Yew-topped SG-style Guitar

[Andyjr1515]

1 minute ago, ADFinlayson said:

perhaps the course one can be demoted to the kitchen to grate something over your Bolognese 

Yes - it's funny that because I'm pretty sure the micro-plane concept was developed for wood-working use first.  But - by golly - the catering industry has opened up a HUGE market since.  And they work so, so much better than any other kitchen graters!

You asked about the next project

Yes.  There is one.  A Guitar Bouzouki.  No, no idea...

[Andyjr1515]

And I now have a nice AAA ebony fretboard blank.  But I'm not going to rush into things - I'm going to ponder a bit first.  Because I'm not quite sure of the best sequence.

I have a nice set of Mother of Pearl crown inlays

I will be using the G&W radius rig for radiusing:



I don't have the right template for a 24.75" scale, but I will nevertheless still use the G&W fret-slotting mitre block to cut the hand-measured fret slots to give me slots that are square with the blank and at a consistent depth:



And I will be hand-marking round the inlays and using my Dremel with the precision router base to cut the inlay recesses:



So what's the problem?

Well, there's a few.  For a start, the Gibson-esque crown inlays are very wide.  And the fretboard is quite radiused.  And the MoP I only just over 1.5mm thick.  
Have the eagle-eyed amongst you wondered why the earlier frets on Pete's are crown and the higher frets are rectangular?


Well, basically, I ran out of Mother of Pearl at the tips!  Just sanded right through with my radius block!  So I squared them off and turned it into a 'feature'.

So my choice is:
- Slot
- Cut crown recesses
- Fit crowns
- Radius
This would be easier for the precision routing and ensure that the recess bottoms are flat.  But, it would rely on the inlays being sunk to exactly the right depth and the radius jig likewise.  Also, it means the router would be routing Mother of Pearl!

or:
- Slot
-Radius
- Rout crown recesses
- Fit crowns
- Radius fitted crowns with a radius block
This would ensure that I knew exactly where the inlays were going to fit in the curved fretboard.  But routing on a curve is trickier (although I have done it before) and the rout bottoms will be also curved.

And that's why I'm going to have a little ponder first  

[Gogzs]

How about procedure nr. one, but you first radius it with a router, then fit the crowns, then radius the crowns with a radius block. Would still be a bit tricky to get the crown recesses depth correctly, you'd have a flat bottom but you wouldn't be routing mother of pearl... well, juts a wild thought.
Btw, the top looks amazing, can't wait to see it finished up

[Andyjr1515]

2 hours ago, Gogzs said:

How about procedure nr. one, but you first radius it with a router, then fit the crowns, then radius the crowns with a radius block. Would still be a bit tricky to get the crown recesses depth correctly, you'd have a flat bottom but you wouldn't be routing mother of pearl... well, juts a wild thought.
Btw, the top looks amazing, can't wait to see it finished up

Thanks!

Unless I've misunderstood, I think that's sort of option 2?.  Just to add a bit more detail, routing the inlay recesses before radiusing the board will give me flat bottoms but the edges of the recesses are very likely to chip from the router.  Routing the inlay recesses after radiusing the board will give me radiused bottoms.  

What I am going to have a look at later today - which might be what you mean - is whether my precision router base is wide enough for me to run it on a couple of flat strips either side of the board.  If so, I can radius the board and then run the inlay router on the strips while I cut the crown recesses with resulting flat bottoms.   And yes - that's a good thought  

Or, if the width of the router base means that's not possible to achieve the full movement needed, maybe a half-way house where I rout the recesses 'on the curve' and then use the side rails to let me use the inlay router again just to remove the 'hump' at the centre of each recess.

Anyway, it'll all have to wait for an hour or two.  MrsAndyjr1515 has just asked me to lift some slabs on the garden and by the musical skills I have acquired over the years about tone and timbre, I do know the difference between a request and an instruction!  

 

 

[Andyjr1515]

OK - decided.  And the first job on the list is radius to 12".

After driving myself to the brink of madness in the past trying to radius an ebony fretboard with a radius block alone, I then made my own routing jig and then saw sense and bought a proper one from G&W:


It always takes a bit of time getting it all set up, but the rout job itself took less than 20mins to this level:

Ready for the final 10mins sanding off of the tooling marks with the almost-redundant radius block.  I have a terrible memory, but I always remember to keep the sanding dust!! : 



Now, I'm one of those people where, if I drop a piece of toast it always lands butter-side down.  Except when I try to demonstrate that certainty to anyone, when it lands, of course, butter-side up.
 
So imagine my disbelief when this natural aberration that was lurking under the surface: 

...turned out to be 3mm BEHIND where I will be cutting at the end of the fretboard    Well, if that was karma, I clearly must have done at least one unbelievably good thing in the recent past! 

[Andyjr1515]

Given that I generally use 25" or 25.5" scales on electrics, it wasn't worth getting a template for the 24.75" of this one.  And so I would still be using the G&W mitre box but hand marking the positions.  

For this, I used the Stemac fret calculator and double-side-taped a decent quality steel rule along the centre-line, with the rule end flush with the nut-end:


To mark the positions, standing vertically above each position to avoid parallax errors, I used a sharp ended centre-punch (pictured above) to mark the position with a small indentation.  After double checking the position, I then added more pressure to the punch to make a larger indentation (for reason explained below).


Having marked them all, and before lifting the ruler off, I added a reverse double-check by reading the position of each dot against the rule and checking the answer with the Stewmac measurement.  The ticks above means that my reading of the positions matched within a minimum of 0.05mm to the calculator.  There were a couple where is was a bit more that that.  For those, I just put the punch in the dip and added a teeny sideways pressure until the required measurement was exactly in the centre of the adjusted dot.

Then, with clamps at either side and the board held against the side with tight packers, I positioned each blade-thickness-sized dot until it was invisible at both sides of the blade and I thus knew that the blade was right in the centre of the dot.  I clamped both sides simultaneously to ensure that the dot remained directly under the blade and then cut the slot.


So here we have the board fully slotted.  Next job is to position each of the MoP crowns, seen here laid on top, score round them and rout the chambers:


This may take some time!

[ADFinlayson]

I expect you will just about be ok with 1.5mm, it would only be the last couple you have trouble with if you do, in which case you cold just score round them onto some 2mm mop and cut them out. On a build I did a while back, I hand cut all the the crown inlays out of maple and inlayed them before I even owned a dremel and base, took me 13 hours to do the lot (it was the one build I kept a time sheet on)

[Andyjr1515]

Well, it took all afternoon and evening but....

...using the Dremel with precision bass, I started by 'dotting' around the outline:

Then joined up the dots, then roughed out the middle and then finally started the final tidy up and fit for each:


...and a few hours later, they are all in and ready to glue


And this, of course, is why I keep all my sanding dust - especially ebony.  Mixed in with standard epoxy it produces a glue with invisible gap-fill properties

 

Got a few household duties to sort, but when those are done, this should be ready for sanding

[Andyjr1515]

So yes - they are a bit of a pain to do.  

But on a scale of 1 to 10, just how satisfying is that !! 

[Gogzs]

Wow, they turned out nicely. And yeah, the way I suggested, routing the radius after making the crown recesses without the crowns actually inside would have chipped the recesses for sure, wasn't thinking about that.

Glad you figured it out, can't wait to see it all wrapped up.

[ADFinlayson]

Looks great Andy. So you radiused the board prior to routing the inlay cavities - how did you keep the floor of the inlay cavities flat for the inlay? This was something I struggled with on recent inlays, I ended up sticking a couple of shims to the very edges of the board so the router base had a flat surface but it's not very elegant. I've also sanded the underside of inlays to the reverse radius of the board which works well for wood inlays but not sure about risking that on 1.5mm thick mop.

[Andyjr1515]

1 hour ago, ADFinlayson said:

Looks great Andy. So you radiused the board prior to routing the inlay cavities - how did you keep the floor of the inlay cavities flat for the inlay? This was something I struggled with on recent inlays, I ended up sticking a couple of shims to the very edges of the board so the router base had a flat surface but it's not very elegant. I've also sanded the underside of inlays to the reverse radius of the board which works well for wood inlays but not sure about risking that on 1.5mm thick mop.

I just took the 'hump' off with a sharp chisel a little narrower than the width of each chamber size, bevel down.  Because I was going to be filling the whole chamber with the epoxy/ebony dust mix and firmly pressing the inlays into place, squeezing out the excess until they bottomed, a little unevenness at the chamber floor wasn't going to be a problem.

I have to say, I found this way round MUCH easier than the last time I tried to fit MoP crowns (which was some time ago as it took a good while for the PTSD therapy to work)!  

 

[Andyjr1515]

Little by little...  

This is a hobby for me and usually is interspersed with a lot more 'life' stuff.  With the lockdown and building a guitar on a bit more 'doing something everyday' basis probably makes me realise how much work there is involved in one! 

But - in actual terms, I suppose - decent progress.  This morning I have tapered the fretboard to it's final size and rough-tapered the neck:


Next job is probably putting the frets in the fretboard.  Nowadays, I do that before gluing to the neck - easier to handle, easier to keep stable for hammering and clamping the frets and MUCH easier for getting the fret ends square and straight with the fretboard edge.

[Andyjr1515]

I cut the frets to length and detanged the fret-ends.  Lucky break - the little bit at the bottom is all I had left off the coil...


When I'm fretting, once I've run along each slot lightly with a triangular needle file, I run a small bead of Titebond along the tangs,then hammer them in (one side, other side, middle) and then pop a clamped radius block on while I'm preparing the next one.


And, after the glue has fully cured, the fret-ends are snipped and edges sanded and we have a fretted fretboard


Next job is the headstock while I wait for the trussrod to arrive

[Norris]

Nice tip with the fret position marking. Looking good 

[komodo]

Killer job on the inlay and the carve!

One way to tackle the "radius before or after" question is to radius about halfway, do the inlay, then finish the radius. As @Andyjr1515 points out, imperfection in the bottom of the excavation are filled and leveled with the sanding dust / adhesive mixture. The real considerations are the thickness of your material, and how large any single piece is that spans the width of the board. You just want to preserve shell thickness when radiusing. In the case of the inlay I'm current doing, I radiused fully first as the radius on an 8 string board is only 16-20". Also, while complex, most of the pieces are actually lengthwise on the board, and the shell is pretty thick at .060" or more.

[Andyjr1515]

I love this hobby!

Unlike, say, hang-gliding or mountain climbing or white-water rapids rafting, you can try new and different things in relative safety

First - and it is related - if you want to see something that holds me personally in awe and makes me weep in my beer in equal measure, then spend an hour watching this video.  And if you are a guitar builder or woodworker or craftsman or anyone who likes seeing someone at the top of their game, it is well worth the hour.  Edit (missing and important sentence!): But somewhere near the end, he explains that he uses epoxy to glue his fretboard and that his me like a firecracker.  He does that because he doesn't want the fretboard to absorb the moisture from the glue.  And ever had a new guitar where the fret ends start getting sharp after a few months?  The reason is that the fretboard is shrinking in width.  And often, this is because the moisture from the wood glue made them expand in the first place.  And they can carry on shrinking for YEARS.  Almost immeasurable, but enough for the sharp ends of the frets to re-emerge. End of Edit :

So why do most of us use woodglue?  Because then - if you have to - you can remove the fretboard intact by applying heat.  I've been asked to do that a few times - generally to replace broken trussrods.  If it's expoxied, then generally the only way is to plane off the old fretboard altogether and start again.

So what is the new thing I'm going to try?  Well - this fretboard is going to have the maple veneer demarcation to give me the fine white line between the board and the neck.  So the plan is:

- epoxy the board to the veneer = no shrinkage of the fretboard

- then Titebond wood-glue the veneered board to the neck = the ability, if ever necessary, to remove the fretboard in the future.

Who knows if it will make a difference, but it won't do any harm as both methods are perfectly sound in their own right.  Here is the veneer being applied to the back of the fretboard:

 Meanwhile, the headstock plate has been cut from a super piece of jet black ebony from David Dyke:


And that, too will have a veneer demarcation.  For this one, I am reverting to good old Titebond.  And no - an upside down radius block to use as a clamping caul isn't the best way to treat a wooden radius block...   :


All the rest of the bits (trussrod, tuners, stoptail, pickup rings, electrics, etc) arrive sometime today, and another room has been decorated so I will soon have no excuses but to just crack on

[Andyjr1515]

Just edited the above - there was a missing sentence.  The inclusion of the video should make more sense now! 

 

[Andyjr1515]

And so to the swifts!

They haven't arrived yet in real life but should be here in a couple to three weeks.  So in the meantime, I'll have to make do with Mother of Pearl ones.

Normal stuff - cut out with a jewellers saw:


Then outlined on the plate in pencil and the chambers cut out with the same Dremel + precision router base as with the fretboard crowns:

 
Glued in with the c**k up-hiding ebony dust/epoxy mix.  Sanded off and done:


Next job - before gluing the fretboard on once the truss rod has arrived (which was supposed to have been today) - is to cut the pickup chambers while I still have a flat-top to the body.  But that job is also waiting for the pickup rings that were also due today.  Maybe tomorrow

Ditto, I will rout the recess for the back cover, again, while I have a flat top to be able to clamp to the workbench.

And then, I reckon the fretboard is ready to glue on.  So, it all depends on the postie from now on...

[Bizman62]

6 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

he doesn't want the fretboard to absorb the moisture from the glue.  And ever had a new guitar where the fret ends start getting sharp after a few months?  The reason is that the fretboard is shrinking in width.  And often, this is because the moisture from the wood glue made them expand in the first place.

Now that smells voodoo to me, meaning that he may well believe it but it ain't necessarily so. Or, he uses very, very moist glue! I know that many builders like to dampen the surfaces prior to applying TiteBond just to get some extra open time. I did that on my first build as per the instructions our Master. It has been hanging on the wall for the past four years now. Just out of curiosity I checked the fret ends and lo and behold I could feel them. Further investigation revealed that what I felt was actually tiny gaps! Either the oil treatment after finishing the frets has caused the rosewood to swell or the frets have shrunk as the climate inside doesn't feel like it's too humid. For comparison I also checked my other guitars in this room and it seems they all would pass the stocking test. I've seen my share of shrunk fretboards on both cheap and expensive guitars so I know it can be an issue with wood that is too moist or green to start with.

Nibbing the tangs and filling the gaps with glue and dust would partially help, leaving only the actual fret ends proud in case of shrinkage.

 

[Andyjr1515]

 

39 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

Now that smells voodoo to me, meaning that he may well believe it but it ain't necessarily so.

I don't think the guy in the video mentions the shrinkage with specific reference to the fret ends.  But it is the mention that he uses epoxy and that he uses it so that he does not introduce moisture into the fretboard that gave me a bit of an epiphany moment.  The bit about the frets is from my own observations having had that happen to some extent with many of my builds. 

And to be honest, I always assumed it was something I was doing wrong (even though I use Titebond as directed) but have since talked to a number of other builders (including two who do it for a living) and most agree that this is an issue.  Some (the pro guys, generally) have specific strategies to prevent a customer having a sharp fret-end problem a year down the line.  One of the pro-builders showed me an Ibanez he's had a number of years and he measures the shrinkage of the well-oiled ebony (yes- ebony!) board each year just for the amazement of it!

Then when you talk to folks who make their own guitars for their own use, many routinely re-file the fret ends every couple of years.

So - actually - the whole point of me doing this is to see whether it is, indeed, voodoo - or at best, a misinterpretation of what's going on - or not .  This build is going to someone who I know and who I know will play it, look after it and keep it.  And let me know if the frets start scratching his hand!    

 

So, assuming I'm not taken to that Great Workshop In The Sky in the next couple of weeks with the big C, I'll report back.

And if I am...well, I'll ask the Guv'ner and let you all know as and when you join me there   

[ScottR]

6 minutes ago, Andyjr1515 said:

Then when you talk to folks who make their own guitars for their own use, many routinely re-file the fret ends every couple of years.

Fret sprout happens to most of mine the first winter after the build. No matter how dry my board is, it lives in my Houston garage while it's being built, and humidity is just a fact of life. Then the interior of the house humidity in the winter with the furnace (and sometimes the AC) is desert dry. The wood gets dryer still over time and shrinks and the frets do not. It may or may not happen again the second winter. After two seasons of fret end dressing it seems to be over.

SR

[Andyjr1515]

2 minutes ago, ScottR said:

Fret sprout happens to most of mine the first winter after the build. No matter how dry my board is, it lives in my Houston garage while it's being built, and humidity is just a fact of life. Then the interior of the house humidity in the winter with the furnace (and sometimes the AC) is desert dry. The wood gets dryer still over time and shrinks and the frets do not. It may or may not happen again the second winter. After two seasons of fret end dressing it seems to be over.

SR

Yes - it will be interesting because my thoughts were that is it is much more likely to be that general absorption of moisture and gradual drying rather than the very area specific and short term effect of the glue process.

But one of my pro-builder contacts firmly believes the latter is a significant factor.

The great thing about the experiment is that, of course, the original SG build is also owned by someone I know (my band buddy) and that has the same grade ebony from the same source - so this will be the only difference.  On, and by the way, I've had to re-file the fret ends on that one a couple of times... 

[ScottR]

10 minutes ago, Andyjr1515 said:

But one of my pro-builder contacts firmly believes the latter is a significant factor.

I used to use epoxy all the time for the same reason. Then I had a couple joint failures with the epoxy and went to titebond. I can't say I noticed any difference in fret sprout between the two. I also can't say I looked for any. So there may have been a difference, but if so it wasn't significant enough to register.

SR

[Andyjr1515]

2 minutes ago, ScottR said:

I used to use epoxy all the time for the same reason. Then I had a couple joint failures with the epoxy and went to titebond. I can't say I noticed any difference in fret sprout between the two. I also can't say I looked for any. So there may have been a difference, but if so it wasn't significant enough to register.

SR

Which is a subtle way of saying:

"Everyone duck!  Andy's tightening up those strings and there's only one direction that fretboard's heading!!!!"

Sounds like I'll to wear my crash hat...or maybe ask MrsAndyjr1515 to tune it up...