Shirtman's Set Neck

[maull]

Dont have my camera with mebut here's a minor update with the pics I do have at work with me.

I built a very simple sled for my fretsaw blade that I bought last year. This is the first time I've had a chance to try it out. The trickiest part was making the rails fit in the channel and having them tight enough to not have any side to side play and at the same time not be so tight that they don't glide smoothly.

Try paste wax on the runners. This will help you get a tighter fit and still be able to slide smoothly.

[Prostheta]

Yeah, pretty much the same idea as running your fret saw through a candle. You might want to clean out the T-slots using a little cleaning fluid and compressed air or a toothbrush first. Same stuff as you would use for a router bit to remove resin and caked dust.

[ScottR]

Man, yesterday's avatar didn't last very long. This one is cool.

What is your verdict on the fretsaw blade?

SR

[sdshirtman]

Yeah, pretty much the same idea as running your fret saw through a candle. You might want to clean out the T-slots using a little cleaning fluid and compressed air or a toothbrush first. Same stuff as you would use for a router bit to remove resin and caked dust.

Thx. I did the air blow thing and cleaned it before I started but didn't do the wax treatment. I'll give it a coating next time I use it.

Man, yesterday's avatar didn't last very long. This one is cool.

What is your verdict on the fretsaw blade?

SR

I thought maybe the other avatar might be a little pretentious so I nixed it. The one there now is a tiki I carved a few years ago. it now resides in the backyard to scare the boogieman away.

The fretsaw blade is awesome Scott. Once I got it set up it took about 3 min to cut all the slots. I'm glad I opted for that method over the manual slotting jig.

Heres a few more progress pics with a little more detail of how I'm tackling the inlay.

I bought a precut inlay set from luthiersupply.com. Before I did I called them about the sizing which is their website doesn't have. The owner emailed me back a 100% scale pdf of the inlay plans they use so I could check it against my own plans for fit. Unfortunately when I did the set I wanted was designed to be used with a longer scale neck and the pieces for the upper frets wouldn't fit properly. They said they could do a special order based off of plans I sent them but it would take at least 6 weeks, so I just opted to buy what they had and figured I could sand the tops down a bit.

When I received the inlay I did a small test on one piece using 120 grit paper. Shell is harder that you'd guess and It didnt work very well.

It bacame apparent to me I was going to have to get a little more methodical than just sanding down the tops to fit.

I started by taking the pdf they sent me and converting it to vectors in illustrator so I could measure it accurately against my plans I already had drawn up in illustrator. From there is was a matter of making a template that I could cut out and super glue onto the pieces so I knew exactly how much to cut them down.

From here it was the tedious task if cutting out the pieces from the paper template and glueing them one at a time to each piece. All pieces were numbered so I wouldn't get confused. This all took what seemed like forever.

The left piece of the 12th fret marker set should have been pure white MOP but was apparently cut from a piece of gold MOP and flipped over. So thinking that when that piece was sanded down for the radius that the gold could start to show I decided to cut a new one out. I also cut a new center piece for one of the gold pieces that didnt quite match the rest.

The front

The back

I decided to buy an ounce of each color MOP when I bought the precut set from luthiersupply. Which came in handy. An oz of this is about half the price as stewmac and LMI. The MOP was 15 bucks and the gold was $20.

Heres what I received. Its .060 thick too. Not too shabby.

Once I got all the pieces cut down I started in with positioning them on the board. Since these are kind of an odd shape on top I decided to play with it on the computer and once again made some paper templates so I could position these exactly where I wanted them.

I traced them with a pencil and would up with this.

Next step was to place the pieces on the board and secure them so I could scribe around the edges with a sharp exact o blade.

I have Larry Robinsons "The art of inlay" and in it it says to use model airplane cement or Duco cement to tack your pieces to the board for scribing. That **** takes forever to cure so I opted to use a smaller than a pin head sized drop of med CA glue instead.

Here are all the pieces tacked in place and ready to scribe.

So in using the CA glue in place of model airplane cement I figured I could just flood around each piece with some acetone when I was finished scribing and the CA glue would release with some ease. Not the case. Fret by fret I soaked each piece with acetone using a large hypo needle to keep it flooded and they weren't budging. Five minutes, then ten minutes, and they still weren't releasing.

I was starting to get a little freaked out thinking I had just waisted a huge amount of my time and a fair amount of money.

Being a relative noobie to this whole inlay thing I referred back to the book. Larry says you can use a razor blade and gently slip it under the side to help pry the pieces off so thats what I tried. I was afraid of snapping them in half while prying them off but after about fifteen minutes of soaking in acetone and gently prying with a razor blade they started to pop off the board. In retrospect it was kind of comical. Laying all this out gives me an entirely new appreciation for something like madhatters king of diamonds build.

So anyways heres the board after scribing with some talcum powder rubbed into the voids.

Stay tuned for the next installment where I comically try and rout all this stuff out with a 0.032 tapered router bit. >

[ScottR]

I like the tiki. He and my bear can hang together and talk about scaring boogies over a cold beer.

That inlay looks like it will be as much work as the rest of the guitar combined. When I tried the .032 bit thing I kept obscuring the scribe line with ebony dust and ended up coloring much further outside the lines than I expected.

Good luck!

SR

[bob123]

That inlay is terrific! Very nice!

[sdshirtman]

I like the tiki. He and my bear can hang together and talk about scaring boogies over a cold beer.

That inlay looks like it will be as much work as the rest of the guitar combined. When I tried the .032 bit thing I kept obscuring the scribe line with ebony dust and ended up coloring much further outside the lines than I expected.

Good luck!

SR

If I'm ever in your neck of the woods I'll take you up on the beer. Where was it that you reside again?

The SM dremel router base I bought has a cool little nozzle built into it so you can hook up to a fishpump so that doesnt happen.

That inlay is terrific! Very nice!

Thank you but it aint done yet. I underestimated its difficulty level and Its taken much more work than I expected it would. I lost count of the time into it so far but a conservative estimate is at least 25 hours so far. I finally got them glued down last night and will be rediusing the board today. I'm crossing my fingers nothing goes afoul. I have high hopes though.

[ScottR]

I like the tiki. He and my bear can hang together and talk about scaring boogies over a cold beer.

That inlay looks like it will be as much work as the rest of the guitar combined. When I tried the .032 bit thing I kept obscuring the scribe line with ebony dust and ended up coloring much further outside the lines than I expected.

Good luck!

SR

If I'm ever in your neck of the woods I'll take you up on the beer. Where was it that you reside again?

The SM dremel router base I bought has a cool little nozzle built into it so you can hook up to a fishpump so that doesnt happen.

I'll be damned. Is that what that little tube is for? I've got one of those....I ended up holding an air hose between a couple of fingers. Awkward.

I'm over in blistering hot Houston.

SR

[Prostheta]

Yeah, I used to use an aquarium pump too. I thought of attaching an airbed foot pump to selectively blast away debris instead of having two electrical items on the go at once. it's also worthwhile having a length of elastic attached overhead which pulls the cable and the air hose up and away from the work area.

[sdshirtman]

I finally got everything on my fretboard routed out. When I started I thought I could route this all out with a .032 bur. I found out its kind of like trying to empty a bathtub with a spoon so I acquired a 1/8" bit for hogging out the larger parts. I also finally got a chance to try out the smaller dental bits Govtmule sent me last year. (Thanks Govtmule!) I used them to sharpen up the edges and they also came in handy for the corners.

I epoxied everything in and leveled the board. I tried some of the 3M 7X paper Scott mentioned in his thread on this.

This stuff really does last quite a while and doesnt clog. It took one piece of 80 grit to sand the radius in. I just ran a vacuum over the sheet and it was like new. I could probably do another board with that piece.

So heres a closeup of the inlay after sanding up to 600 grit on the un-dyed board.

I thought of leaving it as is with the grey streaks but I ended up slathering it in black dye. I do love jet black ebony fretboards. Somehow even when wearing latex gloves I still always manage to get some of this stuff on myself.

Next was my first shot at plastic binding. For some reason I was expecting this to be a little more difficult than it was. It was much easier than I thought it would be once I started. I used CA glue for the sides and a bit of binding paste for the end and miters.

My camera wasn't cooperating with me today so all I have are these shots.

I'm happy with the results.

[Prostheta]

That's some crisp inlaying! Whilst I am unable to continue with my own builds for a few weeks (annoying to say the least) I might just inlay some boards. See what you made me do? You're an awful influence.

[ScottR]

That is now officially a nice inlay job. Did you have to get a smaller collet for the dental burrs?

SR

[iluvteles]

That's very neat work on the inlays. Its going to be a stunning neck.

I've only used ebony once and I used black methanol stain. Worked a treat. I share your love of jet black ebony.

Keep up the good work.

[Workingman]

Nice!

[sdshirtman]

That is now officially a nice inlay job. Did you have to get a smaller collet for the dental burrs?

SR

Thank you. I tried to route everything with the tightest tolerances as I was capable of. Someday I'll want to do this on maple and when I do the ebony dust and black dye trick wont be able to hide my mistakes. I did have to go buy the smaller collet. They raped me for 9 bucks for that damn thing.

That's very neat work on the inlays. Its going to be a stunning neck.

I've only used ebony once and I used black methanol stain. Worked a treat. I share your love of jet black ebony.

Keep up the good work.

Some people say you cant feel a difference between ebony and rosewood but I sure can. To me nothing else feels like it. At least what I've had the chance to play.

That's some crisp inlaying! Whilst I am unable to continue with my own builds for a few weeks (annoying to say the least) I might just inlay some boards. See what you made me do? You're an awful influence.

So what happened that you got sidelined? I hope you start a thread on what ever it is you decide to do.

[sdshirtman]

I finally decided on multi-layered binding but I have a problem on my hands I could use some help with.

I bought some cream and white binding from Allparts for laminating. I decided on .6 cream, .2 blk, .2crm, .2blk.

Using acetone for the bonding agent the .6 cream laminated to the .2 black just fine. When I went to laminate the next layer of .2 cream to the .2 black the acetone wouldn't bond the two together.

So I took some clippings from both the .2 black and cream and soaked them in some acetone for a few hours. They didnt melt at all so they are obviously not ABS.

I'm stopped dead in my tracks because of this and I'm a little annoyed to say the least. Allparts doesn't say its not abs but it doesn't say it is either. Because of the thin size I'm thinking that it's only going to be used for laminates. I just took it for granted it was abs and would laminate with acetone just fine.

So I guess my question is what direction to go next. Can anyone tell me what glue I can use to laminate this stuff? I was thinking CA glue but I'm afraid that with the brittle nature of CA glue that the binding will de-laminate when I start installing and bending it around the guitar.

Am I just SOL on this and have to source out different ABS binding. At this point my neck is already bound with this color cream so I'm committed to using the .6 allparts cream.

Any advice anyone?

[sdshirtman]

Quick followup. I did a test with some CA glue. It just peels right apart so now that's not an option.

[demonx]

Weld On from stew mac.

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Glues,_adhesives/Binding_glue/Weld-On_Cement.html

I buy it locally from a plastic supplies so you may be able to track it down locally yourself.

I don't do much in the way of plastic binding so my tubes dry up before I finish them, so just buy small tube and save dollars

When using it I have found that more is more as opposed to the old less is more saying.

[sdshirtman]

Thx Allen. Since this takes a little while to set you think this would work for laminating?

[demonx]

I've used it like that for multiple binding before, yes. Just get it taped up in the right spot. Its my "go to" for any plastic binding.

I should mention though, stewmac always had a red tube and the one I have is red, not sure why the stewmac pic shows a blue tube, maybe the company has changed its packaging? That I cannot answer.

[bob123]

Clean and classy, very nice work!

[Prostheta]

I would email Allparts.

[sdshirtman]

I called Allparts today and they told me all the binding sizes they sold me were ABS and has been for years. I don't think it is.

This is my first go with multi layers binding so I really wanted to use ABS so I could use acetone to laminate the layers at the same time and install them all in one shot. I only wanted to do four layers of Cream Blk Crm Black. I don't have any super tight curves on this so I didnt see that as a huge problem.

If I go the cement route I think I'll have to install layer by layer and I'm just not up for that.

I just think I'd screw up the miters doing it layer by layer.

I've already installed the .6 cream to my fretboard so I'm committed to the cream color from Allparts. Otherwise I'd just sent it all back and get some ABS from someone else so I could do this the way I wanted.

At this point I'm pretty close to just saying screw it and doing a single ply on this one. There will be others to try this on in the future.

[Prostheta]

That's a shame. I would have challenged them on that. The proof was right in front of you. CA is brittle so you need to laminate in situ otherwise the binding will crack. Bad show, Allparts.

You might want to consider either ripping them a new one or sourcing elsewhere. Don't compromise the design for no good reason, especially since this is within your capabilities. Onwards and upwards.

[demonx]

I've done double binding with this glue, in one hit. Just get it taped and it'll stay