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n8caster

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  • Birthday January 11

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  1. Yes, but unfortunately I cut fret slots in before rough-cutting the board to shape, so the offcuts are slotted. I might be able to salvage them or glue them so the slots are aligned accurately.
  2. I've been thinking a lot about this option. Since the width at the nut is currently correct, the maple "binding" would taper off toward the nut. I honestly think this would be a cool look, but it's definitely not the kind of aesthetic I originally had in mind for this build. There are two alternatives for laminating. a) First glue up maple and rosewood in the correct thicknesses, make wedges from that assembly, and then glue those to the neck. This would give the most natural look, but if not done accurately there would be some odd looking spots. For example, you'd likely see where the rosewood isn't the exact thickness of the original board on the heel of the neck. b) Slim the neck down further at the nut end. I could then add the "binding" in a consistent thickness all the way down the neck. Both of these would be pretty challenging, but I might be able to pull them off. Ultimately, though, I'd still have a neck made with some compromises. Overall I think I'm leaning towards installing the neck and bridge as is now, and then building a new neck for the guitar a few months from now when it's easier to run out and get supplies. It would be easy enough to re-route the neck pocket to accept a wider neck, and I can use this neck as my practice run. This will also give me a chance to see what I like and dislike about my neck (in terms of shape and thickness) and make other adjustments.
  3. Upon further investigation my neck is indeed too narrow toward the heel. Here's what happened... When I made my template I knew that the width at the nut and bottom of the neck needed to be accurate so I checked the dimensions in my model and sanded them to exact width. When I realized my neck was too long I cut off an inch from the bottom of the neck, and in doing so the heel was moved to a thinner part of the neck. I didn't realize this at the time, so now I've got an extra skinny neck. So what do we do about this? I set up an experiment by placing the bridge 25.5 inches from the nut and pulling some thread into position to see how the E strings would lay on the fretboard: Apologies for the difficult-to-see orange thread (it was the first string I could find). As you can see with the E strings approximately at the correct spacing at the nut and then pulled through their saddles, the strings will indeed be very close to the edge of the board in the upper positions. Here are my options moving forward: 1. Just live with it. The guitar will be perfectly playable up through the 17th fret or so, and I'm not exactly a shredder who spends a lot of time in the upper register. This is my first build after all, and this would give it a little "character". 2. Find a bridge with narrow string spacing. I did some preliminary research and couldn't find any tremolo bridges narrower than 2-1/16" spacing. If I could find a bridge with 2" spacing I would be golden. Anyone seen something like this? 3. Laminate some wedge-shaped strips of wood to the side of the neck. I haven't carved the neck profile yet, so this is likely doable, but there may be some interesting cosmetic results. This would also be challenging for me to pull off accurately with the tools I have at my disposal. 4. Make a new neck. Yikes. What do you think? Is there something I'm not thinking of? I'm definitely open to suggestions!
  4. Haha - I know what you mean. I got pretty good at making MDF templates after realizing my drawings weren't sized appropriately.
  5. There is a taper. There's a bunch of extra rosewood above the nut that I think is making a bit of an optical illusion. That material will get removed when I cut the headstock down to final thickness. I just measured, and I'm sitting at right about 1.7" at the nut and 1.89" at the 12th fret. That should give me just about the right width for my tremolo saddles at the bridge. Thanks for looking out though! I'm 100% expecting someone on this site to find a critical error somewhere in the build process. So far so good
  6. Thanks! I was worried that I had overlooked something critical, so glad to hear my setup will likely work out.
  7. Hi All, Sorry for the long time between posts! I'm finding that I'm a more diligent builder than blogger Anyway, I've made a bit of progress on this build. Still a long way to go, but honestly I'm quite proud of how far I've managed to get so far. It's starting to look like a real guitar! I started by making templates from 1/8" plywood and then transferring those to MDF. I used the plywood first because it was a bit easier for me to shape and transferring to the MDF helped me practice with the router. I was then able to cut out the body blank. Neck Templates This is where I ran into my first issue. I didn't realize until after I cut out the templates that my blueprints were about an 5% oversized. Not a huge deal for the body, but the neck needed to be trimmed down to avoid scale length issues later in the build. Trimmed Down Neck Template Body Templates and Routed Body Blank I also cut the templates for routing pickup and electronic cavities. I didn't buy a pre-made template for this, so I'm super pleased at how the cavity shapes look. I'm waiting to get the neck in position before routing the cavities in the actual body. Pickup and Electronics Template Next I went to work on the neck. First step was to get the truss rod channel routed. I'm using the StewMac hot rod with a spoke nut. I routed most of the channel with the appropriate sized bit, and had to hand chisel the larger recesses for the spoke nut. This was my first attempt at chiseling, and again I'm pleased that I didn't butcher it. Truss Rod Channel I had to resaw a thick offcut of rosewood I bought on the cheap on my bandsaw (this is my first project after all...), and managed to plane it down to the appropriate thickness. I built a jig to work with my fret scale template for cutting frets and went to work. Fret Slotting Jig with Indexing Pin Slotting Action Shot Fretboard Glue-up Then I routed out the neck with my template, and things are starting to look promising! I cut out an access for truss rod adjustments just past the 22nd fret. I think this looks a little more elegant then having the rod poke out into the body with an access cut into the pick guard. Truss Rod Access Routed Neck and Body I can almost hear the riffs already... One question I have is related to the spoke nut truss rod. After I glued the fretboard on I realized the truss rod can slide right out of the heal of the neck. Once the neck is set in the body the rod obviously won't come out, but I'm concerned about rattling issues and the function of the rod. My instinct is to wrap the rod with some teflon plumbers tape and push it back into the neck with a snug fit, but I'm wondering if there is something more secure I could try. If anyone has run into this I'd love to hear how they solved it!
  8. Heartbreaking! Good news is it looks like the split will glue up and not be noticeable. For future designs be careful about cutouts with a small radius (like the pointy end of your teardrop shape), especially in the direction of the grain. Cracks will tend to propagate from those points. On the other hand that's one of the coolest looking headstocks I've seen in a long time.
  9. I'm glad you posted this image. I was already over-thinking the jig in my head. KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID.
  10. It does look good in silver! But I actually haven't decided on a color for the finish. I'm almost definitely going to go with a solid color but I'm waiting for the guitar to tell me what color it wants to be lol. I'm definitely open to color suggestions. The pickguard material I bought is black.
  11. Thanks! Setting the neck is probably one of the two steps I'm most worried about. That and sawing the fret slots. I've got the correctly sized fret saw from stewmac, but their fret sawing jig was a little beyond my budget for build #1. I'm going to have to figure out how to make my own jig.
  12. Hi PG Squad! I've been a long time lurker on this forum, and with quarantine keeping me at home I finally dove into my first ever build. Here are the specs: Shape: Solid body inspired roughly by Fender offsets, specifically the Meteora Body wood: Alder Scale: 25,5inch Neck: Bolt-On Maple Fretboard: 22 Fret Rosewood, inlays tbd Bridge: Fender tremelo Pickups: Fender 57'/62' reissue Controls: Standard s-type Tuners: Gotoh locking I started by designing the guitar in Fusion: Printing templates: And getting my alder body blank glued up: Ultimately if I have something playable at the end of this I'll consider it a huge success. I've seen the community on PG help several others through their first builds and hopefully they'll be as gracious with me when I undoubtedly have questions!
  13. Jay - awesome work on this. I'm about to embark on my first build and seeing your progress is pretty inspirational. Can't wait to see these beauties finished!
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