Leaderboard

No problems about hijacking. Communication is what forums are all about. Wait and see . . . won't be long.

I test fitted the pots and switch and found that the top at 6.3mm was too thick. So I routed the control area to 4mm thick from the back. The drop-top was glued onto the body and trimmed flush but I seem to have forgotten to take any photos. This happens from time to time. I just get involved with what I’m doing and forget about the photos. Anyway, it's beginning to look like a guitar. I wanted to leave the top its natural colour so I decided to bind the front rather than leave ‘nekkid’ and I thought I ought to do that before finishing the back. Trouble is, I didn’t want to use plastic binding and bending the E.I.Rosewood I have is a bit of a problem. I have a home-made 'Fox'-type bender but the Tele shape doesn't really lend itself to that, and I don't have a bending iron. I have a piece of steel tube about 3" diameter with a halogen bulb inside it, but that's no good for the tight curves on a Tele. So, lacking a suitable bending iron, I decided to try a different method. I’ve bent smaller bits of binding, for head plates by dropping the piece of binding in boiling water for a few minutes and then sandwiching it between two forms and drying it out quickly in a low oven. Like this The binding kept its shape perfectly and finished up like this. I had to make two jigs, one for the treble side and one for the bass. This is the one for the treble side in its open position. Here it’s closed. The centre section gets pressed down first, then the ‘horn and the lower bout. The centre and lower bout are common to both jigs. This photo was taken before I re-worked the inside form to allow for the thickness of the binding. I painted the binding with ‘Supersoft 2’ and wrapped it in cling-film overnight. The next day I found a piece of copper pipe with a cap on one end, slid the piece of binding into it and filled it with boiling water. I left it in there for about 15 minutes changing the water a couple of times. Then took it out, placed it on the former and clamped it to death. This was the bass side. Once clamped, I warmed the whole thing up with a heat gun and then sat it on a radiator and left it overnight (it wouldn’t fit in the oven). It seems to have worked. There was a fair bit of spring-back but it’s easily pushed into the right shape. I left them on the formers until I installed them. You may have noticed there’s a third piece of binding. I’ll explain what that’s for later.

Well I got the last lamination on the mold, I ended up flush trimming the last couple with the plunge router from above, this thing has acquired quite a bit of mass and harder to slide around so I was getting concerned about pushing against the little makita trimmer in my makeshift router table. I made the template for the centre press block thingy bigger. It's now 120mm wide giving me a bit more contact area at the waist. I made it out of lams of waste 9mm ply that I had, glueing and screwing then flush trimming one at a time. I used up the 9mm because holding this little block of wood up to the router table was fairly scary and I didn't want to try taking too much in a single pass with my fingers that close to the bit. Highly tedious though with 17 pieces! The centre strip that I inlayed is an ebony offcut from a fretboard, it will serve as an alignment rod to make sure it is screwed down square during the bending process. I was about to route the channel for it and realised there is a (albeit small) possibility that I might hit one of the many screws that are in that block, decided that I'd rather ruin a chisel than risk hitting one of those screws with a router bit. so I used a 6mm chisel to hog out most of it, then the mini router plane to tidy it up - I got that very recently, it works amazingly well if you need to make a truss rod channel a hair deeper. Fortunately no hand tools were harmed in the making of this channel. You can see in the close up pick below that it looks like the centre section doesn't fit properly, that's because the shape is 4mm larger than the inner mold to account for the width of the side, the two pieces of spring steel and the heat blanket, hopefully that's going to work out. Next thing will be the frame but I think I'm going to wait until the heat blanket and press screw have arrived so I can be sure on dimensions..

Now it’s ready for the rest of the binding. The treble side is straightforward, but the bass side binding has to be pushed down in the bevel area, so reducing it in height to about 2 mm in that area helps it to bend. The rebate is cut so that, when the binding is installed, it will be a little proud of the top surface and the sides. It’s easier to scrape the binding flush with the top and sides than the top and sides flush with the binding. I now have to shave the corner off to form the bevel. This left a couple of triangular grooves which I filled with two strips softwood. I’ve only done one bevel like this before, on an OM, and I didn’t trust myself to cut it with a spokeshave and keep a constant 45° angle all the way round. So I took most of it off with the spokeshave and then finished off with this sanding contraption. After sanding, the bevel looks like this. You can see the upper softwood filler. The lower one has almost gone.

I can now install the purfling, but I can’t install the binding at the same time. I do it a little at a time, holding it in place and applying a drop of water-thin CA and trying not to glue my fingers to it. Should have taken photos but . . . The third piece of binding goes on first. It covers the length of the bevel. It’s not as deep as the rest of the binding, it’s the same depth as the purfling. I take most of the surplus height off with a little block plane and finish off flush with the top with a cabinet scraper. Now I run the router round this area again, as if I were routing for the binding, which tapers off the ends of the bevel top binding. Just as the binding rebate had to be widened on the top, in the area of the bevel, it also has to be deepened in the side by an equivalent amount. I haven’t been able to think of a way of doing that with a router, so I have to resort to craft knives, chisels and patience.

So here's the proof of the tests. The top one is the lower percentage of glow pigment, the lower was something like 50%. Note the pinholes in the surface that ended up capturing some of the dust from filing/sanding back. It seems like 30% is the mark to hit. (edit for clarification, or at least bringing the test results together) The epoxy to pigment ratio is a band that seems to top out around 30%, and the band itself is dependent on how deeply the epoxy is being cast. The more epoxy and less pigment, the higher the likelihood that the pigment will crash out and the deeper it can sink. The lower strata of the epoxy will end up with a far higher ratio of pigment than the original mix and would resemble the lower sample if you cut that far back into the epoxy. Higher ratios reduce the amount of pigment crashing, but introduce new problems; pinhole bubbles not migrating through and out of the casting adequately due to higher viscosity or shear tension, and surface pigment causing a poor finish when cut back. The poor surface finish of exposed cut pigment grains is likely less of an issue if the final piece is being clearcoated. This would effectively "resubmerge" the surface grains and makes the finished item look as though there is the bare minimum of epoxy over the glow pigment. If anything, this would produce the strongest and most visible glow, plus the easiest to charge. The pinholes are far more problematic in that sanding dust or other fine debris can be impossible to remove. I haven't got compressed air to try and blast the stuff out same as most, so it has to be taken that this is maybe not achievable. If it were, and a clearcoat could fill those up, that would be the high standard of glow power and maybe through-consistency. Eliminating bubbles seems to be the absolute decider here for clearcoated items. For exposed castings, the right ratio of pigment to epoxy with normal heat bubble elimination. In principle this would mean that I could try the original binding and detail ideas that require deeper castings using more viscous epoxy and higher fractions of glow pigment, however there would be a very significant increase in trapped bubbles that would require pressure to crush. Vacuum elimination would disrupt any homogeneity within the epoxy/pigment mix, increasing crashing, pushing epoxy out of the cast with bubbles or at the very least reducing consistency within the casting. It would also require a not-insignificant amount of epoxy, pigment and equipment to achieve, if it could be achieved at all.

Had a wood delivery the other day, including my spruce bracing stock, African ebony fretboards, head plates and bridge blanks, also a couple of more tops, a german spruce and a sitka spruce. None of the above is particularly expensive wood. e.g the tops were around £15 each, bridge blanks £2 a go, head plates £2.80 and fret boards £8.50. But all good quality for the price, no defects, I've used a few of their fretboards now and can't fault them so highly recommend Maderas Barber for acoustic stuff, their electric tops and body blanks are a bit of a rip off IMO. The brace wood was nice and dry so after the better part of a week I started cutting some of it up to make my braces for the limba build. When I cut the lap joint for the x brace this time, I followed the Driftwood guitars method - marked them out against the template aligned them together in the vice and cut them both at the same time. The resulted joint was much better than the last - fitted together perfectly with no play and lined up with the template perfectly, Also cut up one of the face plates to make the bridge reinforcement. Cut to 2.5mm then radiused on the deck. Got that glued in at the same time as the x brace. My stewmac order hasn't arrived yet so I'm still waiting on the extra ebony binding which is holding up the walnut build.

A bit like Mad-die.

Hope you don't mind me dragging this subject up again. I just thought you might like to know that the French have a wonderful, even romantic, name for it. 'Le ciel de l'ébéniste' or 'The cabinet maker's sky'. Apparently they often wedged the bars between the workpiece and the ceiling. Another thing about go-bars. You'd think that the more they are bent, the more pressure they apply. But apparently they don't. Some years ago Hesh Breakstone on the OLF forum experimented by installing a go-bar on a kitchen scale and compressing by different amounts and however much the bar was bent, the pressure stayed the same. I suppose a structural engineer would tell you why.

Dyed and 1st coat of poly

Thank you for your kind words! I have to confess to you and Bizman at first I was making a bit of a joke. The back will be stunning when lacquered but being inside you will never see it LOL. But taking it seriously I think lacquering outside and inside would hamper resonance so using oil is a great idea, cheers! I do think I will have the same problem with cracking in the finish. Both semi's I've built have lots of cracks and the first one has a Qld Maple top While I'm working on it I get really carried away making corners round and so forth and I keep thinking "why not go all the way and make it fully accoustic?" But I'm sticking to the plan for the time being, its a hybrid. I'm experimenting with construction and learning from the previous build (the ES) For example instead of having a block inside like most semi-accoustics, the top is its own block and also the way I've sunk it into the sides it is its own kerfings. I saw a video recently where I think someone else has the same idea - huh! I've got an LR Baggs T-Bridge on its way for this one so I'm hoping to get some truly accoustic sounds as well as fully adjustable intonation

Looks like either the springs are too loose or weak, or the six screws on top are too tight. If you can't push it down with your hand it's the latter. Measure... To avoid redrilling the holes you need to know the diameter and length of the string capstans so they'll fit into the original capstan bushings - or you'll also need to know the outer diameter and length of the bushings so they'll fit the existing holes. And then you need to know the size of the tuner housing so they'll match the spacing. Your photos don't show how the tuners are attached but I assume there's a screw or two. You may be able to find a matching set but if the only issue is misplaced screw holes, filling them and drilling new ones is no big issue. Gotoh, Kluson and Wilkinson among others make decent priced good quality sets, I'd say for non-locking tuners the price range for a decent quality set is about $30-40, premium quality being double or triple of that and most likely overkill for that guitar. The type of tuners you need is 6L meaning 6 in line on the left side looking from the top.

How do I say this gently? Pretend I'm whispering maybe... I would never use Tru-Oil sandwiched in there the way you did. There's no reason to have it there, its not buying you anything and can 'retard' the dye from 'popping' like it could under straight lacquer. And can cause adhesion problems if not properly scratch-sanded or if not allowed to 100% cure before lacquer. If I were to ever do that, I'd be waiting two weeks dead-minimum between oil and lacquer application to allow the oil to 100% cure first. And I do mean 100%. Make that 110% fully cured with no possibility of it not being fully cured before lacquer (if it were mine). It's just not worth it, there's absolutely zero to be gained by using it in this type of application and several risks that aren't necessary. One of which is your dye doing weird shit on you because its reacting to an oil and not a lacquer, and there is usually a difference in reactions. PS, There's no yellowing due to 3-4 coats of lacquer, that the naked eye could ever see.

Did that heart appear accidentally? No matter either way, I you too!

I don't entirely have a lot of faith in the term "sustainable woods" either to be fair. They have to grow somewhere, and often they're still modifying local microclimates or displacing other species. "Sustainable" and "zero impact" are very different terms. I can't see how anybody might be offended by a simple admission of honesty and realisation of the impact building anything from wood. It looks like Sapele (only "Mahogany" by name) to me because of the ribboning. If it is in fact a Swietenia Mahogany then it isn't extinct as such, only "commercially" extinct. It's available, but not in the same constant supply as how one would expect. Reuse and repurposing is an admirable way of sourcing material, and often it's better by the age of provenance anyway.

Some Fear Factory nostalgia to celebrate completion. https://soundcloud.com/nakedzen/lumiaalto-004-fear-factory

Thanks Bizman62 for the info that I will look at with great attention ! Great News! I was able to get my old B-Band working again. It was the flexible PCB connector ground contact that was faulty after all. However, the gain on this piezo pickup element is not the greatest and an annoying 60 Hz buzz can be heard when we crank it up. But when I touch the metal of the 1/4" jack, it gets super quiet. Humm... So... I first made a ground cable that connects the 1/4" jack to me (soldered to a copper penny I tuck in my shorts, behind my belt against my skin, But that is a pain, one wire too many! But it works great. I then made a ground cable that connects the amp end of the 1/4" jack to terra firma (the ground wire plugs into the wall receptacle no less, with two plastic dummy prongs for the mains. with no chance of electruction like Marty McFly What can I say? Hell, it works and the sound is cristal clear with no noise whatsoever. Paul.

I've only done it once before Ash (on an OM) but I did it exactly the same way. After all, the area of the bevel on an acoustic is 'solid'. I asked a lot of questions on other forums and received a lot of help and advice, particularly from Steve Kinnaird. I've always been amazed by the generosity of some professional luthiers in freely sharing information. When I built the OM I cheekily wrote to two pros who use a slightly different bracing pattern to what's accepted as 'standard', asking if they would share information on dimensions, etc. They both said 'sure, what would you like to know?'. One even sent me a full size hand-drawn plan. These were guys whos base price started at $6000.

Exactly what I was going for!

Heat blanket arrived today, still waiting on the spring steel and the press screw to complete the bending machine. But obviously I couldn't resist having a bit of a play this evening. I spritzed a bit of the walnut binding I made with a bit of water, switched the blanket controller to 100ºC and OMG that was so easy, after maybe 20 seconds of holding it in place, I clamped the centre block down and it just bent perfectly. Stuck a bar clamp on each end to told it on to the form, left the blanket on for 5 minutes before stitching it all off. Took it out after about another 30 mins and this is what it looked like. Bit of spring back but not a lot, I can hold it against my sides and it conforms pretty much perfectly. I did a bit of radiusing of the top of the sides for the limba build, Following the driftwood method - I folded a piece of paper a few times and placed it under the heel block to prevent sanding the front so I can keep that area flat. It was quite a slow processes sanding the solid area of the arm bevel and I had to be careful how I applied pressure to prevent the other side disappearing, spent about 20 minutes and got bored, it's about 2/3 of the way there. Back to bracing the top, got the rest stuck on apart from the sound hole reinforcements and did a bit of carving. The tone bars and the wings were a doddle to cave but the x braces are not proving to be as much fun. Weird because it's nicely quartersawn with uniform straight grain but they really don't want to be carved. Those little ebony pieces you can see off to one side are offcuts from the bridge plate, they're 2.5mm thick and I'm using them as a guide so when I taper down with the chisel at the ends of the braces, the bevel of the chisel rides along those and I know I need to notch the sides out to 2.5mm at the braces. With any luck the other bits of the deck and the ebony strips will arrive tomorrow or sat, otherwise I'll carrying on with the top.

I've got the tape off the sides, got most of the sanding of the sides done, but couldn't resist doing a mock up, so threw some tru oil on the sides and put all the hardware in place

Very cool! As it happens, I just finished up the logo for my own supertstrat today. 8-bit snow

Lumiaaalto! Very funny, as I call my Lumi also haha We (used to) get a lot of that shit falling out of the sky, so always good to try and love the stuff right?

It makes noise! A small blind test, guess which is which? Lumiaalto build #001, bolt-on telecaster with EMG's, ash body, maple neck Lumiaalto build #004, bolt-on strat with EMG's, ash body, flame maple top, maple neck, ebony top. ESP Stef B7, neckthrough 7-string with EMG's, alder body, maple neck.

Such lovely pieces of art! Back in the early days of TV they would have looked very strange on the black and white screen... Fortunately the image quality has improved from those days so we can enjoy watching any colour schemes on a guitar!

It was based on the original Kala Ubass. Scale length is 520mm. It has the same piezo bridge pickup as the original Kalas (Shadow, I think but no longer available) but a good alternative is the K&K acoustic bass guitar pickup. It's shown with polyurethane strings which probably sound most like an upright bass, but they have their drawbacks. They stretch and feel peculiar under the fingers. I've since changed them for Galli nylon wound which I really like. https://www.stringsbymail.com/galli-uxb810-black-nylon-round-wound-ukulele-bass-strings-20-5-scale-22016.html Galli also do flat wound chrome steel which are really nice but really expensive. https://www.stringsbymail.com/galli-ka-bass-4fw-chrome-steel-flat-wound-ukulele-bass-20-5-scale-22899.html I think the polyurethane strings give the nearest to an upright sound. There are hundreds of videos on YouTube.

On the contrary! Although I could find the origin of the name which also led to an old drawing showing a pole between the workpiece and the ceiling, it's always nice to hear a verifying comment. The current version obviously is just an attempt to make the thing portable so you can use the best lit workplace for other purposes while the glue dries. The pressure being stabile was new to me. Very useful information! That means that it's more about the amount of rods instead of how much they've been bent. Hmmm... I guess that there may be a point right before cracking where the bent rods have more power and that if you could keep the rods dead straight you could adjust the pressure by lowering the top. Of course the latter would be easier just by using sturdier poles instead of flexible rods. And of course those sturdy poles should be trimmed to exact length to match the object to be glued. Flexibility is the key here! Thanks for delaying my dementia by offering this meal of food for thought!

If Glad-ys looks so sad, how would Sad-ie look?

With the neck timbers having arrived, they have been joined up which means that most of the major structural components are now ready for their respective further stages of work: There are a myriad of small jobs on each, plus a few big and scary ones! The first falls into the small jobs category - fitting the cutaway sides. One is gluing: While the other one is glued and the excess removed. At some stage, the bottom edge will be routed for some maple binding to be fitted. Now that will be scary...

Hm! No flies on you Mister @Prostheta ! B But I'm afraid I don't have a spare Telecaster at the moment .

I’m putting a white/black purfling on the top so I need to route for that first. As I’m going to carve a ‘comfort curve’ into the back, it would be nice to make a Strat-type ‘arm-rest’ curve on the top, but that gets complicated with a drop-top. I know some do it and carve through the drop-top, but I’m not keen on that look and anyway, what’s the point of having a beautiful top and carving a great lump of it off ? Some carve the body before adding the top and bend the top onto the body, but I’ve never tried that and I don’t want to try it here and risk ruining the top. So I decided to try to do an acoustic guitar type of arm bevel, which means routing a second purfling rebate on the top. That’s where the extra piece of binding comes in. The former for bending that extra piece also serves as a routing template. Then I route for the binding. In the past, I’ve made the mistake of routing for the purfling and installing it before routing for the binding. This turned out to be a mistake because, as hard as I tried, I didn’t get the purfling glued in perfectly so as to leave a ledge exactly the same width to be routed off for the binding. So when I routed for the binding, the cutter took off some of the purfling in places. Take 0.2 mm off a white strip that’s only 0.5 mm wide and the result stands out like a sore thumb. On the other hand, if a 1.5 mm thick binding is only 1.3 mm thick in places, it’s far less noticeable.

I would never do it, but if you've got experience with it with repeated success, Carry On then!

Moving on, nearing the finish on build #004. Neck stained and oiled, binding scraped. Shielding done, nut filed. First \m/ metal test done! Still need to level the frets, crown, dress and polish. Then onto the green strat build.

for what it's worth... hook, line and sinker.

on both... did one light layer of tru oil then lacquer. tru oil contributed some yellow, nitro lacquer contributed even more. The light/flash is contributing in addition. The difference between the two is just down to the wood. the flamed maple was a very white wood, while the quilt was much more tan/pink.

Have you put anything else on those other than the lacquer? They were baby blue like the jeans of my teen years, now one is grassy green and the other like juniper needles! Or is it just a different lighting?

Shiny? I suppose it would do no harm, actually on the contrary if you have a similar protecting coat on both sides. Then again if warping due to different moisture absorbtion on the sides was an issue every hollow guitar would have clearcoat both on the inside and outside. Then again laminate table tops made of chipboard tend to have at least some thick paper glued on the hidden side to prevent warping. Maybe it's because a) the board is thick and b) the laminate is also thick. Chipboard swells a lot when exposed to moisture. - I wonder how a solid body guitar would behave if only the top and sides were finished?

Got a bit more done today, and then the phone rang so I will be busy working for the rest of the week I scooped the top out behind the tailpiece and finished shaping the back Routered out the love heart then went round the edge freehand... This Turboplane is pretty aggressive, it could do with some type of depth gauge. Could very easily ruin many hours of work It seems like everything I do lately is "on the edge" What would it be like if I lacquered the inside?

sort of hard to believe how different these are given they both used the sm dye mix. also hard to believe I used an entire quart of lacquer only doing 4 or so coats. Need to order more... anywho, minor update.

T+14 - fine bubbles are still emerging, pigment is noticeably settling in the warmed epoxy with a clearer layer being visible on the surface. Tests allow me to work outside of the recommended ratios of epoxy to pigment to see how this affects things. This is maybe 50% pigment to epoxy, much more than the 30% in normal guidance. It's also worth noting that these tests are being done with an aqua pigment (M-JNW450) to save the green pigment.

Speaking of mistakes . . . Moving on to the drop-top. I got this about 10 years ago from Fraser Valley Fine Woods which doesn’t seem to exist anymore, and it’s been waiting for an appropriate project. It was quite cheap, even then, and they were offering free postage on some items. This might have been because the dark spots you can see are actually holes, but I think that, if I’m very careful I can get the Tele top out of it and leave all the holes in the off-cuts. Gluing the two halves of the top together. This is the way I’ve done it for acoustic tops and backs. The two halves are face down. Sometimes the two halves aren’t exactly the same thickness or they aren’t perfectly flat. The go-bars ensure that the outside face is aligned and any difference in thickness, etc. is on the inside. The less I have to sand off the outside, the better, as the more I sand off, the further away from a perfect book-match it will be. I thought about making a template for routing the cut-outs in the top for the pickups, but then came to my senses. One can become a bit obsessed by making templates, so I drilled 16 holes, joined them up with the jigsaw and cleaned them up with sanding sticks. They might not be CNC perfect, but they’re pretty close and they’ll be covered by pickup rings. I decided to drill the holes for the pots and switch before gluing the top to the body, which turned out to be a lucky decision. I used an ordinary drill bit for the two 8mm holes for the pots and didn’t clamp it down and it wandered quite badly. It probably wasn’t as sharp as I thought it was and the very curly grain threw it off centre so the holes were obviously out of line. I should have used a brad-point bit and clamped the top down. I have a small hobby milling machine, so I clamped the top on the machine table and milled two 12mm holes where the 8mm ones should have been. I then plugged the two holes and re-drilled the 8mm hole with a milling cutter. The plugs aren’t invisible, but they’ll be hidden behind the control knobs. What was that about a craftsman hiding his mistakes?

I often rough in the radius with a large hand plane which saves quite a bit of time (a no6 plane is a good size) and finish off with a radius block. Lately I've also tried clamping a long radius beam into the vice and taking the neck (with fretboard already glued on) and running that over the radius beam which works out a lot faster than a shorter block over the fretboard. Generally the longer the beam, the more accurate and faster the job is.

The original photos paired with those should be mandatory to all teenage girls to study! There's too many of those suffering from self-esteem issues for trying to look like the people on the Internet!

No worries, you and everyone are welcome to ask any questions. The answer is simply every now and again I like getting out in the open air and shaping wood using hand tools. A little 7 mm strip is nothing, except for the edge roundover, the entire periphery of this guitar body was shaped by hand, no template, no router. Try it sometime, so relaxing actually feeling the the guitar take shape, this is why I am so envious of Scott's awesome skill with the chisels. Got this close to flush today Next the edges get sanded perfectly straight and flush on glass Good news for us in lockdown in Sydney, our state premier Gladys Berejiklian and Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant are easing restrictions for double vaxed people. This is Gladys and Kerry after an Instagram makeover. That agave is nice isn't it, it's an old and big one, I have got some younger ones propagating, I hope you can get your garden going, have you tried agapanthus? It's very hardy. I got some time on the banana lounge this afternoon, this was one of the songs on my play list. it rocks

As I’d gone to the trouble of installing hardwood dowels for the strap button screws, I thought I’d better drill pilot holes whilst I could still see where they were. The small block of MDF has a hole drilled in it on the drill press so it’s perpendicular to the surface. It serves as a rough guide when drilling the holes in the body. The EMGs are active pickups and need a battery. I prefer a battery box rather than putting it in the control cavity. It’s much easier to change a battery and avoids any chance of damaging the wiring when changing it. It also means that, in theory, the control cover never needs to come off. But the box needs a hole.

I really thought I had started a build log here for this. I have had the bug for a long time and I knew that just jumping in with both feet would have resulted in something that would have turned me off completely My nature is to read read read then multiply that 100 times until I can see myself walking through the complete process flawlessly in my head This way, if things go awry, I’ll already understand how to solve the error so having to ask questions in a last ditch effort. That isn’t to say this was a flawless build I had some difficulties and the final product isn’t perfect one big problem was the result of an issue I had with the plans I had posted about before, and another was the way I set the neck angle Another annoying but had to live with it was the use of Katalox for the headstock face Let’s say I’ll never use that wood again Otherwise it was a very enjoyable build using non-standard wood which turned out super stable and thinking I have a great economical alternative to typical woods used to build guitars. I am not 100% complete, but am at the punch list stage if you understand the terminology. Essentially what’s left are minor cosmetic details. I’ve posted the three most recent photos, ill post build photos once I can sort them into their own folder on my end for ease of acquisition.

I made another template for the pickup cavities but out of 19 mm MDF as it meant I didn’t have to change router cutters and after hogging out and cleaning up, it looked like this. Spanish cedar is quite soft and screwing into end-grain isn’t a very good idea, so, where the strap buttons will be, I drilled holes and glued in hardwood dowels to give the screws something to bite on I ought to explain that I know next to nothing about pickups. I made my first bass in 2002 and put EMG active JB pickups in it and liked the sound it made. I also liked the fact that they came with volume and tone pots, a jack socket and plug-in wiring. I can now get them post-free from Thomann in Germany so I decided to put EMGs in this guitar. Oh, and my hero bass player Leland Sklar has EMGs in his Frankenstein bass. If, by any chance, you don’t know who Lee Sklar is, look him up on Wikipedia. The list of people on whose records he’s played is mind boggling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leland_Sklar I meant to drill the hole for the jack socket before routing the cavities (to avoid it making a mess where it breaks through) and then fit a temporary plug so the bearing on the router cutter doesn’t fall into the hole when rounding over the body (been there, done that !). So I had to make a caul for the cavity and did that next. It looks a bit precarious, but I managed it without any disasters. It’s a counterbored hole for an electrosocket and the plug is held in place by a little caul and a woodscrew. With the template back in place, I can trim the outside to the finished profile on the make-shift router table. This body might finish up very slightly smaller than it should be, as even this brand new cutter isn’t leaving a perfect surface. It’s going to need some sanding.

Bit more progress. I thinned down the walnut for the backs and sides down to acoustic guitar levels - around 1.9mm The long-reach calliper I had was difficult to use because of the flat pads - it meant that it was only accurate if the wood was completely still and dead level...not easy when it's a large sheet of walnut in one hand and the calliper in the other! I rummaged around my 'general bits that might come in handy one day' box and found these from a set of old mirror fixing screws: Ideal. I ground out the centre screw, got out the epoxy and problem solved Without access to a sander-thicknesser, I always struggle getting sheet down from the supplied 3.5mm down to the 1.9mm. However, the last few times, I've found the easiest way is using my block plane (don't know why, but much more effective for this than my other planes) and then levelling it all out with the Mirka: For the sides, like on an acoustic, I find it easier to pre-cut the unintuitive shape of the bottom edge. I made a card-paper template first from its position in the radius dish: Transferred that shape to the sides blank: And then started bending: After sitting in the mould overnight to fully dry (which helps to avoid the bent wood to relax) I have a bent side... ...and a florentine end cap: The cap will be cut to size and fitted after assembly of the topless box. I will be cutting a piece of swamp ash or similar as a shaped front block to support the florentine and the cap will be fitted to, hopefully, have a nicely fitting and decorative - but not structural - function. I'm growing in confidence that this method might actually work!

I'm 5/6ths done carving the back braces. Like the mahogany sides of the wings, the bottom faces of these will be curved to fit the radius of the dish in their respective positions. Using a jig called a go-bar deck, I will use these, glued on their bottom faces, to force the walnut into the curve of the radius dish

There's some pretty impressive grain-matching there! I play the sax and "occasionally" ( ) hit a bum note. The trick is to then hit the same bum note in the same place from then on in the number and everyone thinks it's Jazz. Along the same lines, if I have to put a 'fix' in to fill the result of an errant router or chisel, I sometimes add a matching one on the other side to make it look like it was meant to be there