Finally Started My First Build...

[skelf]

Looks pretty good to me especially for a first build. are you still putting on the scratch plate etc.

Alan

[mattharris75]

I haven't decided for sure, but the further along I get the more I think it would be a shame to cover up this nice looking walnut. When I get the pickup routed and the bridge holes drilled I will probably mock one up and see what it looks like. I ended up spacing my knobs a bit further down, which could make it tough to put them in the area covered by the pickguard like was originally planned. So we'll see...I'm leaning toward not doing one, but i'll know one way or the other after it is mocked up.

[decadentjon]

hey, i really dig the shape, i vote for no pickguard. it looks really nice and organic at the moment, especially with the laminate p-90 cover, i think plastic would make it look a little odd.

[mattharris75]

Thanks, organic is really the look i'm going for. It's a shame too, because I really like my pickguard design. I think I may have to make a short scale electric for my wife one day in the future (After I build my bass, which is coming up next) and i'll use the pickguard design on that. I'll probably mock it up just for kicks, it's hard to tell with just a quick photoshop rendering.

[mattharris75]

Well, after a lot of head scrtatching and even more measuring I managed to get the neck pocket routed. I chizeled the corners square and chizeled out the small recess for the spoke wheel. I still have a tiny bit of chizeling on that to get it 100% square. Everything fits up very tight, I can hold the whole guitar up by the neck.

I also got the pickup cover finish sanded and the holes drilled on that. That was very difficult to do, and unfortunately I misalligned the two outside holes for the pole pieces. But I drilled the holes small initially so once I drilled them full sized I was able to make up for that somewhat. I'm still not happy as those two holes are slightly oblong. However, it is barely noticeable, once it is tru oiled and sitting under strings i'm likely the only person who will ever notice it. But I'm going to tru oil it before I make a decision on whether or not I want to use it, as this will effect the routing of the pickup cavity. I'll post a picture of the cover once it's completely finished and see what everyone thinks.

The cavity cover now fits and sits totally flush as well. So, i'm making good progress, got a few more little things (like bridge placement) that i'd like to get knocked out this weekend.

[tim_ado]

nice work looks good

i know what u mean my first build i put the neck pocket off so much but u do the math and practise it, it turns out well and its not to hard

im loving the whole el natural thing going on with the PU covers and stuf im planning on doing some on my next build

[mattharris75]

Thanks Tim.

As far as the wood pickup cover, that was a lot more time consuming than I thought it would be. Of course the second time around it would be a lot quicker. I put the first coat of black stain on the pickup cover last night, and will probably do one more coat tonight, then sand back a little and start tru oiling it. I made a few mistakes on the cover, cutting the holes for the pole pieces was quite tricky. You won't have to worry about that on a bass pickup, so it shouldn't be that difficult. One thing I found that made doing the slight roundover on the edges easy was those flexible foam covered 'sandblaster' sanding blocks, definitely worth trying when you make yours.

[tim_ado]

yeah it would definatly take time but it would total be worth it

the plan is buy some cheap pickups that i can take the cover of and make new wooden ones

thats the plan though it will probaly be a while in the making.....recording next week and have no money to spare

[mattharris75]

Well, got my bridge positioned and mounted tonight. It was one of those '2 hours to drill 3 holes' situations. Ended up with the bridge about 1/2mm out of square, which was disappointing, but it's pretty much impossible to see. The center point on the bridge is perfect though, and I ran a couple of pieces of dental floss down the neck from the outside slots on the nut to the outside saddles on the bridge and it lines up perfectly. So, other than my perfectionist side nagging at me, for all practical purposes this is close enough. Also drilled the through body holes for the strings and the recesses for the ferrules. Again, they're close but not perfect. Being a perfectionist with only moderate skill is a frustrating position to be in.

I'm almost done finishing my pickup cover as well. I'm still going to add a few more coats of tru oil and possibly wet sand one more time. I'm playing it by ear at this point. But as you can see, it looks really good. So for those that wanted to see my tru oil example finish, here it is:

[Jon]

Excellent work on the pickup cover, extremely professional looking!

[mattharris75]

Thanks Jon.

Well, since I am not entirely happy with the alignment of my neck through holes i've spent the past few days trying to decide what I want to do about that. Right now i'm thinking that i'm going to make a cover to go over the holes (just recess the ferrules all the way into the back). I resawed and cut out a small blank to do it with. I'm thinking that I will inlay it with the small logo disk that i've come up with. Should give the back of the guitar a little flash. What would you guys do?

Also, since I haven't really posted any pictures that showed off the wood that i'm using very well (partly my photography skills and also a lack of naphtha) I decided to post one of the back of the guitar. You can see the not-quite-perfect alignment of the neck through holes on this, as well as the now flush cavity cover.

Not a ton of progress, but i've been working on a lot of little things, and just felt like posting a picture that showed off my grain a little.

[mattharris75]

OK, I just had to post a picture of this. These were in the mail when I got home last night. I'm really excited about them. These are really going to be the finishing touch on the guitar. This one is bloodwood, and i'll probably save it to go on my wifes red-themed guitar that's the next project (padauk top/fingerboard and bloodwood and black dyed poplar veneer lams along with a yet to be determined light wood). The ones that will be going on this guitar are made of faux pearl but look otherwise the same, just couldn't get a good photograph of them. The recessed area will be filled with black epoxy. One of these will be going on the headstock and another on the string-through cover on the back of the guitar.

These were done by HuntinDoug, I sent him an illustrator .eps file and he turned them around really quickly and for a very reasonable price for custom work! I highly recommend working with him if anybody is looking for custom inlay type stuff, absolutely awesome! Thanks Doug!

Edited July 1, 2007 by mattharris75

[WezV]

I have had the wonky string holes before. I would suggest making a wooden plate with the holes drilled accurately and then inlaying this into the back of the guitar. If you don it carefully you normally find the holes are close enough that quickly running a drill through cleans them up nicely. If you make this plate out of a nice chunk of ebony or even brass you can even forgo string ferrules altogether.

Its much easier to get the holes accurate on this because you can just stick the bridge to your piece of wood and drill straight through

[mattharris75]

Yeah, i thought about doing that. I didn't realize I could use ebony without using ferrules, that might look cool. I had thought of just inlaying the ferrules into a small piece of maple, which would at least give it contrast and make it look intentional. And I don't have a mill, so brass would be out of the question I suppose. But i'm still considering this route of inlaying a block of wood. The idea of the cover seemed kind of cool because I could use of of my logo disks on it and turn it into a feature.

[WezV]

you can use anything that is hard enough to not get chewed up by the string ends.

[mattharris75]

Got some work done over the July 4th holiday.

Made the pickup template and routed the pickup cavity as well as drilling out the hole for the jack.

But before doing that I had to make sure that my pickup still fit in the finished pickup cover, and it did.

Pickup in finished pickup cover

Everything is going well progress-wise. I have a few custom little things that i'm working on as well as cleaning up some things on the neck before I try to fret it. My stew-mac order with fretting tools should arrive tomorrow!

[WezV]

looking nice!

[HuntinDoug]

Looking good Matt!

[gibsonsg26]

"I don't know that the grain on this would be considered particularly perfect, but I think it's pretty interesting. I managed to get the light streaks lined up in the middle against each other, which I think looks pretty cool. And there is a nice looking blacker streak on the bottom piece of wood. I think it should make for a pretty interesting guitar top. What do you guys think?"

I think that grain is pretty sweet the look of it is amazing great job so far i hope it sounds as great as it looks. Good luck with your build

Edited July 6, 2007 by gibsonsg26

[DigthemLows]

looking great!

[mattharris75]

Got a little more work done tonight. In the body I drilled the hole for the pickup wires to go to the control cavity as well as the hole underneath the bridge for the ground wire. Ended up having to use a masonry bit to finish it out, because the regular drill bit wasn't long enough.

But the visually interesting part is this. Got the tuner holes drilled as well as the hole for my custom logo inlay. Also, set the inlay in with epoxy. It's a hair proud of the headstock surface, but nothing a little sanding won't take care of. I decided to err on the side of caution. Better too shallow a hole than too deep a hole. The tuners are wilkinsons. For the holes, the closest drill bit size I could find to the diameter of the tuner was 25/64". Seemed to work perfect. They are all quite snug.

Next step is the side dots and getting it fretted. Depending on free time, should have those done in the next couple of weeks. Then it's onto carving the neck, which I admit I'm still slightly nervous about.

Edited July 12, 2007 by mattharris75

[mattharris75]

Well, my attempt at drilling side dot holes didn't turn out so well. I initially had in mind to create a small jig to run down the neck to make sure they were aligned. But, alas, I got overconfident and tried to do it without a jig. All but two of the holes were perfect. Which obviously means that two of them weren't good enough. For a brief moment I considered trying to fill the holes with wood dust and glue, but decided quickly that wouldn't do. So, I ordered supplies to bind the neck yesterday. Curly Koa. Just have to finish figuring out a jig to use to route the channels on the router table.

When I was drilling those holes I knew in the back of my mind that I could bind it if I screwed up. Ultimately this will make an even better end product. But it is further reinforcement of the lesson that 1 hour building a jig saves you 5 hours of build time (not to mention money).

On the plus side, i've gotten some small things done the last few days, sanding the emblem flat on the headstock, adding a few more coats of tru oil to the pickup cover, and things such as that.

The binding supplies should be here early enough to give me the opportunity to work on that this weekend. Keeping my fingers crossed on that one.

[jmrentis]

I think that mess up is cool, mainly because I love any type of binding. It really accents everything and curly Koa is nice. Definately, show us how the jig turns out, I have a feeling I will end having to make this jig at some point in my future, lol. I can't imagine it will be the easiest job, but considering how well you figure things out and fix problems, I'm sure it will turn out great! A question regarding the binding, will you be doing the entire neck, including headstock or will you just do the fingerboard? In most cases I can't imagine just doing the fingerboard, but your headstock is interesting so I can't say that it would look bad if you just did the fingerboard. Either way, it will definately add to the look of the neck.

Also, what are you using for side dots? Oh yeah +1 on spending the time to make a jig, makes a world of difference and saves lots of time and money. Anyhow, best of luck. J

[Jon]

You could also drill the holes bigger and just do a two-hole side dot inlay. Like do a bigger hole out of koa, and in the center is a black plastic dot or a piece of ebony. You don't have to get a binding router bit and all that to fix this mistake, but if you screw up a second time I guarantee you will need to!

[mattharris75]

Yeah, I possibly could have fixed it by drilling a bigger hole. But it would have been close. Honestly, I originally did not intend to do binding, but the more I think about it the more I like the idea. I also was questioning whether or not to bind just the fretboard or the headstock as well. I've just been trying to look at various examples over the last few days to make the decision. At this point, i've decided not to bind the headstock. I like what i've got going on with it, it's got a nice look as it is. I had considered doing a black plastic or ebony binding on the headstock to continue the black theme, but at this point i'm not going to do that. (Plans are always subject to change. After all, this is a creative venture. )I'll definitely be binding the headstock on my next build though. I've already got plans (and wood purchased) for that in the works, just doing some tweeking on that design right now. I'll post pics of that design for feedback when i'm closer to getting started.

I've been trying to figure out the best route as far as the jig is concerned, and right now i'm leaning toward cutting a pair of 12" radius cauls to tape to the fretboard. I haven't been able to determine what the most 'popular' method is for doing this, even though i'm quite sure i'm not the first person that ever decided to bind their fretboard after it was radiused. I'll post a picture of the jig as well as pictures of the results.

As for what I am using for side dots, I have some 2mm abalone dots, but I also just ordered a 4 mm white pearl dot. I'm thinking of doing that on the 12th fret to match the white pearl in the logo on the headstock.