ADFinlayson

I've got an issue with the neck on a build I am working on. The neck is back bowed slightly but only towards the nut - the first 1 and 2 frets are sitting lower than the rest of them so I am unable to correct it fully with the truss rod - I did get an improvement but the rod is jacked up pretty tight now and won't go any further. Any suggestions for the best remedy for this? a couple of things I am considering are: 1). level the frets down again so frets 3-22 are a little lower than one and 2. 2). pull frets 1 and 2 and see if that reduces the bow at all, maybe the slots are too tight? 3). pull all frets, do a bit more fretboard radiusing to try and reduce the bow in the board, then refret and level For a bit more detail - I had an issue with a neck I made, the inlays were wrong, so I built a second neck/fretboard. But then I ran into "issues" with the second neck so I steamed the fretboard off the first neck, then I cut the good fretboard off the second neck and stuck it to the first neck. So it seams the issue with the first neck being bowed is probably due to steaming the fretboard from it (I did leave it clamped flat for 2 days which obviously didn't help). I am trying to avoid building a 3rd neck for this guitar...

The wires coming off those new pickups do look pretty chunky.

You can make/buy truss rod slot routing jigs which you use with a bushing on the router, no reason why you can't use the same template to route a carbon fibre channel too. Important to note that carbon fibre will stiffen the neck but it won't stop it twisting if it really wants to so I suggest you leave it a couple of weeks once you've got your fretboard on - wood glue will introduce water into the quilt so you may see a bit of movement. If that happens then you can skim any twist off the back of the beck with a hand plane before doing your fretboard radius and the scoop down to the headstock which should make everything flat and parallel again.

I'm amazed how light that is, that's a massive chunk of limba and rosewood, I don't think I've ever been that lucky with limba.

It's occurred to me I haven't entered anything this year and this is my last opportunity so happy to say this one is finished in the nick of time. Specs - One piece African mahogany body - Quilted maple carve top - Quartersawn one-piece flame maple neck - Indian ebony fretboard with maple pinstripe binding - Abalone inlays - Ebony cover plates - Dyed purple/indigo with a light edge burst. - Kluson top locking tuners - OX4 PICKUPS with Butyrate surrounds - Bournes pots with push/pull coil splits - Golden age warparound bridge - Nickel hardware - 24 stainless steel frets, semi-hemisperical ends - 24.625" scale - Weight: 7lb 15oz

You're not wrong about that, it's a local chap that helps me out and is cheap enough to make it worth while. Photography in my conservatory works very well in day light because it's well lit with ambient light, but the LED lighting in my conservatory is mega bright which makes it a reflection nightmare, so these were just taken in the evening with flash and no natural light which is why they came out quite dark.

no it's 24.6" scale, yeah the 24 frets situation is what is making them a bit closer together, there is 40mm between the two pickup rings, the difference in neck pickup tone between a 24 and a 22 is negligible though IMO. These pickups are OX4 Hot Duane PAFs, they're the most convincing "59" pickups I've heard and they're made by a local chap so I default to them unless someone asks for something else.

Photographer popped round and took some pics for me last night. Now it's ready to rock. It seems to have come out a bit more purple in his photos which is weird, my camera made the guitar look way more blue, but in actuality it's somewhere in the middle, I'm calling it Deep Indigo. Hopefully I will have time to do a quick demo video before I get it in the post.

Thank you mate, means a lot coming from a man of your talents

How thick is it? You only need 19-20mm for a fender style neck if your'e glueing a fretboard on. On some fender style necks, the headstock, where it scoops down, is no deeper than the centre of the neck shaft anyway. Or is it that this piece isn't long enough? There are other options to integrate it too, you could thin it down and use it as a back strap or headplate, or even rip it along it's width, glue them side by side to make a scratch plate or control covers.

Well after all the woes, I've got it wired up. Just waiting on a switch tip. I need to do a couple of other bits, final nut slotting, there are a couple of high frets at the dusty end that need some attention, then I'll give all the frets another polish with the dremel. The top 2 strings are buzzing a bit when open and fretted so I think the saddles need a bit of filing out too. Few pics - I like the final colour. My purple guitars normally come out on the violet side, this is looking much more of a deep indigo to my eyes. The two tone look with the blue hue in the centre has come from the tonal variation of the top, if you scrolled back through the thread you will see just how yellow this top is around the edges.

yes I think they are meant to go in the dremel, but the do work nicely in the hand drill or just twisting by hand.

The other thing to consider about CNC machines - The smaller, cheaper ones will take an absolute age to cut a large piece of hard wood into a guitar body or neck, literally hours. You could have have it done with a 10" bandsaw and a hand router in a fraction of the time. I'm not anti CNC, I don't have one and I like working with hand tools, but if I get to the point where I need one to build at a higher speed then I will consider it, or possibly a small one to do mundane tasks like making headstock veneers on control cavity covers etc.

That's a great suggestion, I've started use round bur bits in the drill instead of countersink bits to countersink my screws, never considered them for tuner holes. I'll look into that, thank you. I have found with these types of bits, it can be hit and miss getting the correct diameter, bit of trial and error involved.

That is a few decades of grime built up in the open pours of the mahogany and rosewood. I would start by giving it a good clean. If it's an oil/french polish finish you could just wet sand a load of shellac into it and sprinkle some dark wood dust, eg ebony or rosewood in there to build up a slurry in the pours. Wipe off the excess and apply more coats to build up the finish. If it's cellulose, then after a good clean up, apply some grain filler and spray some more lacquer.

yep this ebony "top" is an acoustic back, I like to thin out the area under the edge of the f-hole anyway to make it look less chunky, so I just used a 5mm back and saved myself a job as I was going to bind this one anyway.

Just as I'm strolling to the finish line, feeling smug that I've got to assembly without any major hickups. Reality hits me square in the jaw. I was enlarging the holes for the tuners, having used a step bit to increase the side of the hole from both sides, these new Kluson top locking tuners I've got require a slightly bigger hole than usual, so I'm carefully drilling out the hole with a 10mm bit in the hand drill and suddenly the big grabbed a ripped all the way through.. So angry, I decided to walk away for a couple of hours. Fortunately nothing actually broke off and I was able to glue it back down with a caul wrapped in cling film. This is how it looked afterwards. Then after sanding. Very fortunate that I was dealing with dark ebony and nothing lighter in colour. Then after all that I realised that one of the damn tuners was faulty and the top washer would not screw all the way down into the body of the tuner. So they've had to go back to Northwest Guitars and I'm waiting on a replacement set. I have been working on some other bits while I am waiting though. I shaped and polished the bone nut in the above pic, that's now glued in place. I used to used CA glue to stuck the nut down, but I've found that it's a real pain if you manage to not get it lined up quite right as the glue dries so quickly. I used a little bit of wood glue now because there is plenty of time to move it about if need be. Also started test fitting pickups and sanding down the pickup rings. These Buytrate plastic rings from Philadelphia luthier supply, apparently what Gibson used to use back in the day. I got a bunch of these because someone was scoffing at my use of "cheap" hosco pickup rings. Plastic is plastic right? I've got all the of wiring that can be done outside the guitar done too, that's the switch harness and 4 pots, 2x vol and 2x push-pull tones. I'm using Bournes pots because I like the lower friction to CTS, the pickups are a pair of OX4 Hot Duane's which are unpotted PAFs. Lastly I got the control plates and the truss rod cover finished and a bit of Danish oil on them. I like to use ebony for my control plates, I buy acoustic back set from Maderas Barber, they normally come around 5mm thick and I can get a whole load of cover plates out of them, this is the last of a back I cut into in 2021 for guitar no15 and this is guitar no35 so I think it actually works out cheaper than buying the equivalent plastic cover material at around £60 for a back set.

Thanks Andy, appreciate that

yeah, my usual situation for sanding wood is to wear one of these masks with the air filter running on full overhead. I find more than acceptable for sanding up to 320 or a bit of orbital sander work with vac attached. But I put the spray mask on for sanding carbon fibre and I don't really like wearing that thing for prolonged periods. Thank you. I certainly could have made more of the figure by doing some sand backs of a darker purple or black before dying the final colour but I find when I do that, it loses a lot of the chatoyance you get from looking at it at different angles. Thanks Scott, appreciate that coming from a man of your talents.

After getting it glued up and the bridge holes drilled, I died it purple with some slightly diluted Angelus leather dye. The after rolling over the edges I got a few mist coast of sanding sealer over the top, checking that the colour hadn't bled into the edges between coats, this is quite common on the end grain, but a bit of sanding between coats of sealer gets rid of it and with every sequential coat, more bleed becomes less likely. Then after a sutble dark burst and a few coats of cellulose Notice how it's becoming bluer as we go through the process. I normally add a coat of Angelus Light-Rose after the purple dye has dried but I want a more bluey purple than pink purple this time. I didn't think it would go quite so blue though. This is after some level sanding and a load more coats. This top is quite yellow compared to other purple builds I've done so I put it down to that, although I think that's an unexpected result, I would expect yellow to turn purple more brown, possibly green. But when you look at it from other angles, it's still very purple, weird. I wasn't very happy with the mahogany on the back, I'm not sure what was going on but there was some really weird grain on the side around the lower horn, it wouldn't disappear no matter how much I sanded So I decided to add a bit of brown shader to make it all look a bit more consistent. a bit of a pig to tape everything off but it came out pretty good and seems to have done a good job of masking the weirdness. Here are a couple of ebony control covers waiting to have some holes drilled and a coat of oil too. I thought I was done with the finishing side of things last week but just as I was getting to the end of sanding with P2000, I saw some brown sludge on my paper, it seems I noticed just before I sanded all the way through the colour. So 6 more coats to be safe before levelling with 1200, 2000 again, so now it's ready for the buffer, I hope.

I've been working on another couple of single cuts, this one has a couple of things I have limited experience with so thought I would document. I bought this billet and cut the bookmatch a few months prior, left it stickered under clamps because quilted maple hates woodworkers Here's the top jointed, glued and sanded flat. I normally level sand with the drum sander with an 80 grit roll, then switch to 120 grit for a few passes to get a smoother joining service. looks like I didn't photograph the back, it's just glued to a slab of mahogany with a black pinstripe veneer between On to the neck. This is a really nice quarter sawn piece from Croatia that I've been sitting on for a few years (I think I got it in 2020). I don't really like carbon fibre rods, the dust is horrible. But I am sending this guitar to California and I don't trust heavily figured maple as much as I trust mahogany to behave so I figured it would be better to have it than not. Here's a thing I haven't done before, and it was quite painful to do with hand tools - my useless purfling cutter made of chocolate was surely never designed to cut into ebony. It must have taken me a whole day to cut the channel and fit the maple all the pieces glued in after bending them with the side bending iron In hindsight the purfling is a little bit on the chunky side, next time I'll make sure it's no wider than the ebony around the edge, but I don't hate it. Then I bound the board and had a go at semi-hemispherical frets. Quite time consuming to make, made more so by the stainless steel... but no fret end dressing. On to my favourite bit of the build, although I bled on this one slightly more than usual. This is after carving and rough sanding with the neck dry-fitted so Steve could see what is guitar is going to look like. I've come to the conclusion that I don't really like dying guitar tops prior to glueing the neck in place, because I don't like drilling holes after dye/sealer and I don't like drilling holes for the bridge prior to glueing the neck in. So to (help) prevent me getting dye all over the lovely flamed maple neck, I sealed that area of the neck before glueing. I also applied some light brown grain filler to the body. so I taped off the neck tenon, just a hair inside where it joins the body and sprayed some sealer, if you look closely you can see a 1mm gap between the tape and the bottom of the fretboard, that little bit between the body-top and the fretboard is the bit I really don't want to get dye on. Then got her glued up.

Looking good Scott. Black limba is often full of wormholes anyway so I would deny all knowledge and move on

OK, I have questions... What do you do about all the little holes in the burl? It looks like you've poured some fine CA glue in? Was that prior to glueing up? Do you have any issues with wood glue seeping up through the holes in the burl when you glue the top down?

A taller one is going to be stiffer in that direction so will certainly make a more effective stiffening rod. That being said, 3/8" is quite tall to be sat either side of a truss rod and I'd be concerned about carving a neck that isn't very girthy. the standard size for carbon fibre in UK seams to be 4mm x 7mm which I think definitely does the job.

He's made a Chapman stick