asm

i thought it turned the two rods in either cw or ccw motion. and having the two movement points on each end of the board, during movement, would 'twist' the neck in the desired direction.

so what exactly is vert movement doing???

hey, when i was messing around with the rod in the channel, upon turning it would do less side to side straightening and more of a spreading of the rods vertically.

ive seen a few old acoustics or archtops where the rod busted thru the fretboard. getting kinda scared here.

or am i just paranoid?

so my first question is about the wood, i know i can buy blanks etc, but im on a really tight budget, so for the sake of scavenging, is there any "around the house" wood's that i can build a body out of? im really not looking for this to come out perfect, im just wanting to see weather i can do it. or any cheap woods or anything you guys can recommend?

second is that the bc rich warlock has contours (i think, from photos?) is this just a case of cutting the body out thick (ie. one big chunk of wood) and sanding down contours to comfort?

probally the most troubling question i have is another thing on the placements, should i work of a "center line"? by this i mean, on my chosen peice of wood, do i draw a center line on it then work from that? so for example say the pickup is 6" do i put it in the center so it has 3" either side of the middle line? same with the bridge etc?

hope that made sense, thx for all the help

lecompt.

piece of advice about the wood.

you can either go to home depot and get pine or poplar or the like for about 20.... and it will LOOK like you made it out of pine. or you could get on ebay, and find some mahogany, alder, swamp ash, lightly figured maple, ect. and pay 20-50$ for it and have a NICE looking body.

so, its up to you. but i went for about 250$ for my first guitars wood. and its going just fine. glad i didnt screw around with some cheap wood. just take your time and you wont mess it up.

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you can either do a flat top or a carved top. usually on carved tops its a seperate piece of higher grade wood.

of course it will take more time, skill to do any carving but it depends on you if you think you can do it.

if you decide to do a carved top you'll have to compensate that height of carving in the purchase of your wood, or buy another piece and glue it to your body and carve from that.

----

for me i always work from a center line. to me it's easier to keep track of the measurement and you normally never cut away your reference lines. helps when the object your working with is symetrical like a guitar, instead of a freeform sculpture or something.

nice work dave!

how do you like the 6100 frets?

thanks wes.

i actually siliconed it in there. so its nice and flat and suspended in silicone.

but seriously, do i even need a neck made out of ebony, 2 graphite support rods, AND a truss rod? id rather not have a truss rod if i didnt have to.

could it be a problem down the line maybe?

rhoads56 (ormsby guitars) is in australia, if your that desperate for wood, maybe he can sell you some of his stock?

PM him and find out. he has some really nice stuff. however, i dont know if its for sale.

ps- i agree, i didnt even bother joining mimf, just a bunch of old traditional guys that are stuck on their ways and can be serious a$$es at times.

also, their forums look like it's stuck in the 80's. really not fun to sit and sort thru all the stuff.

and heres a few visual refs

yeh, i know thats my problem. didnt do it correctly. would have been best to make a jig then pass perpendicular with the nut with a 7/32" flat router bit for the channel.

but nooo. i had to make the line, then hold it against the bandsaw to cut down for the depth, then sand the rest to that depth line.

man, now looking back i cant believe i did that.

neck volute roughed carved by hand tools. i used a small curved blade to help not take to much material off and still be detailed.

rough sanded, neck joint dissapeared. which is really nice not to have to worry about.

rough back carved shape and volute. next i have to figure out how the joint is going to fit in the body. so the block area will be cut and shaped, another few inches of radiused carved neck back.

also have to take a little off of the back of the headstock around the nut end. will try to incorp that into the volute valley... stay tuned.

wow, that glue line turned out alot better than i thought. looks real nice. blends in so beautifully, looks so great i think ill cover it up with binding.

another angle from the headstock...

made a little elevated neck holder, using 2 of the radius blocks i made to hold it flat.

i had a Shurform laying around i never used for another project. tested it out to give it a try and it worked amazingly great. just like a cheese grater, pulled the ebony off evenly in nice slivers.

heres a couple shots of the neck in progress. i turned the neck around when doing the other side. so i would get the same body movement while carving so it would be nearly even.

havent started work on the scarf joint volute just yet...

allright, back to work...

heres the neck glued up. i used my radius sanding block as a clamp, then made up a few other small ones out of scrap, and then made a ghetto radius on them with the end of the belt sander. just needed a bit of radius, so when i clamp i could get a little better pressure evenly since the board is allready radiused.

heres a close up of the glue line dried. i was getting worried here for a bit, since i didnt use much glue cause i didnt want it running in the truss rod channel. thought that it might not be glued down on the edges of some random spots... we'll see in a bit.

i keep having problems with getting the nut channel flat, been probably one of the hardest things for me so far during construction, and i just keep getting deeper and deeper in the channel. but im pretty sure i got it flat this time. this isnt final sanded though, just rough felt out.

excess of fretboard and neck width cut out on the bandsaw. still a 1/16th or so from the final shape all the way around, was just trying to get a halfway decent straight line on it... starting to look pretty hot

has anyone seen a pickup wiring setup that wasnt soldered in? like having easily changeable pickups that you didnt have to resolder in?

its late and im tired. sorry if this doesnt make much sense.

thanks

t

nice pics drak.

couple more questions...

what did you final sand with before you shot?

was that body around about 300?

wow. i thought that cocobolo V was a veneer top. sorry.

even nicer. do you have any bigger pics of it? all i saw was on the GOTM frontpage.

also, can you tell me a little more about your finish, like what brand, ect.

did you shoot it yourself? how long did the actual process take of doing the lacq then nitro take (not counting trial and error of finding what you wanted).

im really trying to find a finish for mine. need some pics of yours to refrest my memory. thx.

Drak did an awesome Flying V with a cocobolo top on, and from memory that was some sort of high gloss finish - it looked sexy

- Dan

im pretty sure he used just Veneer on the top and headstock.

finding a thick enough piece will be difficult, and even more difficult to find one to to a drop top or carved top to.

and if you do find one, gluing it will be a problem. ive seen a whole top pop off while using titebond during unclamping it. its one of the most oily woods you can choose.

From what I've heard it can be a little bit dangerous also if you don't know what you're doing. I'm not sure how true it is, but I've heard it said that if the metal shavings start to burn, then water will not put out the flames.

i think your thinking of Magnesium. im pretty sure Ti doesnt burn.

also, good luck finding someone that can mill that large of a piece precisely.

the redneck machine shops will charge you a fortune cause they arent going to have the tooling necessary to cut Ti.

so the Aerospace machine shops will surely bend you over. after finishing a job for Boeing or the like, im sure they like kids coming in with dreams of making a 'titanium guitar'.

they LOVE cutting deals to those people

on top of that, get ready to pay someone a sum to setup your MasterCAM file before it goes to the mill. you cant cut Ti the same way you cut Al toolpath wise. you have to pluge cut Ti and finish it with end mills due to the extreme heat that builds up, and killing their 500$ single cutting tool is not what they like to do.

all in all, hope you have a summer job planned out.

nice man, where did you get the fretboard?

just off the top of my head, couldnt you just get a 1/4 TRS, wire one signal to tip, one to ring, then both grounds to sleve?

i bet its easy to find a stereo jack too.

im probably way off on this

what about that crazy stuff called 'grain filler' from stewmac or lmii.

man this thread is crackin me up. i KNEW ormsby was gonna pop in.

looks good, did you get that redwood top from gallery hardwoods?

to me it looks like you need to rub in the black a little more. to give it some more depth when you sand down, just an idea though.

have you seen the new line of diamond fretboards? really nice stuff.

ok, nevermind, it wont look bad. i thought you were using one type of wood. you could pull it off with a lam.

do you have a bandsaw?

most woodshops will just have a big bandsaw. push it thru, thickness sand it, then join and glue it.

just look in the phone book for cabinetry, or lumber resources (exotic wood, not 2x4's).

thx man.

actually, im leaning more towards a thick clear now.

is lacquer the only way to go on this? i heard it has a pretty brutal spray sequence then a 3 week dry time before buffing. ouch. but i guess its worth it.

have you used or heard any of the ktm9 (is that the name) waterbased clear lacquer from lmii?

a. what kind of material are you using where you have to laminate AND bookmatch to get a sizable piece of wood for a guitar top?

b. could possibly work if it were quartersawn, any twist in the grain or figure is probably going to look like the deck of your house.