avengers63

After I posted this, I looked and said "DAMN that's a lot of glue running that I didn't clean up!" But it was too late. Best I could do is scrape off the crap you might see through the f-holes. The clamps are all kinds of in the way. I'll have to do it the hard way next weekend.

No inlay work this weekend. But i did get the center block glued in and the neck blank glued up.

Remember that I filled in the gap at the cutaway with epoxy.

The blank is hard to see through the glue. It's alternating layers of chechen and limba. I cut the chechen strips from the same blank and made sure they went back in the way they came out. Grain matching and all that. Ya GOTTA stay consistent and pay attention to the small details like that.

I didn't really get anything done this weekend. I spent most of it in a  disagreement with the waifu. What little time was left I spent trying to re-learn how to do the inlays. When you don't do a thing for several years, you forget some important stuff. So the hummingbird sucked ass, I'm not gonna show it off, and I'll be trying again next weekend.

15 hours ago, ScottR said:

I know longer know what should have means when it comes to lengths measured on a clock......or a calendar.

The guitar just says "keep going, I'm not done yet" until it finally goes quiet.

SR

TROOF!!!!!

I decided to build the neck anyway. I got some chechen because 1) it'll match the trim on the body, and 2) rosewood necks are both decadent and sound amazing. So, Sunday I was ready to cut the scarf and glue on the headstock when it all started talking to me. Y'all know how it is. "I need bling. I need pinstripes. I need a scarf accent. I need... I need... I need..." The damn thing was sounding like my ex wives. I figured I better give it what it wants before IT divorces me too.

So yes, the guitars tell us what they want to be, and decide for themselves when they'll be done.

I managed to squeak a little bit in today. It took a hellofalot longer than it should have. This part was easy...

...getting the bridge wings onto the center block. It'll get glued in next week.

Re-sawing off the pickguard blank, not so much. The blade on the bandsaw is pretty thin and does NOT like doing 6" tall pieces. So the only other option...

...sucked. It sucked hard. It sucked long. It sucked with no boundaries. It sucked like it was it's job. It sucked like a month of Mondays. It sucked like we all wish out wives would.

Fortunately, I have a Wagner Safe-T-Planer to clean it up. It's still rough as a cob, but it's level enough for this application. It's a lot like using a router on rails to plane something down. You can make it work, but it's no direct substitute for a real planer.

I was really hoping to get to the hummingbird, but it just ain't gonna happen this weekend. BUT... I'm getting wifey to make a place so that I can bring the scrollsaw inside for the rest of the Summer. That'll make things a lot more pleasant than in the garage.

My weekend is cur short. IDK if I'll be able to actually get anything done. This is a real disappointment as I've been looking forward to it all week. 

For the inlays, I'll be doing a "warm-up" inlay before I start in on the behemoth on the back. I'll be making a 4" hummingbird to put into the yet-to-be-designed chechen pickguard.

The only component I'm sure of right now is that the body & head will be abalone. I'll prolly mix in some yellowheart as well. All the rest is TBD.

The CNC work on the body & neck are what you'd expect. The neck itself is better than what I expected. The maple is more flat sawn than rift, but not perfect. The body has a dirty smudge near the trem cavity, and overall needs some basic sanding prep before sealing and priming it. Ao again, considering it's from a Chinese sweatshop, it is what it is.

The bridge seems quite a clever design. It's fairly similar to the unit I used on the headless V I made more than 10 years ago. Mine seems to need a proper cleaning. Spoiler: it's not getting one any time soon.

The other electronics and hardware are ALSO exactly what you'd expect from a cheap-ass kit. It's all low budget crap. The hardware is salvageable, like the screws, HB ring, knobs, plates, and strap buttons. The pups and wiring harness are all going in the trash. As for the replacement pups...

The body isn't routed for a traditional s/c base plate. This is, of course, very easily remedied. I bought some black metal s/c pup rings as well. There's something I just don't like about body-mounted pups. Whenever I get around to putting together a P90 guitar I'll have to get over it. Till then, it's rings for all.

My HOPE for the wiring is semi-complicated. It'll be a standard Strat 5-way, taking the extra bridge blade HB out of it. The neck rails will have a tap on it. The extra bridge rails are getting an on-off-tap. This should give a hellofalot of switching options that will be completely useless anywhere but my music room. 

1 hour ago, mistermikev said:

I have a relative that is also a truck driver.  can't imagine gas prices are fun for you folks right now!  Can't imagine how you have time to build guitars.

i know you aren't asking but... you might consider the ruby amp over at runoff groove.  it's easy to build, very small... you can get a couple of 2" speakers for less than $10 over at taydaelec... less pieces to put in the truck anyway and would be interesting to see it all fit in there.  

anywho, rawk on.

GAS: It turns out my company gas card has a $1000 limit. I found this out by taking it down to less than 1/4 tank. It wasn't enough to fill it up. I now hit the fuel station at about 1/2 tank. That gives me room to fill up the reefer tank and top off the DEF tank as well. It usually hits $600-700.

AMP: Suggestions are always welcomed. They might not be followed up on, but they're welcomed nonetheless.  I'm trying one of those cheap headphone units on Amazon for about $35. It'll fit into the pocket of the gig bag, charged by USB cable, and has bluetooth. This SHOULD let it pair with a little Altec Lansing speaker I have. I was initially looking at the 7w Boss Katana, but I wanted to try this first. Less out of pocket initially.

TIME: I'm limited to about 4 hours on Saturday afternoon. It sucks, but it's what it is. This is part of the time sacrifice truckers make. Wifey & I are going through a rough patch while we're trying things to figure out how this lifestyle works for the both of us. On the good side, we both understand WHY we're crabbing at each other, but that doesn't make it any better right now.

I'm a regional truck driver. This means I live in my rig M-F. My life for 5 days/week is in that damn truck. Now, I am WELL compensated for this time, but that's not the point. Time to spend doing just anything hobby related is virtually non-existent. Available space in the sleeper berth is also at an extreme premium, so spending it on anything other than life necessities must be considered carefully. 

Now that I'm finding my groove out there, I'm going to be taking a travel guitar with me, along with a rechargeable headphone amp. Originally, I was going to take my Steinberger. On further consideration, I decided not to as it was a very expensive high school graduation present. Theft from the truck is rare, but I'd rather not risk it. As my available home time is extremely limited, I just don't have the time to make one. I managed to find this yesterday....

...which should fit the bill quite nicely. The whole thing was $108.50. The bridge trem unit goes for $60-90 all by itself. Not having to make the basswood body or maple neck, much less the current price of wood, and this is really quite reasonable. It's a calculated risk with the neck grain orientation, but this is part of the package when you get a Chinese kit like this.

The pickups are obviously going to be garbage. They're likely to be ceramic (nothing wrong with that, but they're cheaper to make), and probably not potted. Likewise the wiring harness is crap. It will all be thrown away. I couldn't even put them on eBay with a clear conscience knowing what they are.

I've bought Artec pickups before. For the money, they overproduce. They're currently advertised as being made in Korea, not China, so that makes me feel a little better. So I bought a set of oddball pups to drop into this thing. The neck is a twin blade with A5 magnets. The middle is a hybrid. Half of the slugs are A5, half are A2. The bridge is the the real oddball, as you can see for yourself...

This will have some real potential for odd switching options. 

My wife is an amazing artist, so long as you fall into her wheelhouse. I talked her into painting the body for me. Right now, we're looking at the cover of Rush's third album: Caress Of Steel.

Convincing her to put this on the back will take a little more effort...

So the whole thing will be in sometime this week. We'll see how it goes.

6 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

I don't think they make roasted wood that way!

Prolly not, but we hobby builders are always coming up with some shoestring budget work-around. Sometimes ya just gotta try stuff and hope for the best.

It ain't trimmed up yet.

It ain't pretty.

It still needs some eopxy in a couple places because I'm not an expert at acoustic construction.

But it's ON, and that's a major milestone. 

Ima try and do the epoxy fill-in before I hit the road so that when I get back, it'll be ready for the next step - the center block.

I did manage to get the painting for the back printed out, laminated, and cut out. This is just huge! It'll take up prolly 90% of the real estate on the back. I've never tried anything of this scale, and I gotta admit I'm more than a little concerned. There are going to be a LOT of pieces. Each one is an individual point of failure. This is likely to mess with my nerves like nothing before.

And I'm gonna love every minute of it.

I swiss-cheesed the center block and rigged up a ghetto-ass clamping/pressure system to glue the top on. It's too bogus to take a picture of, even by my appallingly low standards. I suspect I'll need to reinforce the joint with some epoxy.

I decided to take my Steinberger on the road with me for a travel guitar. I'll be doing a pickup swap, just to try out some stuff. I ordered one of these cheap headphone practice amps to use. Space is at a premium in the back of a truck, so even a 7w Boss Katana takes up too much room.

I'm seriously considering a Tascam song trainer. I'm holding off until I see how much I actually play. It might not be worth it.

No progress this week. I had a 3-day weekend last week, so I have a 1-day weekend this time. Most of the day has to be spent prepping to leave Monday morning, so no time for this.

I DID get in a few supplies. a 100 pack of BWB fiber purfling and 4 strings of 800 x 2 x 1.5 mm abalone. It was all Chinese. The purfling will be fine - it's hard to screw up. The abalone was just to give it a shot. Each string was only $5. If they don't work out, no big financial loss.

The only dust that evert got me was poplar. It gives me the dry heaves. After close to 15 years, if the exotic dust hasn't got me yet, if 2 ex wives haven't done me in, if the depression of losing my house to unemployment didn't get me, if growing up in Catholic grade school didn't get me, hospitalized for blood clots, thought I had a brain-killing stroke 2 years ago....  Hell, I died from Covid TWICE. If none of that crap did me in, I can take a little super glue fumes.

In other news....

I got the blocks for the inlays in the rosewood neck plotted out and cut this morning. I'm binding them in maple/black purfling. The double outline will really make them pop against the fretboard. Unfortunately, there's no fast way to do this as every piece has different dimensions. This is gonna take just all day long, sitting in front of the TV, adult beverage nearby......

1 hour ago, Bizman62 said:

What I like here is the tiny imperfection in the continuity of the outline of the perfectly fitted inlay which tells that it's a one-off piece made by hands of a human - somehow it reminds me of the lettering in the posters by Toulouse-Lautrec !

I was dearly hoping that nobody would notice that. It bugs the shit out of me. I know where I messed up in the process that resulted in the uneven arc. I'm seriously considering re-doing it, but I'm not sure I could pull it off.

It's all because I got ahead of myself and cut out the whole thing before inlaying it. You're SUPPOSED to cut both pieces at once, as I did with the treble side. Like this, I had to try and re-trace the outline of what I had already cut. The blade wanted to bite into the inlay, causing it to wander a bit and wobble around the arc. Doing them in a stack like I was supposed to eliminates that completely.

But if you see it as a positive, even comparing it to another Nouveau artist, I guess I can take the compliment.

Before I glue the top on, I had to finalize some measurements as best as I can and cut the holes for the pups. Making the bottom of the C/C ring angles was absolutely the right thing to do. I knew narrowing the HB ring to normal size was also needed. Better to try something out for looks while you can, even if you know it isn't going to work.

I notched the center block also. It'll be glued onto the inside of the top right after the top is glued on, so notching it now only makes sense. Work smart, not hard. The end of it is gonna be lopped off. No need for it to be that long. I'm prolly gonna use it to make some wings for the bridge area. As is, it's about 3/4" too narrow. The bridge posts will hang off the edge a bit without the wings.

I've tried several times, just like the block in the tip of the cutaway. I just can't finesse it into the exact shape needed for a good tight fit against the cutaway. So when I glue the center block in, I'll be filling the gap with epoxy. I simply lack the skill/knowledge needed to get what I want. I'll also be epoxy filling the edges of the end block. Maybe it won't make a difference, but why risk it. I'm seeing this as a learning point. I made the end block wider than needed and had some fitment issues as a result. Live and learn, but don't leave it with a possible issue when you can hedge your bets against it.

And I haven't forgotten about the guyana rosewood neck. I just haven't had time to fiddle with it. Tonight, while I'm watching TV, I'll be laying out the measurements for the burl block inlays. 

Today a few hours was set aside to inlay the f-holes. It's been a bit since I've done this, so an ounce of practice and setup was necessary.

In order to properly inlay wood with the scrollsaw, you have to cut both pieces at the same time. The cut is at an angle so the top piece in the stack will seat into the bottom. Trial and error is the primary method of determining the necessary angle. The first attempt is at 2.5 degrees.

You want the angle so that the top of the piece being inlaid sits either flush of a nut hair proud of the bottom. Too shallow of an angle and the top will go clear through the bottom. For example....

Too shallow. Reset the angle to 4 degrees and try again.

If not perfect, then it's close enough. Time to cause irreparable damage to the top of the guitar!

Fortunately for me, everything worked out just fine. 

Next week I plan on gluing the top onto the frame. As I have a 3-day weekend, I might get it done Monday.  We'll see.

I got the pickup rings made this morning. By necessity, the CC ring is huge. The baseplate needs a cavity about the size of a P90, so the ring has to cover it with a little extra. I don't like how much ring there is on the bottom. It's unbalanced with the top, and just overall too fat. 

I'm almost certainly not going to have the HB ring math width with the CC. That just looks all kinds of wrong. Bit that doesn't mean it has to be a rectangle. I've thought about making them both oval.

Another option I'm contemplating is not making the CC cavity to the specs Lollar suggests. It's presented that way because it's for a pickguard mount, so the cavity CAN be big. If I make the cavity with closer tolerances to the shape of the base plate, the bottom of the ring can be angled. It HAS to have the space to hold the 3rd height screw, forcing the bottom to me imbalanced with the top. BUT, if I angle it, it'd prolly look a hellofalot better.

Pickups came in. C/C in the neck and a low-wind Imperial in the bridge. The f-hole broke a little when I was cutting it out, so the bottom of it isn't the final shape.

I'll be making another f-hole for the right side, and making pickup rings from chechen.

Also, Stew-Mac sent me a 15% store-wide coupon, so I went ahead and ordered the side dots, abalone purflex, and teflon spacer strip.

I spent weeks of mental time trying desperately to come up with an f-hole design I can live with. I REALLY didn't want a traditional shape. The theme is are nouveau, and normal f-holes are most definitely not art nouveau.  Both my wife and I searched in vain for a shape/theme to riff off of. In the end, I returned to the picture that will be marquetry on the back.

"Music" from the Muses series by Alphonse Mucha. Observe the line work on the right side of the piece:

Now let's color it in black marker and turn it over. This way, I can see what shapes appear without any interference from the surrounding art.

So I looked at it, traced it, fiddled with it a bit, and pulled this shape from the line work.

The direct connection to the original piece is subtle. If it wasn't pointed out, a casual observer would certainly miss it. But it's definitely there, it's definitely art nouveau, and it definitely fits the overall look/theme/style of the guitar. And it definitely took way too long to get here.

I talked with Lollar today on the way home. They talked me through which HB would match best with their C/C in the neck. I just placed the order: C/C neck and low-wind Imperial in the bridge. $400 for two pups! I'm completely out of my element now. I don't usually spend $400 on the whole build - wood, hardware, pups....  I gotta admit, I'm more than a little nervous spending this much on JUST the pups.

I need some booze. I gotta unclench or I might not ever poop again.

On 5/9/2022 at 1:37 AM, Bizman62 said:

I've seen one being in progress on video and heard about the project from a guy who also popped up on those vids. That must have been the cheapest way to make one: The guy laminated "discarded" fingerboard blanks to a block. Don't know how that saga ended, though...

I'm looking at a couple of pieces. One is wide enough to not have to put "wings" on the headstock, but not much extra length. The other needs the wings but has plenty of length. Either will be just under $200 before shipping. I'm having a hard time justifying it to myself, much less to wifey. But the feeling of pure decadence with an ebony neck......

I don't know.....  There's a point where it just fights back too hard and you're just as well ditching the whole thing. It's harder to do with a pricey top - I get that. Still, it just does NOT want to be done.