colinw Posted March 14, 2005 Report Share Posted March 14, 2005 well first of all as i have been reading and finding out what types of wood, electronics and other hardware i wanna use i find myself with a big question that i cant find an answer to. What is the purpose of the truss rod. Also whats the best way in painting your body? Any tips for a first timer would be great. Colin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jnewman Posted March 14, 2005 Report Share Posted March 14, 2005 well first of all as i have been reading and finding out what types of wood, electronics and other hardware i wanna use i find myself with a big question that i cant find an answer to. What is the purpose of the truss rod. Also whats the best way in painting your body? Any tips for a first timer would be great. Colin ← When you tighten the strings on a steel string guitar to keep it in tune, the strings bend the neck forward. Without a truss rod, this can sometimes damage a neck and at the very least will make it bow enough that it's hard (if not impossible) to get the action set well. The truss rod is a screw contraption that bends the neck in the opposite direction from the strings, and you use it to keep the neck straight. You don't need one if you're building a classical acoustic (nylon strings have much lower tension than steel strings), but for everything else you basically need one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colinw Posted March 14, 2005 Author Report Share Posted March 14, 2005 i see, now how many times should i expect to screw up before i can complete guitar? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mickguard Posted March 14, 2005 Report Share Posted March 14, 2005 i see, now how many times should i expect to screw up before i can complete guitar? ← Well, if you didn't know what a truss rod was for, then I'd say... plenty. On my first project, I screwed something up at every step in the process. Most of that was fixable /hideable though. On my current project, I've only screwed up a couple of times so far...but I'm learning. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jnewman Posted March 14, 2005 Report Share Posted March 14, 2005 How much experience do you have with tools? That's the really important thing. If you don't know anything at all about guitars but can follow directions well and are good with all the woodworking tools, your first guitar might turn out just fine. On the other hand, if you don't know how to use a router and don't know much about guitars, you're probably going to run into some trouble - you might want to go down to the hardware store and buy a 1 inch MDF sheet to practice on. A 1 inch thick piece of wood is what one-piece fender necks are made out of, so you could make a few practice necks no problem, and you could practice routing out control cavities and pickup cavities and edge bevels and stuff on a 1" piece until you had a real nice template. A sheet of MDF is a lot cheaper than nice guitar wood, and you could practice on it till you're plenty comfortable with everything you need to do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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