20 Strings - 3 New Projects

[TripleFan]

Last week I finished neck and body.

The neck is tinted with three coats of Danish Oil and sealed off with two coats of "Hartöl".

The body has four coats of "Hartöl". I had to sand back the first coat though because it looked blotchy. I think this was mainly because the sipo kept to spill the oil back out. On the other hand it simply might have been runs which started to dry before I wiped them off.

The result is pretty good but a little bit darker than I aimed for.

ATM I´m contemplating if I should rub it down with steel wool to a more matte look or leave it alone.

In the meanwhile I shielded the electronic cavity with copper foil and started to paint the pickup cavities with shielding paint. Hopefully I can start to assemble the guitar at the weekend.

[Prostheta]

The simplicity of oiled wood is a winner, especially woods like sapele, mahogany etc. Lovely!

You can clean up the fretboard of glue and other crud with a razor blade, scraping it in the direction of the grain from fret to fret. You turn a burr on one side, but this may cause problems with scraping too much material off. Don't go across the grain however tempting it might seem :-D Cutting a credit card up or whatever gets rid of the crud from the fret edges gracefully. I do this as cleanup prior to polishing the board up with 00000 wire wool so the wool works to polish rather than to clean.

I've looked into string retainers myself as an option for some of my builds, to no avail. I've considered using two plastic standoff posts and a piece of metal rod with two recessed screwholes drilled. Making the metal match your hardware will be the only problem. As it turned out, they were unnecessary for mine, so I never actually made one.

[TripleFan]

Actually I considered scraping the fretboard myself but shyed away from it because I didn´t want to screw up the radius. I already steel wooled the board however and will try to polish it up a bit with a foam buffing pad when it gets oiled.

Yeah you simply don´t find any bar type string retainers for seven strings! Actually I already made one myself from a piece of 5mm stainless steel rod. Simple enough. I would only spray paint it to match the color of the (black) hardware. Surely the color would rub away immediatly where it touches the strings but since it´s on the underside I wouldn´t care.

In the end I decided that I would only use it on a project with a locking nut because I think the added friction of the retainer wouldn´t do this particular guitar any good.

[TripleFan]

Today I need advice.

Recently, when I wanted to resume work on my sixstring neck I noticed that the radius over the last few frets on the bass side is uneven. On the bass side the side of the fretboard falls approx. 0,5 - 1mm compared to the treble side.

I see three possible solutions:

1. Ignore! Probably the worst solution. On the other hand the problem consists only on the topmost frets of the bass strings. And since I like my action fairly high I might get away with it.

2. Resand the fretboard. Critical because I might sand through the position markers. Even worse is that I would take height from the fret slots. Because of the binding I wouldn´t be able to resaw them. Which means I would have to rebind the fretboard. After all the sides of the binding would then probably be pretty shallow which would probably look like utter s..t.

3. Replace the whole fretboard. Worst case scenario but the most professional solution (?).

Now I could need some recommendations.

[avengers63]

I'd go with option #1, but only because it's a bass. If it were a guitar, I'd try #2, then when I dork it up, I'd end up doing #3.

[TripleFan]

I should´ve made it clearer: it´s a guitar.

How would you go about the binding issues when resanding the board?

[Daniel Sorbera]

That board looks anything but flat and level. It needs to be perfectly flat, level, and even, or your not going to get much playability out of it.

[Supernova9]

I'd take the board off the neck and resand it. That way you can cut off the binding and re-bind without damaging the neck blank itself, which seems square and level (according to a quick check I just did with Google sketchup, but hey). That way you can deepen the fretslots as well if needs be. Plus if it's off the neck it's easier to radius properly, try running two parallel rails along a flat surface, with them being the width of your radius block apart, and double-stick tape the fretboard down on the centre line between the two rails. That way you end up with equal radius.

[TripleFan]

It´s been a while but I´ve made some progress on the sixstring.

Since the last time I bit the bullet and fretted the neck. During the process some of the dots popped out of the face of the board. This left me with a fretted neck with holes in the fretboard...

So I simply decided that I would just look where this takes me. I replaced all the dot´s with MOP and sanded them flush between the frets. I know this is NOT how it´s done but at this point I thought it wouldn´t matter anymore anyway. Given the circumstances it actually turned out far better than I thought.

Next was the body. I was slowed down considerably when I made the routing templates for the electronic and jack cavity and their coresponding rebates. I wanted them so that I (in regard to future projects) can optionally use covers by Ibanez and in turn it was a little bit of fuss until I got the shapes just right.

I like how the arched top with its partly sunken knobs and switch turned out.

Finally I assembled the whole shebang for the first time. But not without the occasional screwup. Amongst others one of the little srews that hold the tuners broke.

I like the look of it even though most of it could be crafted nicer. For example the binding around the fretboard is just bad. The problems concerning the neck I mentioned already. A lot of first times on this one.

Anyway, the scale is 670mm (26,4") which should make for easy downtuning.

As expected the guitar was unplayable right away. It buzzed and choked like crazy. Especially the D and A strings produced only horrible noises between the fourth and thirteenth fret.

Yesterday I leveled and recrowned the frets. Given that it was the first time I attempted a fretjob I´m quite satisfied. It still buzzes slightly in places but it´s not that bad and to me it sounds tolerable (at least that´s what I keep telling myself ).

The guitar is now undergoing a thorough testing for the next few weeks. If no serious problems show up I will then bind, prep and finish the body.

[Prostheta]

Sounds like you're well on the way. I'm a big fan of the Ibanez Sabre shape, and yours looks like a cross betwixt an RG and an S. Go get those frets working!!

[Prostheta]

I'm with Daniel on this one. I hope you made this go away before you did all the fretting stuff :-\ That's so severe....good techs work and adjust in tolerances magnitudes smaller than the unevenness in the top end of your fretboard!! That's not to say you can adjust it out with setup because you can't....that needs sanding out and being made into a gone thing.

</vodka>

Edited September 25, 2008 by Prostheta

[TripleFan]

To be honest it left it that way and fretted the thing.

I know that these normally are severe faults. But as I already wrote so many things went wrong on this one that I simply decided that I´ll use this as a test mule. And while it looks severe on those pictures it works surprisingly well. It surely isn´t my best playing axe but it´s far from being a dog.

On a lighter note at least I learned one or two things about fret leveling this way.

I´m debating if I should order my fretboards readily slotted, tapered and radiused in future. I´m completely with you and Daniel that this (along with the fretwork) is the integral part which makes or brakes an instrument. For me it seems hard to match the necessary tolances so this might be a good iway to take some of the unsecurities out off the equation.

[TripleFan]

My second sevenstring is nearly completed.

A month ago I assembled it for the first time. I purchased the neck two years ago on eBay and now it gets used for the first time since then. Despite this fact it works absolute flawless with extremly low action and next to no buzzing.

The neck pocket is slightly too big - talk about reusing old routing templates - and I will have to shim the locking nut. Nevertheless this is one of my best playing guitars and by far the best I have built so far.

However I´m not so sure about the DSonic7 in the bridge spot. It somehow misses some bite and doesn´t cut through properly. Until now I had it in my "Scrapcaster" test built (MDF body with pine neck) and it slayed in there. Will see...

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...04/P1030995.jpg

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...04/P1030997.jpg

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...04/P1030998.jpg

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...04/P1030999.jpg

The only problem i ran into when doing the body was a misaligned hole for the treble side stud bushing. I had to plug and redrill two times before the hole was spot on. Initially it was misalligned by nothing more than 0,5mm but I didn´t want to take any chances. Hence I widened the hole from 11mm to 12mm pluged with a dowel and redrilled.

All the rest of the body turned out pretty good and I´m really pleased. No screw-ups and all the cavities and routings are pretty much spot on.

Because most of the stud bushings you can get have an open bottom I had to close them with M8 set screws. This allows me to lock the studs into place after I have dialed in the action during the set up (a genuine feature of Ibanez´ older trems and their respective studs).

Meanwhile I´ve done some finish tests. The body will get an oil finish with black stain beneath.

I prepped the sample piece the same way like I did my first sevenstring - sanding through various grits from 100 to 240, repeatedly damping and resanding with 320 grit. Then I applied the undiluted stain and four coats of oil.

I brushed the "lower" cutaway with a brush with brass bristles. This pronounces the pores of the wood and gives it an appearance some manufacturers call "worn" or "weathered".

While I stained one side of the test piece two times with a few hours to dry in between I did the other side only once. While this side still is black its not completely opaque and lets the original hue of the wood shine through.

I´ll probably disassemble the guitar at the end of the week and will then start to finish the body next week.

[ae3]

The six string is really cool, the schaller bridge (correct me if I'm wrong) has a similar look to what Ibanez uses on the RGA's.

Too bad it didn't turn out as you planned but, hey, it happens.

[juze]

That 7-string rg-type looks fantastic! Well done!

I just cross my fingers and hope that my 7-string build could someday be as sexy as that.

-Juze aka Ghroath

[TripleFan]

juze, thanks for your kind words. Do you have already started building?

ae3, yes that´s the Schaller bridge. It´s an extremly high quality part. Very nice.

The sixer is not as bad as it may seem from all the posts. At the moment it´s the D string that still buzzes a bit and action isn´t "über-low" but I could care less.

I think it´s all about experience and experience is what I gathered during the build. I´ll just level the frets some more and may even replace the fretboard down the road. And there´s still the high gloss finish ahead of me (my first one). Just many more occasions to learn something new.

Back to the task at hand. At the moment I´m still debating if I should go for the "weathered" finish or if I should go for the "normal" black stain.

[TripleFan]

I finally finished the hardtail sevenstring.

A brief rundown of the revised features of the guitar

Body shape: Ibanez RG7

Body: sipo mahogany

Scale: 25,5" Bolt-On

Neck: maple with bubinga center stripe

Fretboard: ebony

Headstock: maple (scarfed from a second blank) 7 inline with volute

Fretwire: stainless steel extra jumbo

Bridge: Warmoth hardtail Fender style (w. Graphtech Ghost piezo saddles)

Tuners: noname Schaller style (probably made by Boston)

Pickups: Dimarzio PAF7 bridge and neck

Electric: Megaswitch-P, Vol, Tone, Piezo-Vol, Piezo/Mag/Both, active Midboost for piezo

Finish: body Clou Hartöl; neck Danish Oil, sealed with Clou Hartöl

I purchased the fretboard readily tapered and sloted.

I finished the guitar over half a year ago and actually already played several shows with it. I just never came around to make some covers for it to finally call it done. I made them from 2mm aluminium and had them anodized.

All in all I´m quite satisfied. It´s the first guitar I built from scratch and it shows but it´s completely playable and that´s all that counts.

I yet have to level the frets. Unplugged it buzzes too much for my taste but played through an amp it´s OK.

The PAF7s sound very clear and defined without pushing the amp too much. The guitar can do everything from oldschool Metallica to modern highgain Fear Factory.

The ghost system is a nice addition for stage use; playing Metallica´s Sanitorium with piezo blows me away every time.

The installation of the preamp was a pain however. Two defective wiring harnesses and a switchjack jack socket not certified by Graphtech did cost me about two months I think. Hats off to Graphtech´s support, who went out of their way to supply me with replacement parts and additional wiring schematics until everything worked!

Alright, enough of my babbling... PICS

Back

Front different angle

Down the neck front

Down the neck back

Body back closeup

Body front closeup

Bridge with piezo closeup

Pickups closeup

Trussrodcover closeup

Headstock/scarf closeup

Covers front

Covers back

Additionally I also finished my second sevenstring.

Soon after my last post I disassembled the guitar and started to prep sand and finish the body. This time I had major problems with dust trapped in the finish. I even had to sand back with 400 grit halfway through to get rid of the dust. It just got better when I started to use tack cloths before apllying a new oil coat. Also misting the drying room (a guest restroom) with water before hanging the body seemed to help.

I let the body dry for a week and started to shield the pickup cavities with conductive shielding paint. Three coats, one per day.

Cavity shielding

Next was assembling the whole lot one more time.

First I dressed up the trem cavity follwing this tutorial.

Before

After

Then I started to shield the control cavity. To determine the outline of the foil I used the my routing templates (pay attention that they´re not the wrong way around when marking - ask how I know... )

Part of the shielding is to connect the pickup cavities to a common ground. I use small eyelets and tuner screws for this. While I drilled for the bridge pickup cavity eyelet I broke into the spring cavity! Oh well, nothing a little sharpie couldn´t fix...

Shielding 1

Shielding 2

Shielding 3

Shielding 4

Shielding 5

Shielding 6

Finally I was ready to start wiring the guitar. At least for me the most obnoxiuos job in guitar building.

Front

Back

The last thing I needed to do were the cavity covers. I scribbled the shape from the guitar to paper and transfered the outline to a sheet of 2mm aluminium.

A special feature of the trem cavity cover is the hole for the Schaller Sure Claw which allows easy adjustment of the spring tension with an allen wrench. Unfortunatelly I moved the router in the wrong direction so the bit wandered. However I also set the router´s depth stop wrong so I was able to flip the cover over and give it a second try.

I prep sanded the covers to 800 grit and spray painted them in matte black. Of course not without the occasional run...

Last but not least they got shielded with copper foil as well.

Covers 1

Covers 2

Covers 3

Covers 4

Well, after all this here it is

Back

Down the neck front

Down the neck back

Body front closeup

Down the neck back different angle

LoPro7 closeup

Body back different angle

Headstock closeup

Upper cutaway closeup

Lower cutaway closeup

Trem cavity closeup

[TripleFan]

I recently finished a clear coat test sample.

I prepped the wood as usual: sanding up to 240, damping and sanding with 320, dying and clear coating.

The front was dyed with a permanent marker ink. Using a refill bottle and a cloth worked reasonably well. The back was left natural respectively colored with generic wood stain in "light oak".

The clear coat is a 2part polyurethane paint: "Füll- und Hochglanzlack" by Clou which I brushed on.

I built my coats as follows:

• 4 coats
  
• sanding
  
• 3 coats
  
• sanding
  
• 2 coats
  
• sanding
  
• several times 1 coat with subsequent sanding
  

The first coats were brushed on without thinner. Later on I used more and more thinner; for the last coats I thinned by nearly 50%.

This is a preliminary result photographed in daylight. Afterwards I layed the sample away for at least a week to let the paint cure:

The brush marks are very noticeable.

The color is exactly what I hoped for. As a nice touch the clear partly dissolved the blue ink so in the end I worked with a tinted clear coat.

After a week I started polishing. After wetsanding the last clear coat with 1200 grit I worked through MicroMesh grits from 3600 up to 12000. I finished off with swirl remover by Menzerna and sealed it with some automotive wax I had lying around:

All in all I´m satisfied for, let´s say 80%. The gloss is superb and the clear coat seems pretty resistant. I pretty much nailed the color shades I wanted or at least know by now what to do to achive them.

What I´m not completely happy with is the surface itself. The thing glosses like crazy but it just isn´t level. I think I simply messed up the sanding between the coats. The reflections are distorted which indicates unevenness. Unfortunately it doesn´t show in the pictures.

I think part of the problem might be that in the begining I used 3M Finishing Paper which, like MicroMesh, to me seems better suited for polishing than for leveling. Even with moderately coarse grits like 400 and 600 there seems to be nearly no cut. Later I used generic wetsand paper which did the job noticeably better but had to be changed more often.

At another point I ran into surface contamination which resulted in cratering and required a pretty aggresive sandback.

Finally I sanded through at one spot (not in the pics). Surprisingly this happend with MicroMesh6000.

At the moment I´m thinking if I should give painting with a roller (?) a try to achive a better, more level surface and make level sanding a bit easier.

I´d like to hear your experiences and thoughts about clear coating with brushes or rollers. Additionally any hints about level sanding are more than welcome.

[Moth]

That's from a sharpie???

[TripleFan]

Yeah, I think that would be your american equivalent. It´s "Edding" for us germans.

[avengers63]

I´d like to hear your experiences and thoughts about clear coating with brushes or rollers. Additionally any hints about level sanding are more than welcome.

I have to brush just about everything, so there are a number of things I can tell you from experience.

1) Thin the finish by +/- 50%. At normal thickness, it builds too quickly and can dry more uneven than thinned down.

2) You can make a vertical wall of painters tape on the hard edges to prevent drips & runs. The MAJOR drawback is that it will pool there pretty thick. This will require either a lot of sanding ot literally carving it away with an X-Acto.

3) If you can't or don't make a tape dam, you'll need to wipe away the drips & runs on the sides. Go back 15-20 minutes after application and wipe the area with a rag that has been dampened with the solvent.

4) Wet sand every 2-3 coats just to level it out. This will make things a LOT easier in the long run. These between-coat wet sandings will be very much NOT aggressive. You're only looking to level out the uneven-ness that is associated with brushing it on. You really can't prevent, but you CAN combat it effectively.

[TripleFan]

Thanks Avenger, that´s exactly the kind of information I hoped for.

3) If you can't or don't make a tape dam, you'll need to wipe away the drips & runs on the sides. Go back 15-20 minutes after application and wipe the area with a rag that has been dampened with the solvent.

I presume that refers to clear coating with cellulose lacquer? Is there really a chance to wipe off a coat of 2 part paint with a rag and solvent?

[avengers63]

I presume that refers to clear coating with cellulose lacquer? Is there really a chance to wipe off a coat of 2 part paint with a rag and solvent?

Yes - lacquer, shellack, or polyurethane. Paint drips & sags I've found can be smoothed out by hand with 220 grit or higher and a very light touch.

[TripleFan]

OK, the finish on the sample piece sunk a bit into the pores so I´ll wait one or two weeks longer after the final coat.

In the meanwhile I installed the binding and started to prep sand the body. I cut the binding channel with this "Sloane" purfling cutter thingy and a chisel and the result came out as usual - butt ugly... Next time I´ll build a routing jig like the one StewMac sells or I´ll paint on a fake binding.

I tried my best to fix it and hope it´ll blend in when the body gets dyed. The worst parts are the outsides of the cutaways.

[TripleFan]

I dyed the sides and the back and put on the first clear coats. I´m really satisfied! Fortunately the patched up pieces next to the binding blend in reasonably well.

I masked the front so that I don´t get any dye and clear on it. Next I´ll damp and sand the front. Then I´ll mask the back and the sides, dye the front and put on the first clear coats. I do it this way because the clear dissolves the color of the front and I don´t want it on the sides and the back hence I sealed them with clear and will mask them.

After I have three or four coats of clear on the front I can take off the masking tape and sand the body. After that I can proceed clearing the body.