Muzz

Looking fantastic, the dots are cool. I don't think your fretboard extension will experience significant stress, a welded truss rod resisting un up bow will push up on the fretboard in the middle and down on the neck at the ends.  I have only ever seen one guitar with a back bow (a Gibson Les Paul Custom and brand new), and I am guessing even in that incredibly rare situation you would need a lot of pressure to pop the end of the fretboard off, does anyone know?

On 7/6/2021 at 9:41 AM, ScottR said:

Mason jars and beer rock!

SR

I've known the second one was awesome for a long time but only recently thought that about the first. A few years back a friend gave me a pack of 6 of those mason jar glasses, at the time I thought, jam jars with handles, whatever, and put them in a cupboard and forgot about them. About a year later a couple of friends came out of my kitchen with their beers in those mason jars, and I thought that the jars with handles took on a whole new appeal with beer in them, and that mason jars and beer do indeed rock!

Next step is to cut some wood off that headstock

I cut two 6 mm dowels to 21 mm long, 

I put some double sided tap on the neck bottom and stuck it down then some on the top.

I put the dowels into the template holes and then put the template on the neck, the dowels went into the channel and aligned it as I stuck the template down.

Then I set up a balance beam to the same height as the top of the template, This means the router is fully supported and can't wobble back and forward. Then the sides got routed.

Then the heel, nearly finished.

The guitar is shaping up so beautifully, I am intrigued, what is the string on the plane for? And do you find when you do any work out the front or with the garage door open you spend more time chatting with the neighbours than you do working? I find it a nice problem to have. Love seeing and hearing the musicians and music that inspire a build.

14 hours ago, Prostheta said:

Yep, hand routers are in a wibbly-wobbly world of their own sometimes.

Sometimes they are indeed, it is our duty to fight the wibble and the wobble, 

14 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

Using a jar is a clever idea should you ever have to leave a half full glass for other tasks. Screw the lid on, put it into the refridgerator and enjoy when you're free to continue that tastiful task.

They are handy that way, and I like the nice patterns on the glass, I'll post one of my jars with a handle this time.

So I ordered new short router bits and hitting the buy button instantly jogged my memory of where I put my old ones. This one apparently is a dado clean out bit, I don't know how it cleans out dados but it is great for routing 6 mm mdf

So I routed the baseplate of the paddle head neck template

Beautiful weather in the land of Oz today

Got the paddle template screwed down to the backing plate

then got the anti wobble surround in place and went to get my short template bit

but it was not in the drawer it was supposed to be in, I'll look for it tomorrow, cheers, for now

Cheers Scott, the next step is screw the top templates to the mdf below with countersunk screws and rout the bottom layer to match the top.. Then drill two 6 mm holes in the template midline to align it with the neck truss rod channel using upside down 6 mm drill bits. Not sure yet whether to screw the template to the neck or stick it with double sided tape. 

With any luck that sideways fretting technique will cause the barbs on either side of the tang to cut two tiny horizontal furrows with wood left above the barbs which will hold the fret in better than the downward furrows cut by barbs in frets tapped or pressed in conventionally downwards.

23 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

I tend to hum. Does an earworm count?

Sometimes when you get the earworm, you just have to hum it out,  

Experimenting with the the neck template, the chunky piece on the left guides the router away from the sloping head stock area. 

Love the grain rolling through the neck into the volute, like a swirling sea current, and everything else is also looking fantastic too.

Definitely, once you set yourself free from the "authentic" way of thinking, it frees you to go where you want, not what other people are expecting/wanting to see, and that is a fun journey that leads to a unique instrument.

Cheers Prestheta and Bizman, I love the cheesegrater,, I use it as well a rasp and spokeshave for necks. I agree that there are so many ways to carve a neck, it really comes down to personal preference. Sculpting the neck I find to be one of the most enjoyable parts of guitar making, seeing and feeling that neck coming into shape is a great experience. I wonder if the choice of music you listen to while you do it can influence the outcome.

Listening to Whitesnake's 1987 remake of Here I Go Again and leveling the back of the headstock, using the cheesegrater and then 80 grit sandpaper.

Flatter than Florida on a hot day.

Look for the glue line, what your brain initially tells you is the join, isn't the join.

Next step is the lateral shaping.

Yep there are a gazzillion red white and black copies out there, it would be great to see this take off on sliding doors trajectory. I just hope you didn't go overboard on tightening your clamps applied directly on the fingerboard with no caul, so they didnt make craters like a stiletto heel on a wooden floor that slowly rise up starting six months later.

Yep, that is in the work of art category, absolutely beautiful.

Ruler clamped along neck centre line, a BOWWSE lined up along the ruler

and used to continue the centre line along the headstock

Three holes drilled with a 6 mm bradpoint bit along the centre line

two holes used to poke 6 mm drill bits in through the jig channel and line it up on the neck, one just to align the jig with where the channel stops on the neck, The drill bit at the right is is sitting in a hole 9 mm deep so the router bit can sit in the hole before the router starts.

Routed down to 9 mm deep.

I dropped into Bunnings today and picked up a proper 6 mm bit to route the channel. 

The channel in the practice run cut with the 6.3 mm bit, was uniformly 6.5 mm. The truss rod is 6.2 mm wide https://luthiersupplies.com.au/welded-2-way-truss-rod I'll do a test route with the 6 mm bit on a piece of scrap first to be sure that the maths is right and the truss rod channel is going to be tighter than the budgie smugglers on a lifeguard that's been eating a lot of pies recently.

I routed through the truss channel jig

and tried it out on the model neck

from this exercise I learnt I have to rout 1.5 mm deeper than I calculated and set it back 1 mm towards the heel

and I need to get a slightly thinner router bit, this one is actually 6.3 mm

apart from those adjustments everything looks good, I'll go ahead and do the real neck next,

What a gorgeous guitar, it makes me happy just to look at it

6 hours ago, Prostheta said:

Well, I figured that I'm either going to build this to VH1 specs and then subsequently do the upwards modifications, or build one and then the other. This is mostly dependent on how I like the tone of the (heavy) Ash, and whether I want to move across to a pre-built Swamp Ash body for the Floyd RWB. There's a lot of tonal differences in the first six albums (obviously Frankie was only a small part of the instruments used) so getting a feel for the brighter snappier woods and where I want to go with my final player is something I can only find out when we're across the finish line (no joke intended). For one, I'm unsure whether to go for paint in the thin stripes of the VH1 which closes off the road to the full RWB paintjob or go for semi-permanent tape lines.

The Jarrah was a gift from a friend, so I'm going to do a bit of a reveal for him as and when. He'll appreciate that.

Actually, tonight we're trying a bunch of Belgian beers from Alvinne brewery. Just shared a Cuvée Sophie with my wife, which was nice even though I don't care much for Oak-aged beers. The Phi Sloeberry is aged in Oak as well, however that sounds exciting....

https://www.alvinne.com/EN/beers.html

Looking forward to seeing how this, or maybe these two guitars progress, really cool to incorporate the gift from your friend into the guitar. Now I feel like having a Flemish Sour Ale, I don't know if my local bottle o will have any, I might have to wait a while  

2 hours ago, Drak said:

Pete Thorn has been obsessing over the VH tone lately, he's got a few YT's you might find interesting if you haven't already seen them.

Here's one that just came out, very VH guitar related.

23 Different Pickups

 

Watching the vid now with a mug of Rooibos tea, look at that beautiful Ibanez Destroyer 

Making the truss rod channel jig, the frame holds the router snuggly and only allows travel in one dimension.

The baseplate was clamped in place then the jig flipped upside down to screw the baseplate on.

Tomorrow I will route the 6mm channel down the middle of the baseplate and it will be good to go.

On 6/18/2021 at 6:55 AM, JayT said:

 

So, finally the question--- If to insert the truss rod by just sliding it into the channel as shown, whats to stop it from sliding out into the access cavity?

 

Friction yes and to make absolutely sure some silicone at either end of the channel to glue it in place 

Great to see you are getting a bit of Aussie timber into this build, you may get the urge to enjoy a nice Victoria Bitter after sanding those Jarrah dots, Also going for the best hardware with Gotoh, but why not go for the locking vibrato? 

Lovely stripes Scott, planning the finish early in the build can accentuate the enjoyment of the crafting process, you can visualise what is unfolding as you work, all the best with this one.