Lockdown Tele

[Stu.]

My 3x3m space is looking very packed now:

After a bit of clearing out (some things to the bin, otherwise just consolidated, and a few sold), it's feeling very functional:

Lots of supplies:

Planes and good saws within reach:

Clamp racks, wood offcuts, and the new table saw bench that I built a week or two back:

And my main bench with MFT holes, Trend router table insert (with quick release kit), bench dog storage, and a downflow box. I like to have everything on wheels too, so the shop vac is no exception.

[Stu.]

Trying to get this moving agan. I've been doing bits and bobs in the background, but haven't updated socials for ages because life has been mad.

Finally bought a drill press. After judging the Bosch for ages, I decided to give it a shot (thanks, Amazon sale) and it's pretty amazing so far. I love that it's compact, accurate, and has a digital depth readout.

Sticking points for this build are finessing the tenon shoulders to fit the body at an angle and needing to remake the fingerboard. I'm not happy with the padauk or how many bubbles were in the epoxy. I have an old ebony board to try next - it was saved from an ancient project, so no worries if it doesn't work out. Anything black from the previous board will now be white MOP and the gold will be medium/thick CA with mica powder, delivered by syringe.

Also, these Bosch brad point bits are wonderful. I've been using the Bosch professional forstners for years with great results too.

[Stu.]

I did a little bit of work on this one today, trying to fettle down the tenon shoulders to meet the body. It’s taking a while!

Also, more meat removed from the top. I think that the carve is going to need to dip below the walnut and then come back up, otherwise the veneer between will never have a clean line.

[Stu.]

After what seems like forever, I have an update on this one! I wasn’t happy with the padauk fingerboard, so I started from scratch with ebony. I used white mother of pearl and gold mica instead. 

On a side note, I’m been following the Gibson method to construct this neck and I just don’t like it. I’ll go back to my usual order for the other projects.

Here’s the new fingerboard, all fretted and glued to the neck:

[JAK]

On 2/7/2023 at 1:55 PM, Stu. said:

I think that the carve is going to need to dip below the walnut and then come back up, otherwise the veneer between will never have a clean line.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean. With the texture of the top it’s a bit hard to tell the smoothness of the carve (looks like it’s getting pretty close in most places, but maybe there’s enough roughness adding to the “uneven” lines still?)

I, too, generally like clean lines but oh man, let me tell you - the way the veneer blends so well with the spalting and then paired with the walnut looks superb. Especially in the bottom pic. It’s like a live edge - a tree that grew into a guitar (and the walnut then being the pseudo-bark binding). Looks like a happy accident to me! 

[Stu.]

18 hours ago, JAK said:

Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean. With the texture of the top it’s a bit hard to tell the smoothness of the carve (looks like it’s getting pretty close in most places, but maybe there’s enough roughness adding to the “uneven” lines still?)

I, too, generally like clean lines but oh man, let me tell you - the way the veneer blends so well with the spalting and then paired with the walnut looks superb. Especially in the bottom pic. It’s like a live edge - a tree that grew into a guitar (and the walnut then being the pseudo-bark binding). Looks like a happy accident to me! 

There's definitely some roughness keeping the line from being sharp. I'm finding that the veneer just looks too wide if I include it in the shallow part of the curve, but if I try to keep it thin it's actually quite brittle and splinters. I'm either going to have to sand it to hell and back to avoid chipping, or run a router cutter around to give a clean edge. It's a shame to lose connection to a project, so I'm hoping it returns later!

[Stu.]

A bit of progress on the neck carve today too:

 

[ADFinlayson]

I don't know if I missed the part where you were talking about the inlays, but man that is awesome. Very jealous of your inlay skills!

[Stu.]

1 hour ago, ADFinlayson said:

I don't know if I missed the part where you were talking about the inlays, but man that is awesome. Very jealous of your inlay skills!

I kept forgetting to post updates! This is the first board that I processed with my DIY CNC. Pockets for gold accents cut first, filled with thin CA and gold mica, and then sanded back. MOP inlays next, but the pieces needed loads of clean up with needle files. The fit in the pockets was pretty good - the machine lost portion around 12, so it has a dodgy margin. Cutting the phoenix inlay by hand for another guitar was much more satisfying, but I think it would end up prohibitively expensive for selling.

 

 

 

 

[ScottR]

That ebony board is HOT!

SR

[ADFinlayson]

1 hour ago, ScottR said:

That ebony board is HOT!

SR

My thought exactly, amazing work!

[Stu.]

You guys are far too kind. Hopefully it all fits together in the end!

The string through holes in the body wandered slightly, so I made a small string block to hold the ferrules and basically cover up my mistake. After about two hours of work, I popped the ferrules in and noticed there was an error in my drawing

I’ve fixed the spacing of the final hole now and no prizes for guessing my task for tomorrow…

The wenge should match the heel block.

Oh, and I’ll also be making a router template for the pocket!

 

[henrim]

Nice save!

Just the other day I was making this midi controller. I made a drawing and I was by the milling machine when I realized I had to shift the starting point. I quickly marked new positions to the drawing by hand. It wasn’t until I assembled the thing that I realized there was a mistake in my calculation. One column is 2mm off. That doesn’t matter otherwise but every time I look at the thing I’m reminded of the mistake. I doubt anyone else would even notice and then again it wouldn’t matter if they did as the controller is just for my use.

[Stu.]

It always seems to happen, right? As much as I didn't want to have cocked up the drawing, I also really didn't want my CNC to be out of calibration or giving me gremlins. Especially since I spent a couple of hours yesterday just calibrating the X steppers across the length of a fingerboard. They had a tiny error at 100mm, which compounded and put around 2mm onto the scale length. So yeah, happy to have been wrong with my drawing here!

[Stu.]

All better now!

 

[Stu.]

Not necessarily related to this build, but I  recently bought the Elevate Truss Rod Slotting Jig Plus. I wanted something to take the stress out of routing for the truss rod and gluing the fingerboard on. It’s a pretty cool kit which covers routing the truss rod channel, drilling alignment pins, and drilling dots - all based on a self-centering jig. The only issue is that it’s designed for acoustic truss rods, so I’ve been prototyping some alignment pins for repositioning further up the neck. I’ve also taken inspiration from @Lumberjack’s thread and tried to make a router template to use the same bit and bushing as the rod jig. Also heavily inspired by @ADFinlayson’s jig with an alignment strip.

 

 

Edited April 28, 2023 by Stu.
Typo!

[Stu.]

Well, the new process seems to work! It certainly makes a change from fiddling to set up guides and panicking. I think that I’m now in the wrong thread, but I’m closing the loop from my previous couple of posts.

[mistermikev]

Lovely stuff. inlays are great, inlay slot is "tighter than a fish's turd cutter" as they say.  vnice.

your clean shop keeps mocking me tho.  I keep thinking I'll clean my shop... but then thing nah it'll just get all dirty again lol.  rawk on.

[Stu.]

On 5/1/2023 at 12:26 AM, mistermikev said:

Lovely stuff. inlays are great, inlay slot is "tighter than a fish's turd cutter" as they say.  vnice.

your clean shop keeps mocking me tho.  I keep thinking I'll clean my shop... but then thing nah it'll just get all dirty again lol.  rawk on.

It’s a curse! I physically can’t make myself move on without tidying. This is why I’m so, so slow.

I did a little work on the rough neck profile for this and tried getting the body carve to a state I’m happy with. I’m really struggling with the fumed eucalyptus veneer though - it’s very brittle and won’t give me a clean edge.

I think that I need to take inspiration for the Les Paul and contour the top more heavily. It’s still very flat across most of the middle.

 

[ScottR]

Oh damn!

SR

[mistermikev]

lot going on there... nice work.

[Stu.]

Thank you, chaps! I've actually been considering scrapping or reworking this one. The transition from beech to veneer to walnut isn't working at all, I'm falling out of love with the beech, and it is HEAVY. Like, I've never held a complete guitar that's packing as much weight as this. I kind of want to blast the beech and top fumed eucalyptus veneer off, chamber as much as possible, and then slap a new top on.

[ScottR]

Do what you gotta do to be happy with it. You're likely to learn something new while you're at it.

SR

[Bizman62]

56 minutes ago, Stu. said:

The transition from beech to veneer to walnut isn't working at all

Oh? To me it looks lovely in its roughness, like a full size beech cap were wearing off the edges because of never having used a gig bag of any sort during a world tour. For weight relief I'd be tempted to carve huge cavities on the underside - if that were mine, that is.

That neck looks just stunning, perfect details on a flawless piece of wood. And as such it doesn't quite match the roughness of the body. There's no common nominator to tie the two together. Two guitars, one rough and one sleek, maybe?

Just my 2 cents.

[henrim]

Sometimes it’s hard to go back when you have already invested considerable amount of time doing something. I think the idea with the top was interesting and the rough carve looked promising. But like you said yourself the transition is not probably working that well in the end. The neck is beautiful and so is the back of the body, so making a new top is not that big thing after all.