avengers63

His "nut slotting tool" is a set of welding torch tip cleaners. +/- $5 at Lowes/Home Depot.

I'd still take the whole thing out and replace it with a new piece. With what you've told/shown us so far, I wouldn't trust the glue joint of the existing wood. Your gluing to the remaining tenon may be stable, but is the leftover tenon gluef properly to the body? Don't trust it.

Tim: I'll give you $15 + shipping for the pup off of the one without a bridge.

I dropped 4 Tiesco pups into the Cherry Blossom: The thing sounds amazing. Bear in mind that we're not comparing apples to apples here. Mine is chambered walnut You'll have to figure out what yours is, but it ain't chambered walnut. What you can take from this is that at minimum you'll have some cool sounding pickups and vintage hardware to salvage for another build. But that's a worst-case scenario. In all likelihood, you got a decent playing, decent sounding ax for a great price.

I now have this picture of you in my head wearing a super hero costume roaming the streets buffing out dull objects in the night hahaha. Chris That's me - a real-life Kick A$$. I go out at night as Buff man, seeking to buff out crime everywhere. All evildoers must be in the buff. No, I DON'T get out much. Why do you ask?

That's worth experimenting with on a different build. I had a pretty hard time with the finish & discoloration as is, so there's no way I'm gonna monkey around with the color at this point. The idea is worth investigating though.

May I suggest Gary Glitter?

Bold move. It seems to have paid off.

We were waiting to see what it looked like with some finish on it. It looks pretty dang good if you ask me. Here's one of the neck, just for good measure.

While the pieces are all being glued together, I did some practicing on some cutoff. It turned out decent.

That's almost exactly what I did on the Superthin. First, I used a 45-degree bevel bit to set the depth evenly around the body. Then, after penciling the inside line of the bevel, I worked it down with a rasp & file. It worked out pretty easily and with a uniform depth.

After sleeping on it, I cut it in half and planed the whole thing down. Right now I'm putting some sapele on the halves to rebuild the thickness to 1 1/4". This pretty much locks in the idea of ebonizing the back as this will hide any glue lines. I split a piece of the flamed maple. After planing it flat, I came up with a top just over 5/16". If - and that's only if right now - I go with the flamed top, I'll still have a little bit of thickness to either give it the traditional 'Bird contours or go for the slightly rounded ones that Wes showed me. Probably best to keep it simple. On a different note, someone mentioned abandoning the purpleheart idea and going for a fancier f/b like cocobolo. It just so happens that I have a coco f/b that I've been saving for something special. I have a lot of other boards too, but I'm just sayin'. Wez reminding me that I love to monkey around with inlays got me lookng at DePaul's site for another idea to steal. Going with the traditional cloud inlays BCR uses.... I could easily do this in plain maple and yellowheart.

It all depends how you are going to combine it with the hundereds of other ingredients which makes for the final sound of your instrument.... If you wanted to take it one step further, the same species can grow in different places, but due to varying conditions it can be structurally different in subtle ways and sound different. Heck, different parts of the same tree could potentially suffer from the same effect. You could literally say that you will never truly know EXACTLY what it will sound like until it's done. Or you can go with the well known, general properties that we're all aware of. I'm not going to knock hufschmid's knowledge, but this is a classic example of 1) overthinking the whole thing, and 2) asking what time it is and being told how to make a clock. Except he's not telling you how to make the clock, but that you have to understand HOW to make the clock before you can truly know how to tell time. Essentially, (again - no disrespect ) he hasn't given you any of the information you've asked for. All of the walnut I've used has been the same American black walnut you're looking at. using. It'll sound great. Now stop analyzing a fairly simple process and get to work.

Looks like you shot amber shellac.

Shaving it down is probably the best bet. I can't deny that the solid color 'Birds look pretty tasty. Then again, so do the quilted tops.

So what.... you wanna turn yourself into C.C. DeVille? Cuz he's the only fool I can think of who would want something that hideous.

This one does OK. Note also that the BCR has goofy radio knobs too. On a wood-porn piece.

Wow. That one with the chrome is really fug. The others are dang nice though. Maybe, if I used some of that flame without dyeing it, I could do a purpleheart center line. That would tie in the FB/neck. Keep it coming!

The only real problem with that is the control cavity. It's already routed, and +/- 1/4" from the top. I considered using the safe-t-planer to take the top off, but I don't believe I'll ever get it flat enough to receive another top. You're right though: I COULD take some polywood and pine and rig up a thicknessing contraption for the router. I'd hate to lose the sapele. It'd pair up with a maple top tonally very nicely.

I've been looking at this thing for a few weeks, and I decided that I absolutely HATE the way it looks. I can't take the top off because my planer isn't wide enough for a 14" body, so the whole thing is available in the"classifieds" section. So, going in a completely different direction.... I have that flamed maple I got yesterday, and a 1/4" quilted set that I've been sitting on for a while. I've been thinking about this for a while, but getting the flamed plank yesterday just opened up more options for me. I've been thinking about doing a tiger-eye sandback on the quilt, and now have the option for the a tiger-eye burst/sandback on the flamed maple. I'd most likely put it over a mahogany base, but ash is a distinct possibility as well. But that's not the real question in my mind. I have the original purpleheart pickups from R.A.D., and just picked up a piece of PH with the intention of making it into a neck/fretboard/laminate stripes to tie into the pickups. The problem is that my gut tells me that the PH, even if it's just the pickups, would clash horribly with the tiger-eye. I have plenty of other woods that would be fine for a neck, and a plain maple f/b would look really good with the tiger-eye. I just cant wrap my mind around NOT using the PH pickups, which then requires using PH somewhere else. Thoughts?

I've been looking at this thing for a couple of weeks now, and I decided that I absolutely hate the top. My planer isn't wide enough to remove it, so the whole thing is up for grabs. All I want is the cost of materials and whatever shipping is. These are the sources for pricing. http://www.woodworkerssource.com/ sapele - 10.00-10.50/BF = 10.25 average canary - 7.50-10.00/BF = 8.75 average Both species were 4/4 to start out. The black was 15"x19", making it 1.98BF. Rounding it yo 2BF/species, this makes the blank cost $38. It's routed to 2 HBs, a Kahler, 1V, 1T, and a 3-way, and binding. Again - all I want is the cost of materials + shipping: $38, and probably $11-$15 shipping, depending on where you live.

Schaller-Hannes bridge

waiting for R.A.D. to chime in......

I agree with you 100%. If you don't like my ax, then don't vote for it. I even encourage you to tell me what it is you didn't like. It's nothing personal - it's an opinion. Honest to God, I'm as cool with that as you can be.

Dave: I've never PMed ANYONE here "crying" about a loss. Lying won't help you any. Truth be told, after I saw you complaining about not winning, my ewes were opened and I saw what I was looking like to others. YOU are why I'll never complain about losing again. Wes: You're 100% right in all of your points. People CAN vote any way they please for any reason they please. This doesn't mean that I have to agree with their reasoning.