djobson101

Got a little more work done today, I didn't manage to get any pictures until I was done..

Trimmed the rest of the neck & headstock. I realized that I should have thicknessed the headstock before glueing it to the neck - I had a hell of a time trying to secure the thing in my router sled face down with the body up in the air. Had a close call when it came free at one point! I should be able to clean it up though.

I'm thinking of trying a volute here. 

On 2/1/2017 at 11:06 AM, Jdogg said:

Just a suggestion...  add some Carbon fiber bars to the neck.  that should make it overly stiff.

that way you should need to adjust the trussrod to introduce some relief...  at that point in time the trussrod is acting upon the top of the channel at the nut where the redwood wood below is thinnest / weakest.  it would be acting upon your fretboard at the nut and on your redwood in the middle where it's a little thicker / less likely to bulge...

bit of a risk tho, if the neck blank becomes too rigid it may make things worse and you'll have a blowout in the middle of the neck....

Just my 2 cents tho.  love the build... good luck!

Thanks! - I was definitely wondering about using carbon rods for bulking this neck up some. What do you mean as far as the middle possibly blowing out though? 

I had much better luck with this jig for scarfing. I failed to realize though that it would have made it incredibly easier to have extended flat sections of the angled guides, in order to set the depth of the router with ease. I wasted a lot of time playing around with it to see where the bit would contact the work. I guess I could cut and attach guides to achieve this.

(forgot an after pic of the cleaned up joint on the neck):

New sandwich got the treatment as well (question - to avoid the tearout at the bottom, would adding scrap wood underneath help prevent this?)

The neck itself is still thick enough where that portion will be worked away eventually... but I would like to try and get it better in the future.

Finally! It was warm enough to be able to glue something out in the garage and not have to bring it inside:

And the end result. Before gluing, I went the route of drilling holes and dropped a couple little nails in the scrap areas to help keep it in place. As it sits now, she is a bit neck heavy 

Couple more updates - making some progress with the headstock. I had a little scrap of the redwood left so I sandwiched it in a couple of the oak pieces.

Made a little mod for the router sled for more thin workpieces:

The shape is actually going to end up more to the left than this because of the scarfed portion, I failed to plan but I think that little devil on the bottom is going to be right smack on the bottom line of the headstock:

Going at it with cedar again, I want to try some layering further down the line with the headstock. Something tells me this guitar is going to be full of nicks and dents into it's life.

On 1/30/2017 at 1:02 PM, ScottR said:

Yeah, in the words of Orgmorg, it will sound like a guitar. Actually, every account I've heard says pine bodied guitars sound great.

The only thing that concerns me is the redwood in the center of your neck. That is a soft easily dented wood that your truss rod would push against, should it need much adjustment. It may never be an issue, but it is something to keep an eye on.

SR

I gave it a thumbnail test before and it definitely gives way pretty easily. When you adjust the truss rod, does it push more against the end of the channel at the heel end of the neck, or is it more that it pushes downward along the bottom of the whole channel?

Very cool & very clean looking! I like how the P90s look against the pine 

The wings are just a couple of fir 2 x 6 pieces. I am really wondering both if this is a bad idea and what it will sound like.

Ready to trim the neck piece to the template, and in my hastiness......forgot to set the depth stop on the ol' plunge mechanism:

I ended up band-aiding it by trimming 1/16" from each side of the neck template where it joins the wings, and re-trimming. I left the space at the top of the neck to maybe try and get the fretboard straight with a locating technique that I've seen some of you guys demonstrate. I need to do a bit of reading on that part!

Cleaned out the horns and went for the glue up. It looks like a close call but I'm pretty sure I have at least an inch left at the fouled up scarf attempt to redo with the soon to be made router jig:

Planed the whole thing for now and smoothed the edges, so I am inspired while I look at it for what will probably be the next couple weeks.

That fir takes up a whole lot of space as shavings!

For the neck I wanted to try laminating. I am using any and everything that I have laying around. I don't know what the middle piece is but my guess is redwood. It came from a bunch of upcycled 2 x 4's I got from a guy who said they were part of a swing set that he built in the 80's. I was surprised to see out here (in contrast to the Northeast) that some stores stock redwood as dimensional lumber, so I'm guessing that's it. The next layer out is cedar. Not pictured was my decision that these woods might not be rigid enough, so I glued on a piece of white oak on either side in hopes that it will help that cause.

Threw it in the sled for "planing". There are some knots that will be concealed:

You can file this under "Jigs that seemed like a good idea at the time":

Tsk tsk tsk 

Luckily I made this cut with plenty of extra length on the blank. I will be building a scarf jig for the router.

Thanks guys! I hope it turns out nicely.

Here are the templates stuck onto 1/2" MDF, cut out and cleaned up via spindle sander.

The dimensions on the headstock template were just a reminder so I know how wide the piece has to be:

Had to employ the router and a straightedge to get the neck tapers straight (forgot to get a during pic):

In having downtime waiting to order some more tools, I'm starting this project as something of a test. It will be a hodgepodge, but the reason is that I don't want to ruin any expensive pieces of wood yet  The idea started from a fondness for the Ibanez PGM, and wanting to have a guitar that was as playable as an RG, but with real semi hollow construction. I had some motivation too being a big fan of Languedoc guitars. I am in no way ready to even think about foraying into that realm of building though, so this will have to do.

I started off by tracing my Ibanez RG170 for the shape, and getting it onto the computer. I played around with some of the lines to give it a twist and some ideas for contours. Mostly though, it's still like an RG.

Here are some basic specs for the idea:

- It will be neck through, semi hollow construction with a top and bottom.

- Two humbuckers with coil splitting for each

- 24 fret 27" scale

I am guilty of having started some of the work, so I will be updating to where I'm currently at.

I'm pretty green to building, so I will heed any pointers to the best of my ability! Thanks for looking.

@kmensik Ah that thing, it's basically a copy of a soloist body that has a Carvin bolt on neck to go with it. I was mostly just a spectator watching it built. A friend back home had gotten that one started, he had been building a few guitars with his sons in their cabinet shop. I will hopefully do the finishing on it sometime soon.

@ScottR Thanks! It's a great town for me so far. 10 minutes in one direction for downtown amenities, and 10 minutes the other way to start getting into all that front range scenery. There's definitely a lot to do here, and about a bazillion breweries too 

@Prostheta Advice well taken! I put some cans up there to improve the situation, but it could definitely be better still. They're cheap enough to inspire about twice as many but unfortunately we only have a 6 month lease here, so I am going to hold off on doing a better job until I know that I'll be in the space more permanently. What a difference though! It's actually enjoyable to work after dark now.

I should mention that the shelves o' junk on the left corner there, were left behind by the landlord and I am not at all proud to have them as a backdrop for my work area 

I'm hoping to order some fretting tools over the weekend, maybe too a truss rod would be useful to make some progress!

Not much to update on this build as of right now, but I have managed to relocate to Denver from NY. I've really been enjoying seeing all the work that's being posted on the forum in these winter months, so I figured I would at least chime in with some pictures.

Finally with the new place out here, there is some extra garage space that I can set up shop in. Before the move I was able to acquire my old man's retired Makita table saw, seen as he has a better one and it was just collecting dust. I put together a workbench that doubled as a more handy place for the saw.

But it's more ergonomic now at least  

As well as providing some extra storage -

Got the router sled up on legs -

So for now I have a good little workshop coming together. I guess that leaves me with a shopping list of tools. I'm hoping this month to be able to buy some fretting stuff to get further along with this scrappy axe.

I could get on board with the idea of having the blank wider as to have the posts live on the same piece of wood as the nut. I'm only as far as trying to figure out an order of operations with the neck through process because it definitely seems like it could be easy to get in a pickle by overlooking a small detail like this. I guess what I'm worrying about in my head is getting the surfaces accessible enough to work inside the horns when it came time to shaping, if that makes sense? 

I'll be perusing through your thread for sure though, thanks  for a prospective 1st time builder, it seems daunting but I feel up to it. Definitely going to make a couple dummy guitars to experiment with. I am interested in trying the idea you mentioned.

Definitely another stunner coming to life there sir. I always dig watching your progress!

I'm trying to figure out how you get the right shape for your neck blank for neck-through construction. The area up near the high frets meeting the body wings being the one in question -

Well I guess this raises another question anyways - I guess most importantly, 1) should the overall width of the neck blank be equal to the widest dimension of the fretboard? 

And then, 2) 

That little tiny sliver that is the difference between the taper of the fretboard and the straight line of the neck blank. What would a good approach be to tackling an area like this? Should the blank be left square and worked on after gluing up to the wings, or would you leave the extra material on the body wing with the neck blank already trimmed flush with the fretboard?

Thanks @ScottR, it was exciting to fire up the router on it for the first time, even though it's not 100%. I definitely messed it up a few times while putting it together but totally looking forward to getting it finalized so more fun can be had. The other thing is I don't have a permanent location for it right now, so every time I want to work on or use it I have to dig it out of my folks' garage.

@Prostheta well, you're right on because I did have to put a set of wheels on one side of the thing recently  it started just getting too heavy to move around! I'm sure the 86 Honda could handle it though 

To conclude for today I wanted to get the top to where I could just lay it on to plan for the f-holes. It was somewhat of a crude way to do this I suppose, but again, free time was slim and there was a forecast for rain.

Finished with a coping saw and rasp -

And then, to make it nicer to look at -

I should add too that some time ago I sanded the glue lines here on the top because I was curious to see what they would look like. I guess I had put the pictures in another thread of the reused oak baseboard I snagged to make this top.

So I have been interested in building a semi hollow with f-holes. This guy will be the perfect test subject!

The free time I've had to work on this thing has been pretty slim, so there was a lot of rush factor here. Next time a much nicer template will be made. I guess it will do the trick though for the parts that won't be seen! Routed the raceways for pickup wiring while I was at it.

Finally have been able to accomplish some work on this thing. I was very interested by the router thicknessing jig tutorial that you wrote @Prostheta, and the need to get this work piece to a more workable state was certainly a driving force too. For awhile I've been working on building a gantry style router jig, although it's not 100% done it's now usable enough to do what I needed here.

I cut the gunk epoxy and the rough uneven wood off the top to clean things up. I think next time I try something like this I am going to take the time to measure the filler piece/rout the cavity more carefully so I can just glue it instead of dumping all that epoxy in there. Nonetheless, it'll do for this experiment 

As it turns out, there are areas where the cuts came out just a little bit off as it got up near the neck pickup area. Also those lines that look like cracks near the toggle switch cavity are differences in height and the bright light hitting them emphasizes the edges. The other day I put a 4 ft level on the table that the work piece is secured into and there is an area where it is out from the rest by just a little bit. I might try to reinforce it with some metal on the underside of the plywood to pull it into levelness. The jig needs a few more tweaks before I'm happy with how it works, but it's getting there!

I also addressed the issue I had had with the top cupping - 

22 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

As you will soon see....so much for good intentions...

 

 

I'd say your intentions are better than the old auspice of "saving on wood glue by upcycling stale marshmallows"  

Nice 

I like the combo of the slanted body shape with asymmetrical f-holes. The lines go nicely with the semi length frets down there too

Those finish test pieces are a thing of beauty. For some reason I always liked how the Ric body shape is sort of a departure from the P bass/J bass styles, and a 5 string on top of that... This looks like it will have a serious mojo factor to it 

Very interesting to see the attention to detail involved with this type of instrument. I especially like that volute and the fitting of the tone bars/bridge 

That guitar is just gorgeous, amazing work! I would be very interested to see what you do with that headless 8 in terms of wood combinations and what not