, and then marked and cut position slots with a small router bit onto another sheet of MDF to tape the fret board wood to. I didn't do the greatest job of getting good angles to show what's going on in the sled but you probably get the idea. The fretboard is attached to the side of the MDF piece closer to the middle of the sled and those little jig clamps keep it pressed against the bottom of the sled. And then the "pin" is up against the back of the sled. So on the fretboard wood - I bought a piece of mora from the local Rockler store knowing not a whole lot about the wood. It's pretty hard stuff right? Are there any other pros/cons/indifference for this as a fretboard choice?
  16. Overall it was a fun process, but yeah I'm pretty sure I probably tried to go in too heavy. I would like to practice this method some more in the future - definitely satisfying in it's own way. And thanks! Of course at the moment they happen the hickups are a real drag, but in exchange for learning through experience it's not a bad trade.
  17. Onto some neck updates. Got me a truss rod and some fiber rods! I'll explain in a moment why the good looking picture is first This whole process was done on a day when I was really rushing and it shows. Everything from cutting the rods, to the truss rod channel being slightly too wide (template moved on me maybe? not sure), to THIS: I was too impatient to make investments to do this job via the router, so I hastily decided to go back to the drill press routing, and of course, being that the body is present, made it a huge pain in the ass. On one of the passes I didn't realize that the body pushing against the column on the drill press forced the template out of place... Not something that'll be seen of course, but I will certainly hit the drawing board much more seriously in the future as far as which steps need to be done first.
  18. After a little bit of filling and sanding, I got it looking a little better. If you are looking at it from a foot away, it's a little haggard but it's better than it was. I'm still window shopping for a band saw, so for now I have this contraption - jig saw screwed onto an MDF box it did the trick for this thin piece of cedar, but beyond that it's usefulness will be limited: I used the template from the body route to oil the back of the top & body cavity just to.. protect it from what, I don't know. It's just some furniture polish type stuff from home depot, beeswax & orange oil I believe. Nearly forgot to cut the channels for pickup & bridge grounding wires. That would've been unpleasant! And finally, just went for it and did this:
  19. About time for more updates! I sprung for some acrylic templates, mostly to deal with the f-hole cuts. I wasn't really sure how to go about making a clean template for them and the time I have had to work on the guitar lately, I've been anxious to make progress quickly. So it seemed like a good idea to get these I put the whole body in my router sled with a neck/fretboard template on to take the thickness of the body down enough to allow for the top to sit on top. For whatever reason, I think I went lower than I had originally wanted, but I like seeing the little bit of the neck woods showing through. Seen as the f-holes have some really tight corners, I wanted to try out the drill press routing method. I forget who I recently saw make the post with the link to the video of Robbie O'Brien doing this on a classical head stock - but thank you! It seemed to work pretty good, considering I missed some of the instructions that a second time going back and watching I picked up - had the drill running at too low of an RPM, wasn't being great about removing the waste material from the cut. Not sure if it was my ignorance or the softness of the cedar, or both, but it tore through in some spots.
  20. I'm just getting really happy with using templates now. This will get cleaned up of course when it comes to working on the neck: With all the rough areas on her it's really kind of a hot mess right now but I swear I will be giving it much needed attention in the near future. I didn't forsee that the round nose bits cut like... that, but the neck is still too thick anyway. I actually went back and did the cut again with a wider diameter bit to smooth the transition more, but I am having trouble with my system of retrieving pictures from my phone and getting them on the computer.
  21. I picked up a used 14" drill press from a commercial liquidation tag sale recently, and have been having good times so far with it! I was anxious to give this a shot. Finished her off with the trusty Makita: It's really teetering on being truly "neck through" at this point
  22. Woops, adding pictures out of order I guess what I'll do when it's strung up (a very ambitious statement at the moment) is try out varying gauges to see what feels 'right' for this. Also because I most definitely would like to do another of this same guitar in the future to keep in a different tuning, so there will be room for trying different things. I used some cedar to try and decorate the back of this thing. It is really, really soft.
  23. The regular reply form that is the screenshot up there, I have always used this and worked fine but I am now having trouble when I try and add multiple files at once. But only certain pictures, on occasion, it seems to randomly not work with some. The error message I think read "There was a problem uploading the image -200".
  24. So I'm actually not sure how to approach the string gauge for this guitar. Is it that using light or normal gauge strings on the longer scale creates more tension by the time it's tuned up? As long as I can get away with using a string set without a wound G string I think I'll be happy.
  25. It'll be standard most likely, although I'm definitely in the future going to build something like this to either tune down or go 7 or 8 string. The best answer/reason is that I have big hands - ukuleles, mandolins and even Gibsons just throw their heads back and laugh when they see me coming I feel like 25.5" scale is the minimum I feel comfortable on. I was intrigued back when too I saw that the Buckethead model LP came with a 27" scale. This was actually an inspiration to want to build a guitar in the first place - I would go around to guitar shops to ask if they had anything larger than Fender scale I could try out, and never found anything.
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