Filthy McNasty

Interesting idea, not too complicated, ........thank again for suggestion!

Never thought about dowel option, not sure I have tools for that ......... anyways thanks for suggestions, will consider it in the future. Drilling holes by hand and filling with wood filler did not produce perfect result but I am ok with that ...... still looks cool, hope for the best after applying final finish ......

Well, the only other choice was to to it again by hand which was just painful experience in case of a top hand rip saw. Glad I came up with this idea, making the jigs was well worth it .......

Fretboard glued, lots of sanding to get 12" radius. Fake binding using masking tape .... this was also experiment mixing some black walnut gel stain and some kids water based dark red/burgundy color. Now I have to figure out what kind of fretboard inlay to do. Never done any hand inlay carving before so I am a bit concerned ........

Back pocket and cover done. Previous attempt of making tailpiece wasn`t successful, too narrow, couldn`t fit string holes. This time instead of maple I used walnut. Since I do not have binding router bit , I got an idea to something around the edge so this was an experiment with 2.5mm wholes (hand drilled) that were filled with some wood filler. Applied same idea to the body. Never done it before so it was a bit scary not to make any mistake as it would ruing the top. This was quite messy and also tedious job as I had to fill the wholes several times, not easy to push filler in such small holes all the way. So after first application, I had to wait a bit for filler to harden, than clean it with chisel, and apply filler again, maybe 3-4 rounds total. Final clean up and sanding. Looks pretty cool, will see how it looks like after applying final finish. Found some really interesting aluminum sheet for cover plate .... rough shape

Truss rod in place, covered with thin piece of wood. Rough shape of the headstock. I decided to make a neck template as I was afraid of attempting router/rail technique. Added some 2mm on original 43mm nut width later for adjustments if necessary. After some routing ........

Cutting fret slots was a real pain the ass. I do not have a proper (Japanese) saw , I accidentally found this one (picked at some garage sale recently) among many saws in the box, that have right thickness of approx. 0.023". So, after making first cut with a razor knife, I had to be extremely careful and stay on the line since this saw blade is very flexible in both directions. Painful part was applying pressure with my left hand holding this small piece of wood at the center of the fretboard (due to vertical blade bending) while doing only pull strokes at the same time. Push/pull strokes were out of question for two reasons, due to blade flexibility I might accidentally ruin the slot, the other problem was slot width, I tried on a scrap piece of wood before cutting the fretboard and with push/pull strokes the slot was too wide. At the end everything was ok, it took several hours to complete the job, and both hands in quite a bit of pain.

Thanks guys for all your comments .......... after nearly 2 weeks being sick in the middle of summer (hate that), I am back to the shop, new challenge - building neck. So I checked my garage sale/scrap solid wood leftovers trying to find some nice wood for the neck, I believe is this black walnut , part of some table I guess. For fretboard I found some old piano piece which I am not sure what kind of wood it is, quite hard. Since I do not have band saw, I made a jig for cutting scarf joint with mitre saw, 15-ish angle. It required some leveling/sanding later on but it worked pretty well. Similar idea for fretboard jig, I wasn`t sure if this is gonna work since the cut is much longer so the width was a bit too much around 11-12mm (later on it took lots of leveling/sanding to get it to right thickness of around 7mm).

I am currently working on a solid guitar project (recently posted in Build section) , and I am considering installing zero fret. It is gonna be 24.75" scale, 16th fret to the body , 22 frets. Gibson neck angle is around 4% give it or take, so my question is, .... is zero fret gonna (significantly) change the angle, if at all? The guitar top is flat, instead of creating angle on the top and neck pocket, I am gonna do it on the bottom of the neck. Anybody done anything similar or experimented with zero frets?

Any suggestion how to cut neck using only router without any template. It is gonna be 24.75 scale, 1-11/16" (43mm) nut , end at 22nd fret around 2.2" (~56mm).

Very narrow waist, only around 150mm , transition (intentionally) from lower to upper bout not curve shape as you can see on the template (dimensions in mm) . Around 440mm long

Still working on tailpiece ........ and cover plate, might keep one made of PL record, also considering brass one.

Top glued, after some router job and sending and carving .......

I used table placemat for holes

I took a looong time to do it, messy at the end so it required lots of leveling/sending to get to approx 10mm thickness ....