avengers63

Scrounging for a new piece for the neck, I came across a piece of cutoff mahogany. It's the EXACT length I need, just barely wide enough, and I only needed to plane off less than 1/4" to get it to the standard 3/4". Routing for the truss rod. Is it me, or does it feel decadent to use a piece of bubinga as a fence. Custom, one-off neck taper template. I HAVE to keep it, even though I know I'll never use it again. Neck roughed out, then routed to the template. The t/r channel went a little long, so I put a little spacer at the end. No long term harm. And the perfunctory "march of the hammers" pic, gluing on the f/b Basic pickguard shape routed. I screwed a piece of scrap MDF to the body template, cut it out close, then used a 1/2" (I think, maybe 3/4") rabbit bit to get it to a uniform distance from the edge. Also, the body got a simple roundover. More shaping to come later. Another unforeseen thing cropped up this morning also. Shortening the scale to 22" SIGNIFICANTLY narrowed the neck at the heel. There's prolly 1/4" difference between it and the standard StewMac neck template, so I'll have to rig up a jig. It's not really a problem, it's just something I didn't think about happening. This is looking like it'll be the fretboard inlay. It'll go in the upper register, above the 12th fret. It can be angled a bit if necessary to fit inside the width of the fretboard. The rest are likely to be abalone dots. The rest of the day will be spent in assembly/wiring of other projects.

I use my pinkie a LOT. She won't be, cuz it basically ain't there. Anyway.... I was putting off slotting the fretboard for a few minutes and got the body planed down to 1.5" and roughed out. It was later routed to the template. Nothing left to do, I was forced to get out this hateful bastard... I HATE slotting frets by hand. The gent's saw fights with me constantly. Fortunately, I now have a Japanese saw! HAH! Those things make VERY short work of it. Then came an unforseen problem. What's new, right? I was starting to lay everything out on the body, hoping to plot out bridge, pickup, and control placement. But I didn't take into account shortening the scale length by 3". The truss rod is WAY too long. I'm going to have to make a new blank, routed to use an acoustic rod. It's not hard in the least seeing as it's just a plain, straight piece of lumber milled to 3/4", but it still halts progress for the day. On a much funnier note, I went in search of my wife to (complain) tell her what was happening. I found Morticia Adams in the front yard cutting the blooms off of her rose bushes. She says it directs the nutrients to the new buds trying to form. I say she belongs in the Adams Family.

Love you too. Y'all have missed me cuz nobody else will do this.

Gotcha. I've actually thought about making an intricate inlay, slotting the board, and seeing what I could get for it on eBay.

So more devisions have been made and directions have changed. The headless guitar is now going to be a Christmas present for my new daughter (new wife's 15 y/o - we don't use "step" to describe them). She's been slowly learning on my old Steinberger, so she's getting her own in December. Wifey had her try out a few bodies to see if she liked them. A V is out of the question because she's new and it won't stay on her leg when practicing. As she had the girl "try on" some body shapes..... Well...... Puberty blessed her early with a healthy rack that would be the envy of most women. Even with a bra on, her right boob just spilled over the top of every body but one..... Now I didn't really wanna make another Corvus. I was gonna scale down my strat-like shape for her. Wifey said the Corvus was absolutely the way to go. Crap. So I spent a couple hours looking over the wood I still have (not gonna buy more right now!). The walnut and mahogany I have are just plain unacceptable for this one. It's too small a body for center stringers, allowing wings. I don't think it'd look right. So it's gonna be hard Northers ash - just like no other headless Corvus. The blank is in the clamps right now. The neck is at least staying buninga with an ebony fretboard. The string holder adapter thing that goes on the end of the neck has a hone in the end to get to the truss rod. It turns ut the angle on the end is exactly 20 degrees. I accidentally nailed it on the first cut. Now this girl has TINY little fingers. Her pinkie is abnormally short. By big toe and 2nd toe are longer than her pinkie. It's freakishly short. I have a knuckle of finger length on most folks. I have almost 2 knuckles on all of her fingers. So the neck has to be REALLY narrow. IDK how that's gonna work out with the pickup pole spacing. The bridge spacing is set, so Ima hafeta make a new taper template. Also, because of her micro-hands, she's getting a 22" scale length. Just laying out the fret slots seemed to take forever. Finding a scale length calculator was easy. They all gave the measurements in decimals. Converting them to the nearest 64th of an inch was available on-line as well, but still a pain. I'm glad I had the measuring thingie already. I had to use the point of the compass as a hole punch, then made the line. I made sure to always measure from the 0 or 12th frets as I KNOW a couple will end up being off by a smidge. Those smidges can add up to a cascade failure. I'm done for the day. I might slot the f/b tomorrow. Might get the body to the template. Might not do anything. We'll see.

The hell I am! I'll do some stuff to a fretboard, there's no denying that. I'll love every minute of it and come back for more. But getting out chisels and carving? Not happening. I don't even wanna do the bell curve on an archtop, much less the stuff you do.

HELL NO I'm not gonna try and carve anything! I'm much more inclined to do stuff like this....

Headstock idea/challenge for out resident carver. You know who you are.

Decisions have been made. The headless hardware has to go on a pointy guitar. Anything traditional wouldn't be right. Rummaging through my available product, I came across a couple of things. One was a sheet of formica that looks like brushed aluminum. Thus was it decided that the headless pointy thing will be faced with what looks like brushed aluminum. Asking wifey's opinion on what fretboard to use, as any smart man is wont to do, she IMMEDIATELY said "Black. Black hardware and silver top HAS to have a black fretboard." So it seems that I am destined to use one of my 4 ebony fretboards on the headless, silver, pointy thing. At this point, I think it'll get the Hamer HB set. The body will be walnut. The neck will be salvaged from a bubinga neck I started prolly 10 years ago, abandoned, and found this afternoon. I found a few other things, so the story doesn't end there. i stumbled upon a Les Paul Florintine body base I had completely forgotten about. It's only 1.25" thick, so it was intended to have a top of some sort. I've been jonesing for a P90 guitar. I just so happen to have 2 P90s and a Gibson P100. A stripped-down LP with P90s seems right, but that's not really what's gonna happen. Looking at my available tops, I thought "Why not a spruce acoustic top? I don't think I've ever seen that before." I think it'll look pretty good. I'm considering a tortiose shell pickguard, chambering, f-holes, and binding. Spruce it up a bit, as it were. (Yes, that was a dad joke. I'm a dad. Get over it.) For the neck, I found one I had started for reasons I can't remember, but know that I had abandoned. It's hickory with chechen & maple scarf pinstripes, and a pair of pinstripes under the fretboard. Conveniently, I have 2 chechen fretboard blanks that have been sitting around for more than 10 years. So OK.... I'll admit it now. The guitar bug bit me again.

I made a full test and review of the fretboard radius bit in the "tools" section.

A few years ago, someone made a router bit to put the radius on a fretboard. It was WAY out of my price range, so I didn't bother looking into it. Last year, I found another company on Amazon that makes one: Yonico. I'm confident that it's Chinese, but I can't confirm it. It's been in my list for quite some time, but I had no readon to get it as I haven't been making anything for a while. Then the price dropped from $25 to $12.50. Well, that's that! So there I was this morning, out in the garage, making a router table jig/sled. I was going to make it a box, but I didn't have enough screws. I was quite proud of myself for changing directions into this.... Then I started messing with it and remembered why it HAS to be a box. Shit. BRB I scrounged some more screws and now we have a box. A little time wasted, but life goes on. I took down and sorted through my pile of fretboard blanks and picked out a couple I was willing to sacrifice in the name of SCIENCE. I wanted to see 1) how well it worked, and 2) can I slot the board first. I decided on these two boards for 2 reasons. 1) I don't trust a glued board to take the potential stress of a truss rod adjustment, and 2) if the slotted board splinters, zebra is about as splintery as it gets, so it it doesn't splinter, we're good to go with just anything. Also, here's my feet. We can't go through a whole build (or whatever) without seeing my feet. It's just some sort of law of the universe. Best not to fight it. First off, let's test with some scrap, just to get the feel of it. I have some leftover test pieces from a cedar chest I made this past Winter. That'll do! Ya gotta stick it to the sled with double sided tape. A slow pass through the table and here we are... I only did one side of it, just to get the feel. It seems to have done it well enough. Let's try it with the maple/walnut board. Reading up on it, you should use a fence with it. The bearing is only supposed to be useful on the 1st pass. When you flip it over, the bearing will be riding along the part that already has the radius routed away, thus making it unevenly routed. THIS is why the sled HAS to be a box. Once you center the board on the face, you can flup it over and rout the other side of the board without moving anything. Being kind of a cheapskate and never having bought a proper fence for my table, a 4x4 and clamps make an excellent substitute. The first thing I discovered is that you're likely to get a little chip out on the end as it enters the bit, so leave a little length on the board, just in case it damages the end beyond reason. One pass later and here we are. I'm not sure if you can see it in the pic, but there's daylight between the bit and the board with the sled firmly against the fence. This is why you're supposed to use the fence, as I already described. Making a pass on the other side and this is what I ended up with... There are parts the bit never touched, and the second edge is thicker than the first. I had set the bit so that the highest point of the cutting edge was along the center line I put onto the sled. Well, seeing as this is all experimental test pieces, I ran it again on the 2nd side without the fence. This put the bearing against part that already had material removed, making the 2nd side deeper.... but the 2nd side was thicker with the fence, so what the hell. It turned out OK. Now, it's ENTIRELY possible that setting the bit a tough higher MIGHT have had a different outcome. What I DO know is that doing it without the fence left the board pretty close to even. So does it route it perfect? Of course not!, However, I am satisfied that if you spend a few minutes with a proper radius block, it'd be perfect. So the bit will save anyone a HUGE load of time & labor by doing all the hard work for you. You'll just have to add the finishing touches. Technology yet again makes out lives easier. On to the slotted zebrawoodboard! That one didn't turn out as well..... Clearly, that didn't go quite as well as the unslotted (mostly) maple board. The 1st pass wasn't bad, but the 2nd was a disaster. Could it be grain orientation? could it be that zebra is chippy? The only other slotted boards I have are an ebony one and a jatoba. Jatoba is significantly harder than zebra,... and damn near anything else you'll come across, and I'm willing to sacrifice it to find out, so let's go! The jatoba DID have a little bit of chipping, but it didn't tear out in the fretboard area as the zebra did so badly. At this point, I believe the chipout is due to the fret slots. One more experiment will tell the tale..... An unslotted black palm board. It's pretty splintery, as it's a grass, not wood. If IT chips out, it's from the wood. If it doesn't chip out, the the chips are being induced by the bit catching on the edges of the slots, just like it did when the maple board entered the bit. NO CHIPS! So the conclusion is: 1) The bit works just fine, especially considering it's price. 2) You'll need a sled to feed it into the bit. 3) You are best advised to slot the board after it has been routed. 4) You want a little extra length to account for end chipout. I hope this helps!

Also, I bought one of these. It should be here in a few weeks. I haven't even started planning what body shape to go for. I have a set of Hamer HBs and a Fender Strat set waiting for somewhere to go. I also have lots of veneer and a few thin tops waiting to fancy up a plain body. I'm kinda feeling some wood porn, but it's way too early to say.

In the last 7 years - divorce, moved, vehicular homicide (ran over a guy), job loss - 2 years unemployed, bankruptcy, career change, lost my house, moved, remarried, I'm really ready for a break.

I also went another direction. I've been itchy lately. Maybe the guitar bug bit me again. So whenever I build a neck, I have the same problem almost every time: it frets out around the 9th-13th fret. IDK what I'm doing wrong, but I have some suspicions. I bought a 12" radius router bit, but I haven't set up a jig to screw around with it yet. In the meantime, I bought a $40 Chinese neck. I knew what I was getting going into it, so I have -zero- illusions about craftsmanship. The cheap Chinese pedals actually sound amazing, and I have some pups that were great, so what the hell. Going the cheap route, I used whatever I have on hand for the most part. I had to buy a Wilkinson bridge, some pots, and some knobs, but that was it. Maybe $30 total, plus the neck. I had most of a mahogany body blank sitting around, so it became the "peanut" shape I've done before. A gigantic pickguard, chicken head knob, and goofy looking pickups will keep the cobbled-together, home-made theme. But the pups only LOOK goofy. They're real Bill Lawrence pickups from a Gibson Marauder. (Yes, Muzz, you may be jealous. No, you cannot have them ) The neck pup is brand new - still has the plastic film. Overall, it OUGHT to sound OK. I mean, mahogany/maple is a proven formula. The Marauder pups are low powered, like in the 2.5K range, but because they're Bill Lawence, I'm positive they'll be good. The p/g isn't quite finished yet. I'm debating on a belly cut and forearm bevel. The body is just getting a good oiling and that's it.

Well, actually a couple of itches. We'll see how this goes. Anyone remember this? It's my very first build. And some canned vegetables, headphones, cheese danish, and other background crap. The thing sounds & plays amazing. It ought to! Mahogany & maple body with paduk stringers, spalted maple wing caps, maple neck with paduk fretboard, and Bill Lawrence pickups. The ONLY problem with it is that the damn thing weighs more than a Les Paul! I just HATE playing it cuz it weighs so much. Fortunately, I know how to build guitars, so I'm finally taking care of it. Last Summer, I decided to make a new body for it. Chambered paduk with bookmatched spalted maple. Overall, it's pretty unassuming. Everything screwed to the original body will transfer directly. There's still a little fine-tuning needed before I can start putting a finish on it.

Nobody has touched on this yet.... Cocobolo is beautiful, but is a COMPLETE PAIN IN THE ASS TO FINISH. The wood is incredibly oily, even for rosewoods. You alsoLUTEly HAVE to seal in the oils before any finishing. If you don't the natural oils WILL rise to the surface, blacken, and prevent the finish from curing, turning the surface into mud. The only cure for this I've come across is shellac. Prep the wood, then put a coat of shellac on it ASAP. Maybe two coats. IDK why it works - I just don't remember anymore - but it does. Also, any given finish (except oil) can go over shellac just fine. It's basically the only finish that will stick to another well. You just have to make sure the give it plenty of time to cure before putting anything else on top. Alternatively, you can buff it out with steel wool for a great matte sheen.

Interesting timing that you're making a new neck for a simulated Marauder. One of the things I've been tinkering with involves genuine Marauder pickups.

Losing interest in the project. The divorce and move put a LOT of things on hold. By the time I got the wood shop re-established in the garage, I had lost interest. Honestly, most of it was that it's a re-finishing job, and I hate/suck at finishing. The divorce/move was 6 years ago. I only had the building bug for about 6 months since then. I've moved again, which stalls everything. BUT...... the bug is starting to bite me again. I've been tinkering around with a couple of things and looking into a couple more.

Nope. In the 8 years since I've touched it, I've been divorced, moved, lost my job, lost my house, moved again, remarried, and had a significant career shift. Also, I completely lost interest in the project.

For maybe the first time in my history, the wiring had -zero- issues. I NEVER get it right the first time. But to balance that out, the action is ridiculously high. Good thing I'm not gonna gig with it.

Little by little..... And I'm now out of shielding tape. It turns out that I don't have the proper screws to mount the pickups. Alternatively, the route is pretty tight in the corners. So tight that I really don't think the pups are gonna move willingly. In other news, I don't think my 1/2" brad point bit can get any more dull.

Good gawd... I forgot how long it takes to properly lay out the peghead.

Let's get some shit done today.....

Before I polish the finish, I'll be leveling and polishing the frets.

I finally had time to buff up the finish. I'm out of Maguiar's, but it's just as well since I haven't oiled the back yet. Almost there...