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First build: Zebra-caster


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10 hours ago, SIMpleONe89 said:

Yup I do. But still the handle could be slightly bigger! 

I'll check it out how my hands take it. Maybe there's a way of removing the handle and creating a custom one?

 

 

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22 hours ago, Prostheta said:

Affordable, definitely. They're a mile better than machine-struck rasps, but nowhere near as good as a proper hand-struck rasp. They don't have a convex surface though, so you will have the same difficulties that @SIMpleONe89 has with his neck carving.

I suppose it depends how "serious" you are as to how much you want to invest in your tools. The Shinto is good price/performance for my level and the fact that I'm still building my first guitar :).

Once I finished the rough flat rasping I moved onto a concave cabinet scraper. I didn't have issues personally

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Oh, well totally. I think though that at some point it becomes almost like insurance. Cheaper tools can cause more work or leave you in less control than is ideal. I like that Shintos have a capacious ability for waste removal rather than clogging. I'm going to have to A/B one against a quality flat rasp....going up against my Cabinet Maker's rasp wouldn't be fair since the Shinto only has flat profiles.

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another day at the workshop. preparing the rough neck.

  • created a necktemplate
  • rough sawn the neck
  • thickness planing
  • truss rod routing

also thicknessed the fretboard, so that's next on the list to prepare for glueing on the neck.

had a few slips with the trussrod route. fortunately it will be covered up

also drilled the jack output hole on the body so It's now ready for finishing. I'll try to do a test piece tomorrow to see what it will look like..

some more progress during this week I hope!

 

 

neck work 2.jpg

neck work 4.jpg

neck work 3.jpg

neck work 1.jpg

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10 hours ago, SIMpleONe89 said:

Is that birds eye maple? 

yes it is. I have a strong bem-fetish. Got me a nice piece a while ago which I'll be turning into 2 necks. This is the first, made out of the less-beautiful side. Using it to learn and then on the next project I'll be making a birdsey neck with birdsey fretboard.B-)

 

 

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24 minutes ago, SIMpleONe89 said:

Nice! I like how the lighter stripe lines up with the knobs.

small correction: zebra-stripe ;)

haha, I read tiger stripe, but it actually says lighter  stripe, sorry 

 

Edited by 10pizza
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created my own fret-slotting mitre box today. copied fretslots from an existing neck on a piece of scrap wood ( thicknessed and flattened) and created a marker in my slotbox using a piece of an exacto blade. The neck black will be taped on the scrap wood which will fall over the blade to get the right fret positions for sawing.

job for tomorrow: actually slotting the frets and glueing it on my neck!

 

 

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Just be careful about compounding tolerances. Taking a measurement adds tolerance, making a tool does so, as does making the final transferred mark. Eliminating errors makes any way of doing things better whether you're using scrap or expensive materials....

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update: glued the fretboard to the neck and created a 'table' for my plunge router to hang under so I could use it to route the fretboard flat with the neck.. Drilled the pegholes so now I'm preparing the inlaywork to be done After that I can radius-sand it and then it's onto the carving! Hope to get all of that done by Monday. Will post some pics then as well.

a question on the inlays: what.glue do you use  for the inlays? also, do you use special drills for round position markers or just a regular 6mm drill ( in case of 6mm dots )

I also started on a side project titled 'Cheapo Les Paul' which is a restauration of a discarded LP copy my brother in law found somewhere. will create a separate topic for that.

 

pictures will follow.....

 

 

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Depends on the materials. Normally cyanoacrylate (superglue) is fine for most, however it can be problematic with lighter woods such as Maple since it darkens them. Rosewood is fine with cyanoacrylate. If you have some very large gaps, packing a bit of Rosewood dust in works. They polish up like the "real" wood when all is done.

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32 minutes ago, 10pizza said:

a question on the inlays: what.glue do you use  for the inlays? also, do you use special drills for round position markers or just a regular 6mm drill ( in case of 6mm dots )

CA and epoxy are the most commonly used glues for inlays. On my most recent build I followed an old school suggestion and used regular white Elmer's glue mixed with the ebony dust and it created the most invisible fill I've seen so far. The down side was the white glue shrank quite a lot so I had to fill twice.

As for dot position markers I recommend brad point bits because they cut a cleaner sidewall and bottom of the hole will be flatter than one cut with a regular bit. You don't have a lot of depth to play with on a fretboard.

SR

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Been using my unemployment time as useful as possible, so here's some updates. I'll put them in separate posts to keep things readable.

INLAYS

Bought myself a Dremel tool to help with cutting the MOP as I couldn't get it cut with my figure-saw :blink:

That worked very well so I decided to do some more MOP inlaying. Used the dremel as well to route out the inlays in the fretboard. Next time I'll try to find an even smaller router bit for the dremel to make things more neat, but I'm pretty satisfied with this first time result.

made some dust-glue to blend the inlays in. Took me two rounds because of the glue shrinking.

After that I routed the headstock to the appropriate depth and used my friends drum-sander to finish it off. 

 

 

 

inlays 01.jpg

inlays 02.jpg

inlays 03.jpg

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NECK CARVE

today I started on a task that I maybe dreaded the most: carving the neck. I was very scared of ruining my neck ( which I almost did )

I used my Dad's workbench and got out my brand new Shinto rasp. I had expected to spend a lot of time rasping, but man! That Shinto is fast! Almost too fast as I accidentally created a deep scratch where I didn't want one anymore, so I had to sand that out. I also used a smaller sized flat rasp. Then it was sanding, a lot of sanding. Here I almost went too far as I kept seeing dots/scratches but eventually I found out that it was the figuring of the maple haha. At least it's very smooth now.

I carved it into an asymetric profile, similar to my Peavy Wolfgang neck which I like very much.

Yesterday I also glued zebra-veneer on the headstock to match the body. 

 

 

 

 

neck carve 01.jpg

neck carve 02.jpg

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NECK FIT

today I also installed the edge-trem and two tuners, strung it up with two strings to position the neck correctly in the body and mark it.

that worked out pretty well and I've now installed the neck-screws Here's a few shots of what it looks like now.

Got the body covered in about 8 layers of Tung oil. First few layers I thinned to have the wood better absorp it. Now it's waiting for it to dry completely, which can take up to 3 weeks as I read on the container. I'll see what it looks like then. Might try to wetsand it to make it more shiny.

So, now I need to design my headstock signature. I got a name for it, just need to get a nice design for it.

then I'll create a decal of it and I'll attach it to the headstock. It means I'll have to lacquer my headstock to make the decal blend in.

If anyone has a better idea for that, I'm all open to suggestions!

 

I put some tung oil on the back of the neck as well to seal/protect it.

 

Next on the hit list: installing the frets and the locking nut. As I've used a 240mm radius on the neck, I need to think of a solution to give the nut a proper radius as well. 

 

to be continued......

 

 

 

neck fit 01.jpg

neck fit 02.jpg

neck fit 03.jpg

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  • 2 months later...

wow! it's been over 2 months again already.

a quick update: all is finished but the headstock decal. Currently designing a logo for my 'Swel' guitar. I'll put it in for the October GOTM contest with detailed pics. 

 

IMG-20160924-WA0001.jpg

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