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First Build - A Nylon String Superstrat


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ok guys, call me convinced - I'll have a go at radiusing. thanks for the input!

I think I prefer the look o radiused body over a carved one. What I personally don't really like in most carved guitars I see is that the carve has sort of three sections - a flat middle part, the carve, and then a flat part again, around the edges. I'd prefer the carve to blend into the flat parts more than what I usually see people doing.

I might drop the tail end a bit though, not sure about that yet. This would mess up the figure at the meeting point of the two halves where its actually supposed to match..

The imbuia - I got it here: http://www.madinter.com/b2c/index.php?page=pp_producto.php&md=0&ref=METIM (they have some wacky wood at good prices compared to other places I've seen in EU). I'd love to see a bass done with it! I have a 5-stg somewhere in long term plans, but for now I have to make at least one guitar to see if I'm capable of pulling this off at all.

The imbuia does have a shiny spot in that photo earlier, I think that's just how it arrived. Wouldn't call it waxy. It is a beauty and the spicy smell it produces when worked is an added bonus :)

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A word of advice. If you use a water-based glue such as Titebond (as I do) then leave the neck a few days after unclamping. The moisture in the glue swells the wood so if you plane and sand it straight now, when that moisture dissipates the wood will shrink slightly, making the previously-straightened wood uneven in the opposite direction instead.

I do exactly the same thing when I remove a lot of wood from a neck blank also as the internal tensions of wood can be released after cutting turning the formerly straight wood into something resembling the rockers for a rocking chair. A week is a long time to put down a project, but sometime you are thankful that you did when you come back to a workpiece and find it pretzelled on you due to glue or whatever.

More often than not - with good wood choice and work practice - this does not happen. This week the other students were prepping a load of boards for a course project and we hit a bad batch of Mänty (Pine). Every board closed up around the back end of the table saw during cutting which kicked them back crazily. That tree was a pernicious badass so we sent it to burn. :rock

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Thanks Prostheta. I think I knew to leave the wood for some time after cutting, but I don't think I was fully aware that I need to do this after glueing too. And yes - I am using Titebond.

With this one I think I will still try to get this straight now since I have two more strips of bubinga to glue to each side. I'll probably put them on tomorrow, which will be 2-3 days after the first glue up. Then the neck will have time to rest until Tue since I'll be away anyway.

lol @ the warped pine curse :)

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Every board closed up around the back end of the table saw during cutting which kicked them back crazily.
Stuff like that is what converted me to riving knives. I actually (fortunately?) had the board close-up hard enough to stall the blade. That wasn't fun.

Ray

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Well, I can't say that I have observed HUGE changes due to moisture from glueing however it does exist as a problem. Perhaps you should do a before and after on your own work to gauge it? I see it moreso from cutting wood that is a little questionable. Even some fantastically quartered Maple in a laminated neck moved on me after cutting a neck's side profile. Thankfully I left a few mm on the fingerboard glueing surface to dial this out rather than the movement being transferred through to an otherwise flat fingerboard.

I have always screwed up things through my lack of patience....my biggest problem.

The Pine was annoying. Pitchy as hell in places with far to much blue staining near the edges. A bad batch. A couple of weeks back we had the kiln trying to evolve into an intelligent lifeform when it decided to increase the moisture in the wood it was drying instead of the opposite. Cue a metric crapload of Pine starting to turn into porridge! The kiln kicked out tons of water too....good times....

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Every board closed up around the back end of the table saw during cutting which kicked them back crazily.
Stuff like that is what converted me to riving knives. I actually (fortunately?) had the board close-up hard enough to stall the blade. That wasn't fun.

Ray

Oh, we have those fitted! The wood was so tense that it closed up before it even got as far as the splitter. The grain was like a coiled bandsaw blade spanging open!

Check this idiot trying to remove himself from the gene pool. Especially 4:20:

I threw my mouse across the room when I reacted to that. I know better than to cut between a guard and a blade....

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Oh, we have those fitted! The wood was so tense that it closed up before it even got as far as the splitter

Regarding riving knives and kick-back:

Like-wise, I had the factory-supplied splitter installed, too. I've replaced it with a semi-custom riving knife (I refuse to even associate what I have now with the original splitter by calling it a splitter) that's just a touch thinner than the blade kerf, is a touch shorter than the blade height and has about 3/16" clearance between the front of the riving knife and the back of the blade for the full upper-back quadrant of the blade. I don't even need to remove it for non-through-cuts. I also switched to zero-clearance inserts at the same time and Grrriper Push-blocks shortly thereafter.

Thanks for the video, that definitely gave me the hee-bu-dee-gee-bu-dees.

As for wood movement, the fence on my dado-ing jig is much thicker than intended because I had (supposedly) high-quality 13-ply plywood bow after being ripped into strips.

Anyway, back on topic:

OP: Nice project. I've had a Nylon-string solidbody on the To-Do list for a while. I'm definitely following this thread.

Ray

Edited by ElRay
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wow, that video is scary. For now I'm following my router-less path with this build. Will get funny as I get to the neck pocket. But for today - just a small update. I got three sides of the glued 3-pc blank nice and flat so the final two pieces are going in.

487619_4299734024049_494314733_n.jpg?dl=1

Unclamping tonight and letting it rest until Tue. Then I'll hand plane it and prepare to cut the scarf - by hand I guess. :P

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  • 2 weeks later...

Finally got time to move ahead a bit with this. I planed and sanded the neck blank to get it reasonably straight last week and it remained such, so I set out to do the scarf joint. And here's my scarf cutting... jig. <_<

185085_4363344894281_2021792621_n.jpg?dl=1

that produced two very nice surfaces :peace

557655_4363345334292_1871231430_n.jpg?dl=1

after some hand plane (and sandpaper) fun:

576418_4363345494296_195741350_n.jpg?dl=1

This marks my first planning error as I just realized that I did the scarf upside down. The board is asymmetric to fit the headstock, and the way I cut it it would beed to be reversed. I don't want to do that so I'll probably end up modifying the shape a little (I'm only missing 2mm or so) or gluing in a small piece of bubinga.

But the tricky thing I'm facing now is planing down the headstock piece. I will have to cut it down from 2cm to something like 7mm, I have a 1cm-thick headplate to go onto it (that I'll have to thin down also I guess). The tools I have available for this are the hand saw, the planes and the robosander. We'll see what I can work out.

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After cutting the scarf joint I had to tackle another thing - reducing the thickness of the headstock piece from 2+ cm to about 5mm. I built something resembling a homemade version of the "luthier's friend" to do thicknessing jobs, but taking off 15mm of wood would take ages. So I decided to use my manual bandsaw substitute:

960_4384268537359_1125903329_n.jpg?dl=1

To my surprise I ended up producing this:

156599_4384269137374_137885035_n.jpg?dl=1

Now I can smooth out the surface with the sanding drum. I figured the offcut would make a nice cavity cover - but nope. Too small.

I did some shaping of the body also. First I lightly radiused the top with a hand plane, then I pulled out my double-action polishing machine that I got some time ago to polish car paint. I stuck some P40 sandpaper on it to smooth out the top. It turned out that I can also shape it a little this way, so I ended up adding a delicate bevel all around the edge of the body.

Funnily, after sanding with P40 this imbuia is already showing somewhat of a gloss. I wasn't expecting this:

550573_4384268217351_1247029166_n.jpg?dl=1

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ok, after-weekend update time. :D

First, the body - tried to fill some imperfections in the top with imbuia dust mixed with epoxy (I made a lot of dust when I was thicknessing the headplate). Here's the body just after putting on the epoxy:

602533_4419270492386_794609153_n.jpg?dl=1

I haven't sanded it off yet so no idea how it will turn out.

Most of the work was on the neck. I glued the headstock and after unclamping I cut out the shape roughly with my jigsaw:

178930_4419271492411_1405336277_n.jpg?dl=1

then I took out a template I made some time ago for the headstock, and checked again on paper that the tuner hole placement should be giving a straight string pull. I attached the template to the headstock with double sided tape, drilled the tuner holes and shaped the edges on the robosander:

527449_4419271852420_1889207544_n.jpg?dl=1417009_4419272652440_1892170340_n.jpg?dl=1

I narrowed down my choice of fingerboards to two pieces of wood, I couldn't decide between the two so I'll continue working with them in parallel up to the point where they're ready for fretting and gluing to the neck. I'll post when I get the fret slots cut.

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Fingerboard time! I'm running two pieces of wood in parallel until I am capable of picking one. Here is the merbau one in the high-tech fret slotting jig:

33843_4449719013580_105624185_n.jpg?dl=1

(in the background in the clamps is the neck, getting a layer of flame maple veneer that will go to create an accent line between the neck and the fb)

Here's my high-tech thicknessing jig - basically a ripoff of the luthier's friend. With the ebony board being run through.

557796_4449719493592_1002055940_n.jpg?dl=1

Both boards were slotted and trimmed to final size using a shooting board, which makes it easy to very accurately dial in the size (by extending the plane blade I shave off fraction of a mm deeper of the sides).

Over to the body. I mostly did the belly cut starting with a chisel, then a rasp, then a spokeshave and finally a scraper. Still not perfect but close. I'll need to work on it some more.

539758_4449720013605_645383437_n.jpg?dl=1

The top got sanded, I sill had some small pinholes where I put the epoxy so I repeated the procedure,

changed from 40 to 80 grit on the robosander and ran around the edges and here we are, basically waiting for the neck to be done so that I can start on the neck pocket:

602345_4456027931299_1773095140_n.jpg?dl=1

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Before I post my headstock progress let me show a snapshot from another build I'm doing in parallel. I arrived at a point where I needed to get a neck from 30mm thick down to the 21-22mm I'd have at the heel. This would mean potentially hours or plane/robosander work so I decided to try an alternative (encouraged by having success with this method when bringin heastocks from 30mm to 15mm):

405112_4465051516883_885355676_n.jpg?dl=1

to my surprise.. it worked ok <_<

But back on topic..

I glued the face plate to the headstock, drilled the tuner holes and shaped everything. I still need to take some thickness off, as this quick mock-up clearly illustrates. I'll probably sand off the bottom part.

530959_4464698468057_1603218502_n.jpg?dl=1

ok, after shaping the edge of the headplate its obvious that the face side will need to be lowered too :)

53224_4464661907143_744453067_o.jpg?dl=1

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wow, that video is scary. For now I'm following my router-less path with this build. Will get funny as I get to the neck pocket. But for today - just a small update. I got three sides of the glued 3-pc blank nice and flat so the final two pieces are going in.

487619_4299734024049_494314733_n.jpg?dl=1

Unclamping tonight and letting it rest until Tue. Then I'll hand plane it and prepare to cut the scarf - by hand I guess. :P

you weren't joking...our neck blanks are very similar! I like your proportions of thicknesses.

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You are doing great! I would suggest to get a router or laminate trimmer to help you with thicknessing, especially if you find one that can be detached fm its cradle and put into the drill press stand. You have to take real care when handling it, but it works cleanly and consistently. Just a thought, you're doing great work as it is.

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Thanks guys!

One of the points of this build (and another two I have running in parallel) is to try to do without bigger tools. I'm starting to appreciate the need for a bandsaw (though I would have no place to use it I think) and of course a router but I'm trying to see if I can manage without them.

I managed already to smooth out the bottom of the electronics cavity in another body by mounting the dremel in my drill stand. Worked pretty good so I'm already planning to use the same technique for the neck pockets.

If it turns out that I'm able to create a guitar that actually works (i.e. plays) I'll think about investing in new tools :)

(I'll probably need a blue bosch or something else in place of my green bosch drill. I've already managed to make it wobble through too much sanding). Hadn't thought about fix-mounting a router to use to thickness stuff as opposed to the sliding rails idea that I typically see people use. hmm...

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  • 3 weeks later...

The name of this chapter is: making the neck pocket with a Dremel. I conclude that this can be done, but I'm starting to appreciate the need for a full-size router. The routing itself (not counting set-up etc) would have probably taken 5 minutes instead of 2 hours or so. Anyway - on to the pics.

I glued the fingerboard to the neck with double-side tape and shaped the heel to match the fingerboard:

156709_4533509908300_15253432_n.jpg?dl=1

I then carefully aligned the neck on the body and clamped it between two straight edges of mdf - a jig with unclear purpose that I ended up not using :P

46252_4533506428213_711348711_n.jpg?dl=1

Well, ok - I did use it to show me where not to drill with the forstner bit:

73878_4555663702131_1607928472_n.jpg?dl=1

After drilling I cleaned up the edges with a chisel and set up for routing. I used a jig that a friend of mine build with me, I was planning to use it for truss rod slots (in fact I did already - works pretty good for that) but I realized that basically anything requiring straight lines can be done with it. So I mounted a routing bit in the dremel, took measurements of the neck heel, drew the lines on the body and started taking wood off. Along the edges, down all the way to the depth I planned for the pocket (or so I thought).

61974_4555663662130_1608492761_n.jpg?dl=1

By the time I was done I realized that the router bit slipped out a bit and one channel ended up being deeper than I planned. The two obvious solutions would be gluing some wood in there or making the whole pocket deeper. To see I'd need to check vertical alignment i.e. string height at the bridge. That will come later. For now I only made the pocket as deep as initially forseen. I first chiseled out the wood in the middle of the pocket and then used this nano-planer: <_<

577898_4555663622129_1442038018_n.jpg?dl=1

..and finally after some fine-tuning I could test the neck fit:

198196_4555664462150_812872816_n.jpg?dl=1

Its pretty much spot-on. I think that the nut is 1-2mm away sideways from where the body centerline would extend, but I still have room to correct that when I do proper alignment. Which is the next step.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Time to attach the neck. I shaped an AANJ-like joint freehand on the sanding drums

228293_4574484892649_322623986_n.jpg?dl=1

I put the neck in place and double-checked the body and neck centerline alignment. Once everything was nice and straight I clamped the neck in place and drilled the screw holes.

537572_4621759354481_381253274_n.jpg?dl=1

Then I went ahead and rounded the joint

481433_4621759234478_163362990_n.jpg?dl=1

And the neck went in the clamps together with the fingerboard:

230211_4621759674489_307823662_n.jpg?dl=1

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  • 1 month later...

Wow, I just realized that its been a month since my last update. I'd been gone for over 3 weeks for Christmas, but now the work is back on track. The with the fingerboard in place I re-checked the bridge position and drilled the bridge mounting and string-thru holes mounting my drill stand to the rails I use for the dremel:

15487_4631773444827_106210756_n.jpg?dl=1

I could have just rested the drill base on the guitar top if I hadn't carved it lighty earlier. I will need to modify the order of operations in the future. (maybe on future builds I will be less impatient :P).

The bridge needed to have extra 6 holes drilled to accept the wires from the graphtech saddles:

385206_4713662932013_190292004_n.jpg?dl=1

And I can finally mount a bunch of hardware to check that I got the alignment correctly:

542870_4713663252021_2086904435_n.jpg?dl=1

After that I tweaked the neck pocket and the heel a bit - needed to bring the fingerboard closer to the body. I decided that fingerboard needs to loose some thickness so I hit it with P40 sandpaper glued to a piece of glass:

773758_4802541673926_1747648647_o.jpg?dl=1

Looks like I'm exposing some cool figure in the ebony. :D

So now, a question:

My plan for the next step is to fully level and polish the fingerboard and then hammer in the frets. I figured it will be easier to get everything straight and to do the hammering while the bottom of the neck is still flat and straight.

On the other hand - can the neck warp a little after carving? Maybe its better to level the fingerboard after the neck profile is close to final? Any suggestions on the order of things at this point?

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Yes, for several reasons. The most common one is that each fret can force open its slot imperceptibly causing a cumulative backbow. A neck that is not shaped has more strength than one that is, meaning that this backbow may not even become apparent until you end up shaping the neck. Often most necks resist this but some end up being taken out of straightness.

Also, wood can release internal tensions when you remove large chunks of it. Removing the wood from the back of then neck when shaping allows the wood to release these tensions which leave you with a non-straight neck. Choosing good wood from the outset eliminates this 99% of the time. I usually leave wood to do what it will after I remove large parts of it, then re-straighten it if needs be.

One last thing....slightly bevel the face of the fret slots to ensure they seat flat. :-D

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Hi, looks you are doing great! I like the way you solved the drill press issue. Regarding your question, I can tell you that I do necks as you have described - I shape the fingerboard while glued to the neck, and hammer in the frets while the back is still flat, for the exact reason you mentioned. It doesn't rock, and I don't get any marring. I never had any issues with warping. Perhaps someone else can offer a different wiev, but this method works fine for me. Be sure that you have correct fretwire width for the slots you have sawed, that could cause some backbow (err..it happened to this friend of mine....just once :blush ). And chamfer the slots, ofcourse.

Hope that helps!

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Thanks Prostheta

it was your earlier remark about waiting with planing laminated neck blanks flat after gluing them up that led me to think about this now. I did fret two (and a half) necks in the past and it was always a pain with the rounded back. Guess I will have to think harder about some proper support :)

So its spokeshave time then! :rock

...

just noticed the replies from gpcustomguitars. Thanks!

hah.

I might still do as Prostheta is suggesting, since in this neck I don't have a truss rod so if the neck bends I'm screwed. Plus, I don't have equipment to thickness the neck while keeping it flat, I'd like to avoid using the robosander for this. I was planning to do it all with a spokeshave (plus something to get straight lines when the shape is nearly done), maybe running a channel through the middle with a dremel on the truss-rod jig to show me what the final thickness is supposed to be...

I'll recheck the fretwire, I though my 0.57mm fret slotting saw matches all reasonable frets as the tang width is standard? This one is getting EVO gold fretwire to go with the overall color scheme :)

chamfering the slots is something I knew about since I watched that 19-piece refret video on youtube a year ago prior to doing a refret on an old crappy guitar, on my way to deciding on building one from scratch :rolleyes: but thanks for the advice !!!

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