Yew-topped SG-style Guitar

[komodo]

This is all very interesting. Normally, I use Titebond for everything because it's ridiculously strong and reversible. I'd never consider using epoxy for a fret board because I'd like the ability to take it off, and like your idea of a separating layer. All that said, with my current neck being cocobolo, epoxy is the adhesive of choice for the scarf. And, with the current fret board having an inlay from the depths of hell . . .I REALLY need that fret board to be removable if needed. Isn't epoxy removable with heat? Acetone?

[Bizman62]

12 hours ago, komodo said:

Isn't epoxy removable with heat?

Way back when we were very young I did some archery. Super Epoxy was a common brand to glue the steel tips to the duraluminium arrows and sometimes you had to remove the tip. A cigarette lighter was the tool to break the bond. If I recall correctly the epoxy was a sticky mess when hot but hardened to be somewhat brittle after cooling.

A quick search told that "The strength of epoxy adhesives is degraded at temperatures above 350 °F (177 °C)." (Wikipedia) and that "Wood slowly chars at 120°-150° --- Decayed wood ignites at 150°" (https://www.tcforensic.com.au/docs/article10.html)

Doesn't that sound like the answer for removing epoxy from wood with heat is no?

 

[Andyjr1515]

11 hours ago, komodo said:

All that said, with my current neck being cocobolo, epoxy is the adhesive of choice for the scarf.

Interestingly, the only other time I've used epoxy for a fretboard is a cocobolo one.  Even doing all of the 'wipe with acetone to remove the oils a number of times and immediately before applying the Titebond' the fretboard - which looked good and tight - could be lifted off the neck with no more than a gentle tug

The epoxy sorted the little varmint, though 

[ScottR]

14 hours ago, komodo said:

Isn't epoxy removable with heat?

In my early days of building the afternoon sun would shine right down on my work area, which is in the opening of my garage in Houston. I love the sun and even enjoy the heat, so I worked right there. And I was using epoxy for everything. And as my work pieces heated up in the sun, occasionally a joint would fail.  It took me a few to put it together, but the boards got hot and the epoxy got soft and sticky. So I made two changes. I quit letting my work soak up the sun and heat and I changed all my joints to titebond.. For oily woods like cocobolo, I rough sand the gluing surface just before applying the glue and have not had a failure yet.

SR

[Andyjr1515]

Not much done today, but I have got most of the rest of the bits - certainly enough to do a quick mockup to check if Matt wanted to go with black or metal pickup rings.
He's opted for metal.  The bridge and rings are chrome ones here from my bits box - the nickel ones are on the way.  Also, the other bits are not yet positioned, but it gives an idea of how it's starting to look:


So tomorrow's job will be the pickup chambers.

[ScottR]

That is sooooo sexy!

SR

[komodo]

I agree! The color and grain of the yew take the SG to a different level.

We should probably get another thread going about epoxy stuff so we don’t derail this build.

[Andyjr1515]

Yesterday was a bit of a lazy day so I got cracking again today.
First job was to glue on the headstock plate:


That meant that I could confirm the final positioning of the neck and therefore also the pickup chambers.

Those who have watched my build threads know that I hate routers.  I will use them, but only where they are pretty much the only thing for the job.  In terms of pickup chambers, that in my book is one small job.
For what it's worth, this is how I do them.  Having worked out exactly where they are going to be, I draw out the chamber outlines.  Then I drill the 8 corners:


Then, I hog out to the edges with a large forstner bit and use a chisel to take me up to the pencil line to a depth of around 10mm:


And then, and only then, I use a bearing trimmer bit in the router to tidy up the sides and get it to final depth:

You can just see in the above shot that I have successfully intersected the cable run channel that I cut before gluing the top - phew!

And then repeated the whole thing for the neck chamber:


Still no trussrod.  May need to order another one from a different supplier...

[Andyjr1515]

The last structural job on the body will be to rout the control chamber to final depth and to rout the recess for the hatch.  But before I do that, there's a bit of structural integrity to sort out.

Knots - they can add beauty, especially to Yew - because the wood grain sweeps round what are emerging branches.  But that is what they are - and so knots are always effectively separate parts of the wood and so have to be stabilised.

So, today's scary picture to those who haven't got up close and personal to these kind of woods   : 

And there's a related crack that goes all the way towards the pickup chambers.  So my strategy is to stabilise and do the bulk filling at the same time.

First step, I have 'wick'd' thin superglue into the cracks.  Capillary action sucks the cyano deep into the crack which will help reduce future movement:

 Then - goodness, has this build turned Andyjr1515 to drugs??????

No - at least not yet .  It's a syringe folks use to get medicines down cats and dogs throats.  And perfect for forcing epoxy&wood dust mix deep into the larger fissures.  Yes - I know what it looks like... 


And all done waiting cure and sanding:


And after that, finishing off the control chamber. 

[Andyjr1515]

I reckon that's enough for today.

I've got most of the cyano and epoxy overfill off the top:


...and routed the control chamber to depth:

The observant amongst you will have spotted the pickup cable channel in the side wall.
Depending if the truss rod arrives or not tomorrow, then I will probably complete the carve, adding the rear cutaways, etc, and rounding some of the hard corners.

As always, thanks for looking and for the encouraging feedback, folks

[Bizman62]

The syringe tip was great!

[Andyjr1515]

I've cut a slice off some Sapele offcut to use as the control hatch.  I generally use a bottom-bearing rebate bit to cut the rebate and then just square off the magnet-protrusion peaks you can see here with a chisel.  The little offcut is to double make sure that the rebate is the correct depth before I put the router away:


And then I started the carve at the back.  Although I don't think the 'proper' SG's have wing cutaway relief at the back, that has always seemed daft to me as it is one of the things that makes it much easier to get to the upper frets.  So this one's got them   This is after the 'reveal & seal' coat of Tru-oil prior to final sanding:


Why do I call it the reveal and seal coat?  Well, the seal I've talked about before - I do a light slurry-and-buff with Tru-oil as an initial grain-fill and sealer step even when, like this one, I'm going to eventually gloss varnish it.

But it is also, I find, the very best way of finding missed dints, sanding marks, glue spots and other similar things to tidy up.

Take, for example the edge here - I can now see that the edge needs a little more cabinet-scraping work to ensure that the demarcation line is revealed all the way round:


And here, you can see that again and also some glue spots that need sanding away:

As always, thanks for looking 
 - and stay safe

Andy

[Andyjr1515]

In terms of cleaning up the edges, this is closer to how it should be with the demarcation stripe fully visible:

The fretboard isn't fixed yet - I have a feeling the truss rod's not going to arrive anytime soon so I've ordered a second one from a different supplier.  If/when the original one arrives, it'll just go in my bits box ready for the next build

[Andyjr1515]

Well yesterday, the truss-rod shipped on 24 hour service last week arrived (not a grumble - just a fact of life at the moment).  But, actually, I'm pleased that I ordered a second one (which arrived today), because while the original purchase was very nicely made (the one with the fancy chrome end) it is no good for me on this build:


And why is it no good for this build?
Well, remembering that the rod is fitted the other way up, the fancy chrome cylinder (inside is probably exactly the same gauges of rod and tip as the one on the left) actually adds another 2mm to the depth of the neck channel - just at the point where the neck is at its thinnest.  And if you add the fret height to the fretboard thickness and the rod & tip height (11mm) and take away the planned thickness of the neck at the 1st fret (22mm), it would leave 2mm under the rod at the nut end.  And that's not, IMHO, enough.

Same calculation with the left hand trussrod, gives me 4mm under the rod - and that is fine.  So that's what I've used.

Is that going to be a problem for everyone with that particular rod?  No - not at all.  If the fretboard had been thicknessed 1.5mm thinner and I hadn't wanted the 0.6mm demarcation veneer, then it would have been fine.

But, ignoring all that, it means that the fretboard can go on

No capping strip (again, this would reduce the meat under the rod), just a strip of masking tape to stop the glue filling the channel, a final check that the neck was flat and that the rod top plate was flush with or below the neck glue face:

And...it's on:

[Workingman]

This is a great build thread.  BTW, truss rods are fairly easy to make.  A friend uses welding rod, bends 1/2" of one end 90 degrees to stop it from rotating and threads the other end.  

[Andyjr1515]

Clamps are off and I couldn't resist a quick mockup:

Tomorrow is neck carve day

 

[mistermikev]

making me want to try yew someday.  no fancy quilt/flame/burl... but stunning none the less. just has a fire quality to it.  nice work as always.

[Andyjr1515]

Most builders will tell you that their favourite part of a build is carving the neck.  It certainly is mine

The first thing I usually do is rasp-file the corners off the volute:


...which lets me go the full length heel to headstock in continuous strokes of the spokeshave:

You do have to be careful with the spokeshave, though.  I've gone from rectangular to broad curve on this side in just over 1.5 minutes!  It would be very, very easy to overdo it!
In all cases, though, I am moving progressively round from fretboard edge to the edge of the purpleheart and so taking nothing off the thickness of the neck, just removing material from the haunches.

In less than 10 minutes total, I move across to a fairly fine microplane.  In use, I hold either end and draw it up the neck just like a spokeshave - but trying to show that would mean me dropping the camera!

You can see how quickly the basic shape starts getting there.  However, I do stop frequently, have a cup of tea, play a bit of air guitar on it and view the shape from afresh to work out where I need to spend some more time.
Normally, I would move onto the cabinet scraper pretty quickly (again, drawn up the neck two-handed) but mahogany is quite soft and doesn't respond so well to a scraper used hard - so for mahogany I tend to stick with the micro-plane and then use the scraper just to 'kiss' the sides rather than bulk-remove material:

This is about 1 1/2 hours in, including the tea breaks.  I'll come back to it this afternoon and the carve should be complete by the end of the day    :

[ScottR]

1 hour ago, Andyjr1515 said:

This is about 1 1/2 hours in, including the tea breaks

Impressive pace you're setting there Andy. If you're not careful you'll run out of things to do and won't Mrs Andy enjoy keeping you busy?

SR

[Andyjr1515]

8 minutes ago, ScottR said:

Impressive pace you're setting there Andy. If you're not careful you'll run out of things to do and won't Mrs Andy enjoy keeping you busy?

SR

But I have a cunning plan, in the shape of the guitar bouzouki

Mind you, MrsAndyjr1515 might have a cunning plan too, more in the shape of a paint-brush

 

[Andyjr1515]

Well, this probably looks exactly the same as the previous photo, but to the dedicated air-guitarist tester (me), it actually feels completely different.

 

Going to leave it now until the morning.  The one thing I might do for the aesthetics is bring the heel transition further into the body - although playing-wise it actually feels fine right up to the 24th fret on the bass strings.  These things are best left to gestate a while. 

[komodo]

Interesting thing, how much wood to remove/leave for a transition? There is no right answer there.
One thought though beyond just aesthetics, is by removing some more at the heel you could create a 'stop' similar to the volute. After a couple beers, at the end of a long show, and you are doing a quick slide up the neck to that final high note, it would be easier to know where to stop. Lol.

[Andyjr1515]

In the end, I got up the following morning and tried a decent amount of upper fret air guitar.  It felt right - and no restriction at all.  Against a 'real' SG, it is those two carves at the rear cutaways, mirroring the ones on the top, that make all the difference.

So I'll leave it as it is

And that means the varnishing can begin

Here it is after the first coat:

With the slightly retro-way I apply varnish, it's sort of done when it's done.  It might be just one more coat.  It might be another 5 or 6.  I'll see how it goes and stop when I don't think I can do better

 

 

[ScottR]

7 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

I'll see how it goes and stop when I don't think I can do better

 

The most important and most difficult aspect in the creation of art is knowing when to stop.

SR

[Gogzs]

The demarcation line is such a nice detail, but the top is hypnotizing... just, wow.