Codename Swansong

[guitman32]

After a long while reading and learning from the forum, I have found the time and motivation to begin my first project. I recently ordered wood and components from LMI and Stewmac, and received them a mere four days later.

The plans are as follows:

- LEFTY

- Alder Body to be adapted from a Jem 777, minus the monkey grip, with an AANJ. I opted for a 3-piece body from LMI as opposed to a one or two piece because this is my first project, so I'll hold out on the nice woods until I have more experience.

- 27" scale length

- Hipshot hardtail bridge

- Maple neck, 24 frets, angled headstock

- Pau Ferro FB

- 6100 Fretwire

- Hotrod Truss Rod

- Headstock shape still undecided

- Dual HB's

- 1 vol, 1 tone, 3 way switch control config.

Sound good? Any thoughts or ideas?

I will post pictures as soon as I familiarize myself with the forum pic posting rules, but for now, I will link my first guitar build, a Warmoth Flying V.

Warmoth Lefty Flying V

[guitman32]

And here are those pictures I promised:

Here is a shot of all the wood I received from LMI. NICE!

The body blank came with an LP body tracing on it...Im gonna copy it onto a piece of plywood and make a template from it. Thanks LMI!

These are 1st grade Pau Ferro FB blanks from LMI. The grain is pretty straight, and in my humble opinion I think they are quite beuatiful. The little dot on the lower section of the rightmost FB was a spot of wax that I scratched off with my fingernail after noticing it.

Heres another shot of the FB blanks.

The maple neck blank is almost all quarterwawn. Now is this an actual quatersawn piece of lumber, or is it just a choice piece of flawsawn that appears quartersawn?

I almost forgot to post this pic of the neck blank.

Edited May 22, 2005 by guitman32

[borge]

another lefty

projects looking good

its hard to find decent lefty guitars aye

i thinks that what got me interested in building my own

good luck

[jay5]

I would consider that quartersawn. Did you ask for that or not?

[guitman32]

jay5: No, actually I did not. Quite nice of them though.

After a busy weekend, I finally sat down and worked on the body template. I used 1/4" plywood purchased from my local hardware store, rough cut it on the bandsaw, and finished it with a rasp and file...

To make the AANJ I took a drawing of a JEM777, traced the body onto the piece of ply, and then drew the joint by hand. Does the AANJ contouring look alright? I think I made it a little bit bigger than a normal Ibanez joint, but I dont mind.

My other dilemma is whether to make the headstock on the neck straight or angled. Other than the usual string-pressure-on-the-nut reason, I am leaning to angled mainly because making the trussrod access slot/hole seems like it would be easier with an angled headstock. I must admit, however, I am a bit lazy, and maybe kinda slightly trying to avoid cutting the scarf joint. What do you all think??

[guitman32]

I ended up going with the angled headstock, contrary to my lazy bones protesting.

Here are some shots of the un-glued neck pieces.

You will notice that the smaller headstock piece is a little short - this is because I screwed up the first cut and had to take somewood off the end of each piece. They werent perfect after this, but when I stacked 'em, clamped 'em and leveled 'em using a spokeshave and sanding block, they ended up nice and flat.

I initially thought I was down the crapper with regards to how much would be left for my 27in scale on the long piece of wood, but thankfully there will be enough neck for the full FB length. I am a bit miffed about the short headstock size. I wanted to use a classic Ibanez/Jackson style headstock design, but I cant now unless I glue some more wood on the end of the headstock. This might be a blessing in disguise, however, forcing me to be original and use my own design.

Now I have to decide if I want to take the thickness of the headstock piece down now, or after I glue..what method do you all use???

[guitman32]

I took some pics of the bridge I am going to be using on this project...

Black Hipshot Hardtail...

Seems like a pretty nice piece...one thing that is a bit weird is that on Stewmac (where I ordered mine from), the hipshot bridges are cheaper than ordering them directly from Hipshot...a little odd maybe?

[jer7440]

Looking good man.

[guitman32]

Hello again all...

I am in a little bit of a bind in deciding my headstock shape. When I cut the scarf joint, I messed up and had to remove a substantial amt of wood from each piece, effectively shortening the total length my headstock can be. Here is a pic of the headstock piece...

The dimensions of the flat face you see in the photo are 5 3/4 x 3. This is the side I will use for front of the headstock.

What kind of headstock do you all think would go well a Jem style body?

I would appreciate your wise and valued input on the matter.

Thanks!

[guitman32]

Update: I have cut the headstock to necessary thickness, and glued the angled headstock on:

Pic of bandsaw and guide set up for cutting headstock piece to proper thickness before gluing it to the rest of the neck:

Pics of the gluing:

I think I am going to take the clamps off after about 1.5 hours to scrape off excess glue...is this advisable???

[nsherman2006]

DONT TAKE OFF THE CLAMPS

please

[guitman32]

Well, the scarf joint is fine! Pics to come soon.

BUT - I cut the frackin headstock too thin...rather than the 9/16th I was going for, I hit a little less than 7/16th. 2/16th deviation is bad, I know, but does this seem like an acceptable thinkness, or should I suck it up and glue a thin veener onto the bottom?

I should note that the wood is quartersawn maple so its pretty strong, and that I cut the headstock to thinkness from the back, not the front.

Edited April 7, 2005 by guitman32

[RGGR]

To make the AANJ I took a drawing of a JEM777, traced the body onto the piece of ply, and then drew the joint by hand. Does the AANJ contouring look alright? I think I made it a little bit bigger than a normal Ibanez joint, but I dont mind.

If I were you I would spend little more time drawing AANJ. It would change your guitar from dorky copy effort to nice custom job.

Have look at this.....

[guitman32]

Thanks RGGR...I was looking at the joint and seems that mine protrudes a little too much. I will make changes, which I think only involves taking material off my existing template...The neck joint, the way I have it, looks like it would be way too big, probably negating the effect of the AANJ to begin with.

I think the rest of the body looks fine to me. Really though Im not too concerned with making it a perfect copy, I just want to use that general body style.

[RGGR]

Templates are faster adjusted then actual body. I think it will pay-off spending little more time on template. A proper AANJ will make this a great guitar, otherwise....well it's just a guitar......

I have proper RG CAD-file if you want it??? Although I agree with you that rest of body looks pretty good. It's just your AANJ that made me cry.

Places like these are also great for finding templates and CAD software.

http://www.guitarbuild.com/modules/mydownloads/

Edited April 7, 2005 by RGGR

[guitman32]

RGGR- That CAD would be great...Thanks for the advice.

What I meant in that last post was that Im going to definetly make the template as perfect as I can before I route the body. I am considering purchasing a table sander of some sort for general smoothing/leveling purposes, but until then, I want to get everyting good on the template first.

[CudBucket]

Excuse my ignorance but whats an AANJ?

[guitman32]

Cudbucket, AANJ stand for All Access Neck Joint, and is the kind of joint you see on some Ibanez guitars. Its the kind that has the contoured heel, not the boxy looking type.

Here are some examples.

Edited April 8, 2005 by guitman32

[guitman32]

I slotted the neck blank for the Hotrod today. I used my router table and a bit purchased from Stewmac for the Hotrod...

In this first pic you can see the entire slot, alot with some newspaper still stuck to the neck from gluing the scarf joint. I will sand that off before gluing on the FB.

Here is a closeup of the headstock area:

To get the wider channel up top to accomodate the adjusting nut, I just switched to a straight 3/8in bit and routed until where the head angle stops.

Next steps are to prep the FB and glue it to the neck blank. I need to measure and cut the slots for my 27" scale length. I am going to make the FB end flush to the end of the neck. I am considering using 22 instead of 24 frets, because that way the bridge will be placed farther back on the body. This is good because I am using a fixed bridge (Hotshot hardtail, pics earlier in thread), which is much smaller than a Floyd type. Visually, I think this will look better than having a boat load of empty space behind the bridge.

[RGGR]

Next steps are to prep the FB and glue it to the neck blank. I need to measure and cut the slots for my 27" scale length. I am going to make the FB end flush to the end of the neck. I am considering using 22 instead of 24 frets, because that way the bridge will be placed farther back on the body. This is good because I am using a fixed bridge (Hotshot hardtail, pics earlier in thread), which is much smaller than a Floyd type. Visually, I think this will look better than having a boat load of empty space behind the bridge.

Uh?.......you're having a 27" inch scale length right???? And still complaining about the space behind the bridge.........

Must be me......

Edited April 10, 2005 by RGGR

[guitman32]

Thats true RGGR - My reasoning was that the Hipshot bridge I am using is alot smaller than a Floyd, and since I am using a Jem body, which was originally designed with a floyd, it had the Hipshot leaving alot of space behind the bridge, not so much as to be totally ugly, but enought to where I would have still preferred a little less.

That being said, I have modified the body template as per your advice earlier in this thread, and since I did, I can now set the neck just a bit farther back into the body. With this little compensation, the bridge goes back just enough to make me happy.

As always, thank you for the useful criticism!

[guitman32]

Just an update. I have slotted and tapered the FB. I have also rough cut (and I mean rough, youll see when I post pics) the neck outline. I am going to use the FB and a flush trim bit to final cut the neck shape.

My next steps are to cut the headstock shape using a template and router table, and install the T-Rod and glue the FB. Then I will use the FB as a template and cut the final neck shape. Once this is done, all that is left is to shape the neck profile and drill the tuner holes.

A little FYI: The headstock is thinner than it should be. It is about 6/16" thick. To compensate I am going to glue an ebony veneer on the front, and maybe some maple on the bottom.

[guitman32]

Update!

To measure the fret positions I created a spreadsheet I to calculate the distances, and marked them using a precision ruler. I had to make sure that the sides of the FB were perfectly perpendicular to the nut edge. To achieve this, I marked out the perpendicular lines on each side of the board, attached a piece of wood with a flat edge (using double sided tape) to the marked line on the FB, then used the router table with a flush trim bit to get the edge totally straight. I then did the same thing for the other side.

I cut the slots using a saw with depth stop purchased from Stewmac. For each slot, I clamped a piece of plywood scrap (one edge was perfectly flat, about 1/4in thick) as a guide for the saw onto the FB, and cut the slot.

After slotting the FB, I marked out the FB's final shape, and used the same procedure for creating perpendicular edges to cut the fretboard taper.

As you can see in the above picture, I have rough cut the neck to shape. I will cut the final shape using the FB as a guide. I sitll havent decided whether I want to do this before of after gluing the FB.

Next step was to shape the headstock. I drew the headstock from scratch in a cad program, printed it out and created a template out of 1/4" ply. This template was then taped it to the headstock front, and routed to shape with myrouter table and flush trim bit.

I have a question: Other than the pressure of the tightened rod and silicone lube placed at each end, what prevents a Hot Rod from being able to slide out of the adjustement slot once the FB has been glued? I really really really hope this isnt a stupid question, but am quite curious as the the answer.

[GregP]

Nothing, really, unless you had specifically shaped it to stay put. My guitar's the same way, and many other tutorials I've seen do it the same way. In theory, we could have used a system with a round hole for the adjustment nut, but there's no real danger of anything going wrong.

Worst case scenario is that it DOES come out. I don't imagine that happening, but if it did, just put it back in. If it slides out that easily, something has already gone very very wrong.

Greg

[CudBucket]

I used a Hot Rod in my project and I just used silicon at the ends to hold it in.