Southpa

The average tang thickness on the fretwire I am using (mostly med. and jumbo) is 0.023 - 0.025" I've been cutting my fretslots with a "flush-cut pull saw" made by Stanley. Blade thickness measures at .016" give a little more for pilot error and I get the right sized slot for my frets.

I finished it a while ago but was waiting until I could get some decent pictures taken (Thanks Dean!). Hmmm...where to begin . Another one of my "one-offs", no templates just winging it along and following the natural curves. I call it "The Huntress", it has that woodsy atmos. with the natural Honduras mahogany and dyed holly laminates / headstock cap, as well as the hunter green pickguard and elaborate fb inlay. Celtic lore says that holly (Ilex sp.) has magical protective and regenerative properties and giving holly to someone is a sign of good will. Body wings and center neck block are Honduras mahogany, the last of my stock American holly (Ilex) laminates on either side of the neck block, dyed hunter green and feathered out onto the neck. I honestly haven't seen anyone do this before so I figured I'd give it a whirl. The design revolves around Fenderish aspects, almost a strato-tele hybrid, strat body cuts, 25.5" scale length, stringthrubody design w/ ferrules in back, hardtail, 24 frets and rolled fb edges. The headstock has a 1/8" thick holly cap (dyed green/blue) Chrome Grover mini-tuners. Neckthru as mentioned with rosewood fb cap and my own single action truss rod. I did good on the truss rod, can make them for about a buck apiece now! The fb inlay? What can I say? I sure wish I can say I was responsible but I'm an honest fellow, it was pre-inlaid and radiused. I bought it from a friend at work which he got off Ebay. Looks like a CNC job with lots of MOP and abalone. I DID install the med/med frets and it looks like a 12" radius. I made the nut from vintage mother of pearl. It used to be the handle from a silver plated butter knife. The finish is 2-part "Imron" polyurethane (Thanks Stu!). About 8 thick coats with alternate curings/scuffings between every 2 coats. I previously grainfilled the mahogany with "Famowood #1 Professional Wood Filler" which I picked up at the local Do-It Center. (good stuff, I just rubbed it in with my fingers) The pickguard is 1/16" thick, clear, one-side-scuff-resistant Acrylite. The back side is painted with "Krylon Fusion" rattlecan for plastics , hunter green. I think it matches the surrounding dyed holly very well. I have an alternate guard which is black w/ white trim but unfortunately, it was too thick. It felt like the strings were laying right on the deck. More pictures here Its wired like a telecaster and sounds like a telecaster, the neck pickup is a stock single coil from my 88 Am. Std. strat and bridge pickup is an Ibanez C2 stacked humbucker. 3-way blade switch, 1 volume, 1 tone, .022 cap, nothing fancy. Combining the 2 very diverse pickups gives a very pleasing tone. Thats what teles are all about to me. If you want to see more here are my "in progress" shots. Sorry, they are a bit disorganized but still cover many aspects of the build. And something for that good advice thread if it has not been mentioned yet: If you are building a neckthru guitar of this design, ie. body wings onto neck block, keep the bandsaw cuttoffs for clamping the body pieces together later on! I guess you could glue the wood together beforehand but try cutting a body out on the bandsaw with 2 feet of neck sticking out. This guitar is designed for a woman in mind. Its small(ish), lightweight (only weighs 6.5 lbs!)and is VERY comfortable to play. I do not plan to keep it and am considering putting it up for the United Way Christmas Raffle at work. I'll just get some stick-on holly decorations (leaves, berries 'n such) and call it the Christmas guitar. Huh, someone could pick it up for 2 bucks, imagine that! But it will go toward a good cause and just feels like the right thing to do. I have enough guitars laying around as it is!

I've used the copper adhesive shielding tape from Stewmac and found it conducts very well across the overlapping joints, no soldering required. I have a friend at work who does TIG welding on copper-nickel piping, all diameters and sizes. He uses aluminum tape (mfg: Ideal Tape Co.) to seal the pipe ends for containing the shielding gas (Argon). I took some of the material home and used it on a few guitars. It does not conduct across the joints, ie. non-conductive adhesive but I just hit some joint areas with a soldering iron and burned away the glue. The heavy copper tape is also used by stained glass artisans.

Heres my method. http://www3.telus.net/Alsplace/Fretwork/ The pics show my most basic steps. You can't leave any of those steps out, that is cutting corners and the end result suffers. Pace yourself, and make sure you economize your actions. Doing fretwork, the way I do it , is hard on the fingers, hands and wrists. Try not to cripple yourself.

Depends on what you are crowning with. If you are using the regular steel crowning files then yes, you could speed things up a bit. Splurging on the diamond grit file (what, 80 bucks now at stewmac?) will help. I was told that only a few swipes is required to crown a fret with one of those.

I might consider using NO vol/tone etc. knobs on my next build. Just a single on/off switch and pickup switch. I usually keep all the guitar effects on full anyway.

Sorry Robert, I don't think that neck is going to work. If the neck is placed exactly where you want it, as in your first picture?, then my eyeball tells me that the bridge will wind up where the single coil sized pickup hole currently is. I hope I am wrong and what I am seeing is just a matter of perspective but otherwise you should double check your measurements and make sure you FULLY understand the concept of "scale length" in guitar building. Its THE fundamental law for making a guitar tuneable and playable. So measure from the leading edge of the nut to the crown of 12th fret and make sure its the same distance as 12th fret to FIRST STRING bridge saddle. For a TOM bridge you must then angle the bridge back by about 1/8" to 1/4" . Thats just to compensate for the thicker strings and puts the bass note saddles into adjustable range. I also think the string - thru holes should be positioned closer to the bridge. Such a shallow angle to the bridge gives lousy tone and a sloppy feel when playing. Its nice to design something new purely by esthetics but there ARE conventions that must be maintained. Its your first guitar project and oak is a pretty heavy, solid wood to shape on your kitchen table with rudimentary tools and methods. For that I say, WELL DONE! , I prefer to use the living room and my friend's back yard on occasion. See if you can smooth things out before taking pictures. No offense but it looks a little "home made" as opposed to "hand crafted". Just use some 80 grit wrapped around a flat block (for the flat areas) and alternate with the same around a foam pad for curves, add some elbow grease and try to straighten out your lines and make the curves flow better.

Johnny Winter Mick Box (Uriah Heep) Frank Marino (Mahogany Rush) FZ John Kay (Steppenwolf) Pat Travers Randy Bachman Warren Haynes (Allman Bros.) Dickey Betts (Allman Bros.) still more to list ...one day

Nope, they don't work that way. A little quote from the tele forum There is some sound logic in using your push-pull pot as a tone ie. farther away from your wildly flailing hand

Yay! We got a new Lee Valley store in town, opens sometime next week. I'll look forward to buying some curved spokeshave blades. Hopefully, just the blades that will fit in my current holders. I already own a couple and the straight blades have taken a wee bit of a beating. Fretwork can be tricky but I agree with Wes. You CAN lay a perfect fret job without having to flatten out perfectly good frets and then recrown, sounds sort of redundant, don't you think? The name of the game is getting it right the first time. Just cuz the guy (Mel Hiscock) writes a book and then makes a TON of money off this (and other) websites, yes I happen to own a copy as well, does not mean his way is the only way. If you are careful throughout the process you can get away with not having to level and crown, done it many times. The object is to make sure your playing field is right (level and properly radiused) to begin with, your frets and slots are properly prepped, ie. the right sizes, frets overbent uniformly etc. AND your technique is consistent throughout the process. This also means constantly monitoring your progress with straightedge, eyeball or whatever you are good at. No egos involved, just plain experience and ...did someone say common sense??!!

I guess I could complicate things further.... I draw a fretboard in ACAD and print it out actual size. Cut it out and tape it down onto the would be fretboard. Then scribe the fret positions out with a razor. Remove the paper and rub chalk dust into the cuts. Then saw the slots out. I think my saw is .025". There is no other way if you want that kind of accuracy. Now if you can find some sort of drawing program where you can input the 3-4 decimal dimensions given by the stewmac calculator... And heres something else...would you rather slot a square fb or a tapered one?

it is.

From the beginning its band saw and then roundover bit in the router. The hard part of shaping and smoothing those areas is the fact that its mostly end grain. It can be a real workout at times, especially with maple. So I found that rasps and riffler files are VERY effective for getting your general shape in order before sanding. I've used drills and sanding drums and have even wrapped some sand paper around a can of soup. Thats great if the radius of your "drum" is the same as the cutaway, otherwise be careful.

No reading off the bridge pickup? I'd say you have a broken winding or a detached lead. Try getting a reading between the two pickup leads. If you get no DC resistance reading then the pickup needs to be swapped out and / or rewound.

You trying to hide imperfections with clear lacquer ? Lacquer will only amplify scratches and any other "imperfections" in the wood, dye/stain job etc. Ya gotta get it right from the beginning, and keep it right ...or else. It also depends on your own "thats good enuf" level of perfection. So if the imperfections are UNDER the clear lacquer and you can't live with it, then you have to strip it back down and redo. If your problems are within the lacquer then you have to address the gradation of grits you are using. Obviously they won't polish out and you could be there for a long time. You mention 600 to 3000 grit but we don't know whats in between. Also your own methods and level of "thoroughness" should be questioned. Wetsanding can be a real chore in itself. What really takes most of the time is assessment between sanding grits. I always have plenty of paper towels handy and am constantly checking the finish. If you don't spend the time its easy to miss something. And you usually don't notice it until its too late. If the scratches are buried then you have to get down to that layer or level of coarseness and sand it out. Yes, you run the risk of tapping into your dye job and really putting it into the crapper.

There is more than one dimension to a fret, you have to interpret what "large" you are using. Check the Stewmac website (gawd we make those people a LOT of money) and look at the various dimensions of frets you can get. Large is a very general term and can also be relative to different brands and suppliers. Measure your own fret and find out which file is most appropriate. Obviously you have the wrong one...go smaller.

You'll have to use a smaller radiused crowning file. Or get good at using a triangular file.

Nice wood

Well, J dropped by earlier last week and picked up the scaled down V I've been working on IN MY LIVING ROOM for the past 4 months. Its not done, ya see, J is the painter (he painted the topcoat on my truck). So he is looking into the "swirl" method and might go with black base and hugger orange (the same paint on my truck ) polyurethane- enamel swirl job and clearcoat. But my part of it is done, I'll probably just re-install and setup the hardware after the paintjob. Heres all the pics, sorry, not organized very well. Maybe I can talk J into adding HIS progress to this thread. Either way, we'll get to see the finished project in the future. All mahogany set neck, 25 frets. The neck is actually half of a perfectly q-sawn piece of 4X4 handrail. I still have the other half for a later guitar. Its scaled down to 87.5% actual size as the guitar is for his sons to play, and maybe they'll leave his Ibanez Gem alone . "Hey, if the kids wanna play all the power to them!" But now J seems to like the V more, says hes been playing it alot. I wonder if it will ever get painted... . I scaled it to 23.5" so I could fit all the hardware. Custom body bevels, carving and volute. It has a single DiMarzio "superdistortion" HB rated at about 14KΩ DC resistance (scavenged from a LP copy that will be chambered one day). Despite the small size and weight (6 lbs even) this guitar has a BIG voice. Tuners are black Grover locking minis, pretty good balance overall. MOP dot inlays in a rosewood neck with jumbo frets. TOM bridge with approx. 5 degree neck angle as well as scarf jointed headstock, about 15 deg. I didn't go overboard on finishing as I knew it would be largely wasted effort. Its still a bit rough and I think I stopped at 180 grit. The guitar is going to be played, bumped and scratched for who knows how long and there is no case for it yet. When J gets the gumption he will strip it down, do an epoxy grainfill and prep it for painting, no rush.

http://www.kidsbooksandpuppets.com/elopeha...ressuphats.html Sorry, couldn't resist , but they DO include dimensions!

Never mix coating types ie. lacquer, polyurethanes, enamels etc. or even in a lot of cases (my experience), brands of coatings, especially in the lacquer (nitrocellulose or acrylic) categories. I like doing with automotive paints because there is always a matching primer, color and clear, basically a kit where all the components are MADE TO WORK WITH EACH OTHER. Its a no-brainer and you can't go wrong if you follow instructions and provide the proper conditions. Some enamel DOES NOT POLISH WELL and even if you can get some sort of shine it will be dull in about a month. If applying a coating over poly then the poly must be scuffed well to provide a good bonding surface and to avoid any adherence problems. I mentioned compatibility issues between paints and that is the problem. When doing this the results can be unpredictable. You don't know if the solvents in the new coating will react with the existing coating. And as far as timing goes. I have only one thing to add. The longer I wait the better I feel about the results. This is where aLOT of patience (and restraint ) is needed. When I shoot a guitar now I just let it hang and forget about it for a while. The paint might 'seem' cured, will sand well without clogging the paper AND pass the fingernail test with moderate pressure. But its a real drag to see the nice imprint the towel made in the finish after laying the guitar down for only half an hour! That won't happen again!

Riffler files are cool. There is a pic floating around in the archives of me sanding an SG cutaway with a can of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup wrapped in a chunk of 80 grit. And it MUST be mushroom.

A couple of options, perhaps echoing a few already mentioned. When you say the body is being painted everyone assumes the purple heart top is also part of the body. But you plan to go natural w/ the purple heart, right? 1. You can alter your shape a little bit and then rout over the edge with a roundover bit. You juuust might make it even. 2. Find another piece of parent wood that is similar color and grain structure. Cut the mating edges making sure there are NO gaps and their respective grains are aligned. You might be able to blend it in.

One of the last things I do is carve the back of the neck. That way I have a stable surface for doing most everything else prior to that event. If you know the dimensions you are working with you should have no problems. If your fret slots are the proper size then you shoud not have any backbow, thats means the neck is undergoing longitudinal internal stress, something is too tight. Consequently, I don't use glue either. As mentioned, everyone has their own way of doing things. The secret is being able to duplicate your efforts for each fret. I've managed to get it so all that extra effort like glueing as well as fret levelling and crowning is not necessary. Of course there is no right way, but there definitely ARE easier ways. Just practice getting it right the first time and being consistent in your madness.

Decide on your bridge and then ask again. Most TOM (tune-o-matic) Gibson style bridges require a neck angle (3 - 5 deg.) because they are much higher than conventional Fender bridges (no neck angle).