asm

never seen any hardware made out of copper, why is that? is it because its so expensive? wonder what it sounds like.

sorry for the hijak... its this model: http://www.break-even.org/ibz78/imagesiban...la/lpf100wn.jpg but mine has the original flower engraved tailpiece and no pickguard, and the nicer transparent gold knobs. $370

www.taigtools.com is gonna be your best bet for a small mill like that to start off with. they have hand and cnc ones

thx man, much help. im being super careful now. since i tore out a bit of the body with that dang router.

any tips on how you do it blind? really dont have access to a hand held router. i was thinking of making a fence, tapping the hole, then just making light passes. but it seems pretty scarry. everyone ive seen does it with a hand router so i dont know. help plz.

ive got a 1978 ibanez LP lawsuit i'd sell. close, but not a gibson. lol.

depends on what sound your going for, and what your budget is. ive got bolivian rosewood and ebony, and the ebony is harder to cut and easier to tear out, but takes a polish way easier. you'll also usually run into more problems if using more exotic or harder wood. but for a strat i dont see whats wrong with mahogany or alder or swamp ash. how will it be finished? paint, oil, clear, ect?

i went with planet waves locking/cutting tuners. just because they are alot cleaner than all the rest, and are pretty small.

good idea, next time, in the rough areas im just gonna hand sand. lesson learned. i knew it was a nasty area to route. so i was just taking slivers off in each pass with a brand new bit. still messed up though

they were cut out on a laser cutter, but if his cad tracings were off then it throws problems. looks like all the laser stuff is right on cut. but if you try and place the top and bottom templates together, theres about a 2mm difference in sizes on spots around it. that, and the nut isnt straightly drawn edit: nooo, i know the templates didnt cause the wood to be easily tearable, i was just saying since it tore, and the templates have differences between them, that it shouldnt be a problem cause i was gonna have to retouch-match them anyways.

definately. theres only 2 ways to do it, from a solid blank or like what your doing/scarf joint. now if you were making it for a baritone or a bass, it might be iffy but that should work just fine.

holdon killer. just trying to organize these pics, descriptions of each coming right up edit: allright there you go. descriptions for each pic. whew... feel free to comment.

allright. i might make this work. good thing i cut the extra headstock blank cause i thought i could use the lam's later. so i got the idea of just using the thickness of it for the whole headstock... cut as same angle (20 degrees, yeh thats a bit steep) as the other angle since they werent perefectly flat i decided to use Smiths All Wood Epoxy from LMII so all the gaps and stuff would be filled nicely and dry fast, it mixes to a 1:1 ratio ebony dust was added to try to darken the glue line. spread out on the joint. its so hard to put a good amount of pressure down on an angled joint, it wanted to slip all around but i got it near as possible. used as many clamps as i could so hopefully press down all the not flat edges so the glue would be less obvious. *missing a pic here* i sanded down the excess of the headstock joint and it looks suprising good. sweet. glue joint isnt bad at all. looks like you laid a single black hair on the seam. and being ebony. its hardly noticible. looks like i might have saved this one :fingers crossed: ++++++++++++++++++++++ now lets get to the routing. i didnt want to tape the template to the blank like some do, due to the fact that i just about had a heart attack with the scarf joint ordeal. so im bolting it on. way i did this was like this: template was screwed down reversed and on the opposite side so i had screw hole to screw hole on the GLUE seam rather than top and bottom of body. i clamped the template to the body so it would move, then tapped 2 holes thru template and about half way in the body. since the thickest part of the carved top is in the middle, i put the two holes in the middle so there wasnt any chance of sanding thru and hitting the hole later. after tapping the holes i used little 1/4" stainless or steel screws. tried brass but almost stripped them in the body. make sure to use a hard metal like stainless and a nice sharp edged phillips screwdriver. no power tools. last thing you want to do is suck the screw down with a power driver and put a huge crack down your body or top blank. thus reason for tapping first. i put a little liquid soap on the screw thread so it would cause less friction and go in smoother. i used screws like this: so i could get a nice flat top and would suck down in the material and be easy to get even. so after tapping i picked a larger drill bit and tapped the same hole just a bit so the head would sit down flat. after screwing down if you feel any raised area, you can sand it with a large file. so now you can put your template on a router table and not worry about it moving or not being flat. made a little saftey hand guard. since the bit is 1 1/2" template bit i didnt feel like loosing 3 of my fingers. great, i was going real slow with the cutting, taking off about 1/32" in each pass. just barely shaving it off. but with this ebony it has some KILLER grain patterns and can really sneak up on you quickly. even going so slow i had some grain come up that was being pushed into the opposite direction of the router bit rotation. it started flaking off and then it grabbed a hard piece of grain, pulled it up and into the bit before i could react. so this happens.... not as bad as it looks. thanks to guitarbuildingtemplates.com patterns being shady as crap . looks like ill be sanding the top and body alot to get them even. so i think i can sand this out.

pushing this thin of a board thru a planer is on the edge of sketchy. but i dont have a jointer or a big enough hand plane. so i just took light passes and was patient.. glue joint looks alot better than i thought it would, sanded down real nice, so far so good. width is planed down, i marked on the board where i felt the high spots were, so when the marks got planed off i knew it was getting real near flat so i didnt accidentally take to much off. next up is the scarf joint. i wish i could have had a solid block to carve out of, but it was expenisve enough allready. marked 13 degrees on the board, and then made a 13 degree angle fence on the base of the circular saw. i chose the circular saw because i thought the thickness of the blade would flex the least and i would be moving the blade instead of the material so maybe i could get a higher tolerance.... WRONG. here comes the problems i even had a adjacent fence to hold a large amount of pressure so nothing would move. *** somethign obviously wasnt straight. what am i gonna do now. :cry: (this is after being sanded a bit so it looked ALOT worse than this. if thats possible

allright. now were rolling, this thing is starting to come together... heres the bolivian rosewood top, the top pink mark is the body outline, just trying to make the grain line up as good with the body lines as possible. also there is the matching headstock laminate. macassar ebony body and an extra headstock laminate material. good thing i made this as you will see later. "waste" of the body is trimmed away with the bandsaw. trick is to use a small, high teeth per inch blade so you can make a clean cut and the small blade is easier to make curves with. ebony body trimmed top trimmed out. the neck pocket area was left untouched so i can have a nice flat surface to put my neck pocket template flat on. ebony headstock trimmed rosewood headstock trimmed and thats the neck heel block in the bottom of the pic lookin good! heres how the neck is gonna be layed out. the extra space on the left is for the heel/tenon joint. neck block has been glued up using titebond. coming up next is planing of neck blank...

do a search for it. alot of people post this. i think most do it after, and use a dremel tool and the stewmac small router base so the carve doenst affect the cutting depth.

if youve got a lot to carve away. you can get a 1/2" or near forstner bit and plunge out alot of the excess waste so you get a rough 3d shape of your carve top, then do the rest with hand and scrapers

natural binding is when the binding strip is masked off, then the top is dyed. so it keeps all the grain lines continuous but you have natural wood binding

i agree with mzi. table saws=pain. seriously you could get MAJOR injuries from a table saw and with a bandsaw the worst you would do is either stick your finger in the blade or if you try to turn the wood to much or to fast just break a blade.

i kind of like the look of the sanded thru part. do the rest of the body like that and have a nice metallic transparent blue finish. i bet it would look real nice.

im using a 12" bandsaw right now. just shy wide enough to turn my whole body around in it (13" wide body arrrg). and the bandsaw is easily my fave tool in the shop. pretty dang safe, cuts fast and not to bad learning curve. what type of wood are you going to be using? www.grizzly.com has some pretty good deals i bet. how much do you have to spend?

thats some pretty sketchy construction there. just go spend the 15$ and buy yourself a good one to start off with. same reason i just bought a pre slotted/ pre radiused fretboard. SCREW all that "making everythin yourself" crap. im building a custom bridge setup in SolidWorks so ive got my fill of making stuff. and i do NOT see the point of trying to do by hand with a pull saw and miter box for *hours* of work to what a cnc can do in 10 min. especially on your first guitar. you should just be getting basics of shaping body/routing down. leave all the precise complicated stuff for later to experiment with. trust me, its gonna take long enough allready. dont worry about that

monkey, any 'cnc' thats made to do stuff 4x4' isnt going to be extremely accurate and for the money youll spend on that it would prolly be easier to make a copy carver. now if you want to mill small metal parts then a small scale cnc is the only route. stepper motors are high torque (the higher the NEMA number the larger/more powerful it is, average NEMA size motor i see is 20-35) very small increment revolution motors. way different then usual ones.

ive seen complete bed units of x/y axis on ebay. more costly, but you dont have to worry about backlash problems and building the whole movement system

word and id go with one of those jacks/strap button combos. dont know if you have to drill a bigger hole. or if its hollowed out. check into it