'58 Explorer - 1st build

[Bizman62]

39 minutes ago, asgeirogm said:

Could you elaborate on that?

You take a length of sandpaper, wiggle it in between the body and the heel and then pull it out while keeping the gap tight. That will make the shoulder match the body air tight.

[Prostheta]

Flossing is where a strip of sandpaper (240+) is trapped between the shoulder and mounting face, shoulder outwards. The joint is pushed closed manually to identify which edges close first, stopping others from closing. By trapping sandpaper in these and carefully pulling it out of the joint, these high spots are gradually reduced so that the entire perimeter closes up. I hope that makes sense.

edit: Agh, I didn't refresh the page! Yes, that's exactly it.

[asgeirogm]

Ahhh okay, I thought you were taking about the pocket, not the shoulder (I only now realized what the shoulder actually is), so I was confused. Thanks you two for the explanation. 

[Bizman62]

11 hours ago, asgeirogm said:

I only now realized what the shoulder actually is

I'm still unsure... To me it could mean both the edge of the upper bout of the body and the wide parts of the heel in a mortise and tenon construction shown above.

Often I've been able to find the right names by image searching for "anatomy of a ***** " or " ***** parts names* but for a guitar the pictures mostly point to body, neck and headstock, finessed with fretboard, strings and soundhole/pickups and other hardware/accessories. Some even mention the upper and lower bouts and the waist between them but that's about the most you can easily find regarding the outlines or main sections. An illustrated luthier dictionary would be very handy!

[Prostheta]

"Shoulders" is a term carried over from carpentry-style joinery and is meant to define the areas around the joint that provide stability and define the outware cosmetic appearance. The faces of the tenon are "cheeks". The corresponding surfaces within the mortise are simply "walls". These can be further defined as "edge" or "face". Some variation exists in these terms as you'd expect, especially when different styles of joinery are in play. In an instrument, the shoulders are the end of the neck around the tenon that butt up to the guitar body.

A dictionary would be useful, I agree. The problem I've found is that people prefer to disagree or simply not work within the vagaries that just-exist. Look at how poorly-used the term "fan fret" is when in fact it refers to something much more specific, which in general the instruments just aren't. Like calling an Electrolux vacuum cleaner a "hoover".

[asgeirogm]

Okay so, I looked at the pocket again and it is only ever so slightly too big on the inner part of the pocket, I actually tried wrapping the end of the heel in a normal piece of paper and put it into the pocket and it was snug as a bug in a rug. 

Seeing as it is so barely too wide at the inner part of the pocket, I'm wondering if going through the trouble of glueing some wood on either side of the pocket, and then aligning everything again for a template and routing again to add parts of a millimeter on either side is the right course of action here. 

I would love it if someone has a better idea

PS. At some point I saw someone in the same situation talking about wetting the heel with water to raise the grain or swell it slightly or something, but is that really a good solution? 

Edited November 18, 2021 by asgeirogm

[Prostheta]

I would say no. A joint shouldn't be so tight that you can hold the body with it. That's just a false idea that people throw around to show off how good their joinery is. In reality, it should fit a little tighter than you have it there, but that should be good enough. You can shim it if you want, but cutting a shim less than typical 0,5-0,7mm veneer thickness is difficult to do well. That and you should only glue it in whilst glueing the whole thing together. PVAc glue will seep through wood that thin and seal it up from sticking, so don't pad out the sides of the tenon!

Wetting wood with water will swell up compressed grain, but in this case it will just swell and shrink back once the water leaves. I would just go with it as it is. It's a bit looser than I would like it, but not so loose that it's hugely problematic.

Do you have a hand plane that you can use to produce a medium thickness shaving? That would work.

[Bizman62]

If you can get the neck that tight with just a single layer of standard 80gsm paper, I'd call that tight enough. That paper is only 0.1 mm thick so I doubt you can make a shim thinner than that! As 2 x 0.1 mm is a bit too tight you'd have to make two shims of 0.05 mm to keep the centerline. The glue will have enough moisture to swell the joint air tight and the seam that tight should not tear open after the glue has dried.

[Prostheta]

True enough. I wasn't certain how thick the paper is, just that it looked a little fluffier than most on the ragged edge.

[asgeirogm]

Well it was two layers of paper, one on each side. 

I've borrowed a plane from neighbor and have been trying to produce some shavings, with mixed results. I'll look into if It's feasible to stick some in there when I glue, but I won't try to hard if it fails at first. 

[Prostheta]

Well, don't overcomplicate the glueup. It it feels like a bit of a handful, go with it as it is. There's nothing worse than a half-assed joint. Wet both the surfaces of the tenon and the mortise, don't rely on glue transferring from one to the other. You should be fine, just as @Bizman62 says.

[asgeirogm]

Sweet, will do, thanks for all the good advice guys

[asgeirogm]

Haven't had much time to work on it lately, and when I've had time, it's been little at a time, which has for sure made me a little sloppy as I've wanted to get something done when I get time here and there. But all the sloppiness is invisible, so not that big of a deal.

Hogged out the pickup cavities with a forstner

Routed, quite sloppily, I only have the long pattern bit so I needed to prop up my template with some mdf, and I did not align the template thoroughly enough (and at one point I didn't fasten the mdf well enough so it slipped a little. I decided to just route ca 16mm deep pockets and then hog out a little more for the pickup legs. I did that with the forstner, but I wasn't close enough to the wall of the cavity so I cleaned it up with the router. I had a suspicion that the PUs would fit as the only pattern bit I have has a diameter of 16mm, so the corners had a big radius, and they did indeed not fit. I decided to use a 6mm bit and use the shaft against the template. That worked okay.

I made a mistake when routing the extra depth for the PU legs for the neck PU, I took it much deeper than required, which in turn unnecessarily removed some gluing surface for the neck tenon. I realized that about 2 minutes too late. I needed to drill a little for the PU screws for the neck PU.

Neck in the pocket

I then re-planed the 2 degree angle into the neck as it was a bit off after sanding twist out of the neck, as mentioned before. I must not have tightened the fastening thing on the plunge router when planing, and I wasn't using the depth control screw thing either, so at one point, the tightening gismo vibrated loose and the bit plunged into the heel. Luckily, it was not so deep and it looks like I was lucky enough with the location that I can remove the error when I do the final heel carve.

I then started sawing out the excess in the top part of the heel, and I was using a really crappy saw with a really "bendy" blade, and I don't know why I persisted so long after it was clear that I was just causing damage. Thankfully, at some point I pulled my head of my behind and stopped, took the neck to the router sled and routed the excess away. Definitely some ugly saw marks left there, but no one will ever know (well except us )

I've left some wood there on the left of the pencil line the neck, I will remove that later once the fretboard is more or less complete so I know exactly where to cut, as if I saw too much, it will be visible on the sides.

Next up are is the control cavity, I've designed and 3d printed templates for routing. I wanted to see if I could save some plastic so I printed the template for the cavity plate recess, and then printed what would essentially be the ledge for the plate to sit on.

When I will route the cavity itself, I will insert the white ledge part into the other one, and when routing the recess/ledge for the plate, I will remove the white part. I think it will go well. Here's essentially what I mean with a top view

The cavity is definitely a little tighter than on the ESP explorers, but it seems similar clearance for the pots as on e.g. LPs so I think it's fine. I plan on soldering together a harness anyway outside the cavity and then placing the harness inside, so it's not a problem.

I also put drill guide holes for 4mm magnets on the ledge part.

Edited November 27, 2021 by asgeirogm

[mistermikev]

nice efficient template.  cool.  nice neck pocket fit - good job.  

[killemall8]

interesting build methods. what is the black template made of?

 

[asgeirogm]

12 hours ago, killemall8 said:

interesting build methods. what is the black template made of?

 

3d printed PLA. ABS would probably be better with regards to possible heat generated by the bearing rubbing against it but it hadn't been an issue for me so far

[asgeirogm]

So, I haven't had much time to work on the guitar lately, but I've been working on the inlay design and I wanted to ask for opinions. Here's the design in padauk, sapele, MOP and ebony:

Here it is as a part of the big picture

Couple of things I'm thinking about:

• Should I make the orangutan a bit smaller?
• Should I place it slightly higher or lower (its head currenty on the 11th fret)?
• Should I put anything more on the fretboard (i.e. other orangutans, leaves, bananas, what ever, suggestions welcome!)

I think adding more inlays on the board might draw away from the current main inlay. I'm not sure if the size and/or positioning could be better, but I think it looks pretty decent the way it is now.

Any and all opinions and feedback is welcome!

[Bizman62]

Wow!

I'd say the size is good as it is, it would be tough to see the details if it were smaller. I'm saying this based on what I saw after scaling it to match a real fretboard. Another option would be an utterly simplified miniature covering only about 3 frets. That said, the smaller imager looks like a red squid so...

I'd also put the head on the 12th fret as that's the only differently coloured spot and the 12th fret is what's most often marked. I'd also pay attention to the grain orientation to make the orangutan's fur look more natural. I mean something like the body being more or less in line with the fretboard and the limbs angled to match the loose hair with the grain pattern. Like so:

[asgeirogm]

@Bizman62 I first had the head on the 12th, but since the 11th is obviously a bit bigger, I moved it up so I could scale the ape a bit up, but I think having the head on the 12th is probably better.

Here are some more mockups, where #1 is the original, #2 is basically what you suggested, and then #3 and #4 are some variations. I think I prefer #4, which is your suggestion but with horizontalish grain on the belly.

Here's the original photo of the glorious great ape that I used as a basis for the design. The coat and face is a bit darker but I wanted to lighten it up a bit, especially since I have a dark ebony fretboard as the background.

Edited December 27, 2021 by asgeirogm

[Bizman62]

You've managed well in simplifying the hairy ape to a few large pieces! The face is a bit pale compared to the original, though. The forehead and nose are lighter than the eyes and cheeks in the original. The current colour scheme makes the monkey look like a caricature of Joni Mitchell in my eyes...

[asgeirogm]

1 hour ago, Bizman62 said:

The current colour scheme makes the monkey look like a caricature of Joni Mitchell in my eyes...

I agree on the face needing some work, I will need to play around with it some to get it closer to the photo

[asgeirogm]

Sooooo, I'm back (for better or worse )! The long and short of it is that I have ADHD and we ADHDers have a tendency to have a grilliion projects going on that never get finished, jumping between them willy nilly. Well I'm back on this one, let's go!

A bit of a photo dump here on some photos I took the last time I worked on the project, about a year ago:

I can't remember if I mentioned it already but I wanted to do a Strat style jack on the butt, but I wanted to do a proof of concept first:

Looks good enough, so onto the real thing

V

Voila

Pot holes drilled and control cavity routed

Pots and jack plate getting a test run

I had then had an F up and broke off one of the screws for the jack plate

And that's where I stopped, a week short of one year ago.

[asgeirogm]

With the missus out of the country for a week, I thought this would be a good time to transform the dinner table into a guitar building workshop and get back on the horse.

I contemplated my choices for handling the broken screw, either digging it out, gluing in a plug and redrilling - or just moving the plate a few millimeters and drilling new holes. The latter option was the obvious choice for me since it required much less work. I filled the OK hole with a whittled wooden grill pin and then somehow, I managed to drill the first hole too far from the original hole (as well as drilling the second hole off center ), so now the old hole with he broken screw is actually visible. I'll probably make due with filling it with sawdust mixed with wood glue.

View from inside the cavity

As a side note, keeping the guitar in a closet in the basement without enough care meant that a bit of the thin neck join areas broke off... But I'll sand that in nicely once I glue in the neck

Now I'm left thinking: What the hell was going to be my next step when I stopped a year ago...

Sanding a smidge and gluing the neck in seems like the logical choice, but now I need to rethink (since I can't remember what I decided) whether I will glue the fretboard on the neck before or after gluing the neck in the pocket... If I want to finish the neck, fretboard and all, before gluing the neck into the pocket, I will need to turn my focus on to the CNC I started building, finish that, finish designing the inlay, route that, glue the board on and all the jazz before gluing the neck on the body.

I think I spent a lot of time thinking about the order of things to do before, but I cannot remember what I decided, or the knowledge I gained by pouring hours into seeing what other people have been doing, reading articles and watching videos. Sigh...

If anyone has opinions, I would love to hear them. In the mean time, I'll dive into member builds and such to try to pick up my thought process where I left off.

Edited January 21, 2023 by asgeirogm

[asgeirogm]

I forgot, I got a dog three months ago, so here's dog tax

[nakedzen]

As a tip for avoiding broken screws, I always put some candle wax on the thread for the first time of inserting. Broke too many screws to learn that.