What next?

[Bizman62]

Another Saturday well spent, with not much visible changes. I cut some more alder and then continued with the body. Sanded the edges a little paler and noticed that the nail holes have too sharp edges. So I took some saw dust and super glue to fill them. And I managed to accidentally delete the photos but you all know what a dust and glue filled hole looks like.

[Bizman62]

Enough sanding! So I bit the bullet and after carefully and visibly marking the centerline I checked how the neck would align with it.

Good enough. If it were perfect it wouldn't be my build! So Titebond to the cavity and the heel and some clamps. There's a length of 2x2 on the bass side to protect the edge of the body and pieces of plywood here and there. Apparently the wood had dried more during the summer so the neck pocket had widened a bit but a drop of water to swell it to fit and sideways clamping seemed to close the gap.

After having a three hour coffee break it seemed safe to remove the clamps and continue. The heel didn't look too comfortable:

'

So my favourite hand tool to the rescue! It didn't take too long to blend the neck into the body.

 

[mistermikev]

"good enough" he says... so a 200lb non binary gender neutral being walks into a bar and says "I will have relations will all beings in this bar if one of you can guess my weight".  from the back of the bar another non binary gender neutral being exclaims "900lbs"!  the 200lb non binary gender neutral being says "that's close enough".  

I think that might be a non offensive version of that humor... but I could be wrong.  

well... progress is progress.... and you've made more progress than me this week (and the previous 5 or 6) so bravo!

[Bizman62]

Mike, your comment worried me some so I had to check. The neck seems to be in line with the centerline or at least close enough to fool my eyes.

[mistermikev]

3 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

Mike, your comment worried me some so I had to check. The neck seems to be in line with the centerline or at least close enough to fool my eyes.

oh, I wasn't commenting on that... YOU said "close enough" in your comments... so was just reacting to what you said.  You can never tell via a picture... unless it's REALLY off... I def didn't see that.

[Bizman62]

6 hours ago, mistermikev said:

oh, I wasn't commenting on that... YOU said "close enough" in your comments...

Yes I know you weren't, But seeing how the ruler was off in the photo as it was taken rather to show how I did it and remembering I hadn't checked the line afterwards as the pocket was so tight, that's what made me worry.

[mistermikev]

2 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

Yes I know you weren't, But seeing how the ruler was off in the photo as it was taken rather to show how I did it and remembering I hadn't checked the line afterwards as the pocket was so tight, that's what made me worry.

hehe, made ya look!

[henrim]

Yeah, I misinterpreted that picture as well. I was thinking if that is “close enough”, I don’t want to see how “tiny bit off” looks like

[Bizman62]

So now that the neck was in place it was time to give a thought to smaller details. My initial idea was to use a RAM stick as a bridge but a So-Dimm was way too tall. Plan B to the rescue! When fumbling through my stack of various leftovers and offcuts I found a piece of tight grained pine, just a split branch originating from my firewood shed. As it was half-round I cut some of it off and sanded a 12" radius in the middle to match the fretboard.

Supposing the top of the guitar top might not be perfectly flat I also carved a shallow arch on the bottom, hoping the ends would then have a tighter contact to the body.

As the RAM stick was out of question I then started thinking about a suitable material for the saddle. As there was a new 0.5 mm thin Japanese saw in the workshop I decided to use fret wire. I approximated an angle for better native intonation and cut a slot.

And of course the saw was too thick for the tang. Some wood dust and super glue to the rescue:

Cleaned, carved and shortened:

To me it looks quite nice, although I'm a bit worried about the strings potentially leaning on the slope. It might have been wise to lay the fret wire a couple of mm's closer to the centre. Oh well, if memory serves me right there's material for three or even six more so no problem if this test piece proves out to be a failure.

A couple of mockups:

 

[mistermikev]

i like what you did there. w the bridge.  add a piezo at all?  that'd be pretty cool.

[Bizman62]

A piezo? That might be interesting, never thought of that. Then again, I don't have one laying around and everything's already drilled for just two donated single coils and a three-way switch. The only place for the piezo would be in the control cavity as the bridge most likely will be floating.

[Bizman62]

Today I had only a couple of hours time because of the Family Day in the nursery home where my mom lives, 100 km South from here. Half of the trip was like this, both ways:

Managed to do something, though! First I sanded a bit, trying to blend the darker sides better to the top and bottom. And then I poured the first spoonful of my BLO-lacquer-turps mix on the top:

Spread it around liberally.

The improvised stand worked well for letting the guitar dry:

And the headstock piece salvaged from the trash bin looks fantastic, don't you think?

[ADFinlayson]

Crikey it's 21ºC in England, I even mowed the lawn yesterday. 

[Asdrael]

On 10/7/2023 at 5:39 PM, Bizman62 said:

Today I had only a couple of hours time because of the Family Day in the nursery home where my mom lives, 100 km South from here. Half of the trip was like this, both ways:

Managed to do something, though! First I sanded a bit, trying to blend the darker sides better to the top and bottom. And then I poured the first spoonful of my BLO-lacquer-turps mix on the top:

Spread it around liberally.

The improvised stand worked well for letting the guitar dry:

And the headstock piece salvaged from the trash bin looks fantastic, don't you think?

My man flashing the Mercedes

 

That headstock looks awesome though.

[Bizman62]

A little more time today despite arriving an hour late and having to leave an hour earlier because our noble leader had to go to a funeral...

My plans were again a bit too ambitious: I had two guitars with me, one was still without strap buttons which I intended to screw in while waiting for the finish to dry on the other. Well, the situation hasn't changed... After having looked at the guitar for the week I felt that the iron acetate was too dark on the edges so I spent the day sanding. Guess the result will be a bit cleaner with the next flooding of oil.

 

[ScottR]

On 10/7/2023 at 10:39 AM, Bizman62 said:

And the headstock piece salvaged from the trash bin looks fantastic, don't you think?

I do indeed.

SR

[Bizman62]

As I still wasn't happy with the darkness of the edges I sanded them cleaner again...

There's still spots that could have been sanded even more, the oil darkens quite a lot of what looks light grey after sanding. But the darkest areas now sit on the outermost curves of the bouts so it looks like natural weathering which was my intention to start with.

 

I must say I really love this oil mix! Lacquer would not have allowed resanding and refinishing the edges without borderlines.

 

 

[Andyjr1515]

The finish is really bringing ou the beauty of the wood.  It's looking great. 

[Bizman62]

As I was enjoying a gettogether last Saturday I thought I could do something at home. So I took the tuners and noticed that the headstock was too thin. Wrote a note to myself to make a bottom side veneer on the headstock, only problem being to figure out the material. Well, as this build is made of offcuts and scrapwood I took a piece left from another neck and widened it in the same style i.e. glued wings with a light coloured strip in between. Opposite colour scheme to the actual neck, that is.

Found some silicone paper in the trash bin to prevent the glue sticking to the block.

The back of the headstock required a resanding to make the glue stick so masking tape and super glue to the rescue and onwards to the smaller belt sander.

Nice and clean!

After spending a couple of hours trying to bend the almost 3 mm veneer it was time for some creative clamping. I'm afraid I'll have to redo the process next weekend!

[Bizman62]

I just couldn't resist, I had to find out whether the backplate has to be redone or not! It seems I got lucky this time.  No gap to be seen anywhere and the lines match. Hopefully the situation will remain after shaping and sanding.

[Andyjr1515]

I fully agree - that backplate looks good 

[Bizman62]

Today the backplate was shaped to match the headstock. I'm more or less happy with how I managed to get the stripes align, what bugs me most is the lower wing which could have used one or two strokes more with the hand plane.

 

There was a tiny gap to be filled with super glue and wood dust, nothing that could rattle or endanger structural integrity.

While scraping and shaping the headstock I also addressed the darkest edges of the body, ending up scraping and sanding the entire perimeter.

As the holes in the backplate were drilled for the clamping screws they were way too small for tuners so I used a round file to enlarge them. At the end I had to grab a drill but the file did a good job to make the drilling safer. As you can see the front side holes are smaller to fit the bushing tighter so I couldn't just drill from the front.

And finally there was just enough time to spread some finish on the body and headstock. Sanding the edge yet another time was worth the effort, I really like how the growth rings now pop, yet there's plenty of weathering left. And the backplate ties nicely with the rest: The center strip is from the same batch as the fretboard, the walnut on the sides is the same as that of the center of the neck. The cherry stripes are from the very same board.

[Andyjr1515]

Those rings are super! 

[henrim]

19 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

As you can see the front side holes are smaller to fit the bushing tighter so I couldn't just drill from the front.

I’m a bit confused here. What kind of tuners are you using? 

[Bizman62]

12 minutes ago, henrim said:

What kind of tuners are you using? 

Standard cheap tuners. The tuner housing doesn't come all the way through and there's a couple of mm's space when the bushing is screwed to the bottom. Obviously the bushing is thinner than the housing as it fits inside it.