johnsilver

Congratulations to all. Another month of quality and interesting builds. The basses were interesting and well done. The finish on the LP was very nice and I like the heel contour - looks comfortable. I like the vibe from the Tele, and the cream was absolutely the right choice in my opinion. I voted for the blue burst just for overall fit, finish and detail.

Thanks for the suggestions. I broke down and asked my son what he would like. He's thinking about it but is leaning to the desert burst. Pr3Va1L, I'm glad you weighed in here. Your suggestion of a Custom in the bridge is consistent with another recommendation I had from Lews Guitars. Then I looked at the SD website and here is what it said about the Custom and Custom Custom. Custom "Recommended for bridge position. Often a Duncan Custom is paired with an SH-1 ‘59 in the neck for bigger P.A.F. tones in the bridge and vintage-correct P.A.F. tones in the neck. For balanced and warm instruments. Works especially well with rosewood fingerboards." Custom Custom "Recommended for bridge position. Often a Custom Custom is paired with a Pearly Gates for bluesy P.A.F. tones in the neck. For brighter toned instruments. Works especially well with maple and ebony fingerboards." Since I want to use a Pearly Gates neck and have an ebony board, I was leaning to the Custom Custom. However, I don't want a muddy bottom end on the guitar. After your's and Lew's recommendations, I'll probably go back to a Custom.

DIY, I recently finished an SG in cherry red and basically used the modern finish from the Stewmac book. However, I tested the process on scrap mahogany before attempting the guitar. On one piece of scrap, I followed the Stewmac recipe. On the other piece, I sprayed a coat of sealer before applying the dark walnut pore filler, with all other steps the same. What I found was that I preferred the piece where I applied the sealer first. It wasn't as dark and the color more uniform that applying the filler directly to the wood. Your mileage may vary, so I suggest you test.

Mike, that's great. I've never worked with purpleheart and haven't warmed up to it in the projects I've seen on this site, until now. I really like the use of it here, probably because it is integrated into maple and mahogany. Also, I find it very interesting to look at i.e. the thin laminate between the mahogany and the maple, the maple / purpleheart binding. Those details make the more "usual" neckthrough purpleheart laminates much more interesting to me. Me likey very much. Do you mill you own pieces such as the piece between the mahogany and maple and the binding? On the image link above, the maple in the neck under the fretboard sits proud of the body. Did you build that in when you made the neck laminates - like a step, or did you route down the neck that runs through the body? Killer.

You won't believe this. I posted the above two days ago. My son for whom the guitar is for called me last night to let me know that he and his wife are expecting their first child (my first grandchild). The baby is due in March, so I have a firm deadline now. OK. Time to get more serious about the finish. Due to stupid sandthroughs, I can't do the transparent amber finish he wanted, so I'm going to try a burst (never done one). I'm going to make up some mock-ups from leftover curly maple and use them to help decide and to develop some technique. Some of you have made suggestions (thanks). My favorites are below. Gibson LP Honey Burst Gibson LP Desert Burst Gibson LP Transparent Black (I'll have to darken the edges) Thoughts? Suggestions? Remember I have gold MOP inlays, gold frets, tuners, bridge and tailpiece (Tone Pros TOM), gold speed knobs, and I plan gold covers on the pickups with black pickup rings. Speaking of pickups, my plan is to order Seymour Duncan Custom Custom for the bridge and Pearly Gates for the neck. My son plays a variety of music from classic rock, blues, modern rock to more alternative stuff. Thoughts? Speaking of music styles, I guess I'll wait until my new grandchild is 18 before I show him/her the pictures of her father's last band. Their name was Thousand Watt Bitch. I hope it isn't a girl. BTW, listening to Gregg Allman solo disk Searching for Simplicity. Great stuff.

Darn. Now I'm going to have to replace my 25 year old Craftsman fixed base router. It seem technology has moved on since that one was a pup.

Amen Brother. Welcome. Beautiful work - basses and jigs.

Interesting, two of my sons have been using Line6 gear (heads, cabinets, modelers) for years without trouble (including road trips for gigs, etc). I'm sorry to hear your experience is different.

After fretting the neck last Saturday, I carved it on Sunday. On the two guitars I made previously, I used a variety of techniques to carve the necks. I say it that way because some of the necks I worked on / carved never made it (on to guitars that is), so I've carved more necks than I've made guitars. On previous necks, I used a spokeshave followed by a scraper followed by sanding. I enjoyed using the spokeshave. On my last guitar (SG), I used a microplane for the heavy removal, followed by a light scraping followed by sanding. That's what I'm doing on the LP. There is an old school part of me that feels I "should" use the spokeshave, but honestly, as much as I enjoyed it I didn't enjoy the sharpening / tuning / adjusting. Oh well, using a microplane still makes it hand carved. This time, I bought two round microplanes of different sizes to carve the areas around the head and heel. Before, I used rasps/files. Here are the tools, basic process and results. Unlike a real LP, I made a volute. Here are the microplanes Starting the carve at the head Moving to carving near the heel Connecting the head / heel carves Volute roughed in Profile of the carved neck Carved neck press fit in guitar - final heel shaping to be done after gluing in Neck / body side view From the back view, you can see the small spalted area in the maple. I placed the spalted area there next to the heel because I thought it would look interesting, but now that I have to burst it, it will largely be covered up. Well, after this set of pics, you guys are pretty current with this project. I'll only be able to work a little next weekend but plan to do some sanding and repairing body/neck imperfections (around binding for example). If I get happy with that, I'll glue the neck to the body and finish shaping the heel. Right now, I'm listening to SRV. Goes well with the single barrel bourbon.

MTG, nice project and good progress. This is some really nice straight grained mahogany. I'm looking forward to more.......

Chris, I like it and I think it is good work. I'm a relative inlay beginner and have still been limited mostly to block inlays, so I appreciate how much effort you put in to this. Good results. Save the inlay - perhaps inlay it into a small box made from leftover guitar wood or something - and give it to someone who will appreciate your efforts.

Alberto, I just fretted a bound ebony neck last weekend. After I bound the fretboard and scraped the binding flush and sanded a bit, I found I had to clean out the fret slots really well, especially near the edges near the binding. I also found that, no matter how careful I was glueing the binding, some glue ended up near the edges in a few slots. I cleaned the slots as best I could, but ultimately I had to trim the tang back on a few. With a proper radiusing of the frets, I found they went it fine. Don't know if this could be affecting you or not. Also, this time, I pressed the frets in and that worked great. Before, I hammered them in and found it was harder to get them to sit uniformly across the slot.

Sweet. I'm going to have to go back and refinish my first guitar - the Tele. Wait, I'm already refinishing it. I'll finish the refinish before I refinish it again. With Marksounds help, I may have sorted out posting the thumbnails. Thanks. After blocking out the neck, I had to decide my next sequence. I could fret the fretboard, then glue it on, then carve it, etc, etc through all the permutations. I decided to glue the fretboard on the neck, then fret, then carve the neck. Part of the reason was that I was pressing the frets this time, and my trials indicated I was more comfortable fretting an uncarved neck. Could have gone either way. I was using my new arbor press from Grizzly and StewMac's press tool. I took the arbor ram to a local machine shop and they drilled a hole length wise in the ram, then drilled and tapped a set screw in the side so I could lock in the press tool. Cost $20 and they did a good job. Even gave me an allen wrench. I was using gold fretwire from LMI. I found sources of gold fretwire at LMI and Warmoth and decided to use LMI. Its a medium fretwire. The wire came loosely rolled so I didn't have to radius it too much to fit my 12" radius board. Here is the new arbor press and some "action" photos. The frets are pressed in and trimmed. I used a file freehand to flush them up to the binding and angle them back a bit, but no more than that at this point re leveling and dressing. Guess I'll do that later. I really enjoyed pressing the frets in. I hammered in the frets on my previous two guitars and I enjoyed the tactile feel of that but never felt fully in control. The arbor press was also tactile in that you could feel the frets pressing into and seating on the board. I liked it and felt more in control. I'm going to have to find something else to press. Maybe I'll crack pecans for some pecan pie. Sorry boys. Its getting close to my bedtime and I'm slowing down, so I'm listening to the latest Jewel CD.

I was using the insert link. Should I be using the insert image? I tried that in the test mode and didn't get the result I wanted. I just tried the insert image again and then edited the code after it was inserted. It worked. Many thanks.

I currently have a post going in the in progress section and am trying to post thumbnails rather than pics and links. I can get them to show up, but some of the "code" accompanies them unlike when others post thumbnails. I am using photobucket as a host, and after I select a pic I go to the bottom and click the generate html button. I get several choices for code and two are hilited for thumbnails. I have tried various combinations in this test area but always get the code next to my thumbnails in the post. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks guys. Godin, the work area is a corner of my garage that I park two cars in every night. I can't spread out too much. Its ugly under the surface. Maybe when I get more space, I can spread out and make some guitars that look as nice as yours. Nitefly, I want to see it completed too. Its been around a long time and my son is starting to get a little old. I may have to ditch this project and start making small guitars for grandchildren if I don't hurry up. Ben, sweeeeet!. Another option. The flametop LP - incorporating the sandthroughs as a "design element". I need some original thinking about now. Of course, I may need a few pints of Theakston's Old Peculiar just to make sure I get the flames positioned right. I'm listening to a Jimmy Rogers compilation right now. Just right.....

I haven't used MOP. I recently received some gold MOP from Andy for a LP project. There were 25 precut pieces for the fretboard, and they were perfectly cut, well color matched and beautiful. I also ordered some gold MOP blanks to make a headstock inlay, and the blanks were color matched to the fretboard inlays. Andy was great to deal with and advised me on which precut set to buy. Actually prevented me from ordering the wrong one by mistake when I told him it was for a Paul. And I received everything in 2 days.

I made the neck from 3 pieces of flatsawn mahogany laminated to form a blank. My local supplier doesn't have any quartersawn mahogany, so I turned the blank on its side, that is, the edges of the three pieces became the face of the blank. It made a blank about 3 1/2" square by about 36" long. I squared up the blank using an inexpensive Stanley hand plane and ensured it was square using a small machinist's square. I marked out the top and side profiles on the blank using my poster board templates drawn up from the plan I have. I was able to mark out two full size necks facing opposite directions and on opposite faces of the blank. The size of the blank allowed me to have angled headstocks, so no scarf joint was necessary. I used my small $99 Delta 9" tabletop bandsaw to cut the neck blanks. Its underpowered for that of course but I went slowly and it came out ok. After trimming the two pieces, I had two rough necks. I used my 6" stationary belt sander to flatten the headstock face and establish a clean edge where the nut will go. From that reference, I re-marked the neck template. Once done, I routed out the truss rod channel, glued ears on the head (cut from the same mahogany blanks), cut the neck to rough profile on the bandsaw, marked and cut the tenon, glued on an ebony headplate, etc, etc. Its a good thing I cut out two necks because I ruined the first one. I was able to "discard" it in a peaceful and non-violent manner and proceed with work using the second neck. I paid about $35 for the mahogany to make the blank, so each rough neck cost half that. Plus I got the added advantage of using the wedge I cut off of the headstock angle as a nice mahogany garage door stop. Only ones on my street. squaring up the mahogany neck blank using a hand plane marking out the necks using templates very rough neck cutouts after the first cut with the bandsaw two rough necks after trimming and cutting the headstock angle unbound fretboard sitting on the neck More later.

OK, I did a lot of inlay on this so far. I did a custom inlay on the headstock. Nothing special, basically just a couple of letters - an A and a G. I cut them out of a single piece of gold MOP. preparing to cut the gold MOP using a layout glued on the pearl partial cutout - not the smoothest but can be cleaned up later with small files letters cut out letters inlaid into the ebony headplate Then I needed to inlay the split block markers into the ebony fretboard. 25 pieces in total to be inlaid. Not bad for the masters but a little daunting for a relative beginner. I ordered the blocks precut from Andy Depaule. They were very nice and 0.060" thick. The naturally occurring gold color only goes about halfway though. Since I was inlaying this into a preradiused fretboard from LMI, I needed to be careful to get them in close because excessive sanding would go through the gold color. I also bought the gold MOP blanks from Andy. Good stuff. Here is the process - roughly. precut inlay and ebony fretboard inlay positions marked out with tape as per LP tutorial by Setch (Cheers!) MOP inlaid and being sanded flush in my fretboard sanding jig finished gold MOP inlay - not too bad

Another vote for Pimp My Ride. I can live with that..... if I have to... Mike, thanks about the binding. Also, I found out when I made the SG that I had sons I didn't know about...

OK, I put miles of binding on this guitar. Here is the evidence. I carved the top before cutting the top binding channel. Take my word, don't do it that way. I had to use the little StewMac binding cutter thingy. If using a regular Dremel router base is like driving a Hummer on flat ground, this thing is like riding a unicycle down a mountain bike trail. Its scary, but ultimately worked. Best to cut the channels before carving. It did however let me cut the channel in the cutaway so that the binding follows the curve. Can't do that if cutting the binding before carving. By the way, I'm listening to my new Jimmy Vaughan CD right now. Its killer. binding cutter for the carved top I used yet another StewMac milk-me-for-all-I'm-worth thingy and laminated the celluloid nitrate binding. 7 layer on the top, 5 layer on the bottom and 3 layers for the head. Thank goodness Gibson only puts a single layer on the fretboard. The binding laminate jig actually worked a treat. Just brush acetone on the binding and run it through. Now, bending 7 layer binding around a cutaway horn is a trick. I used a small hair dryer and softened the binding first, then slowly wrapped it around and taped it in place to stay overnight. Then I glued it in the next day after some of the tension was mitigated. laminate jig Here is the binding. 7 layer top binding 5 layer back binding binding in the cutaway 3 layer headstock binding The headstock binding presents a different problem because it needs to be mitered. I drew out a plan of my headstock shape and then measured the angles. The binding needs to be cut at half of the angle in order for the miter to fit. I made a jig out of a piece of MDF by marking out and cutting the half-angles in the MDF. Then I can clamp it to a solid surface leaving gaps the width of the binding. Once everything is ready, I run the binding through the gaps and cut it off with a small Exacto hobby saw flush against the MDF. It cuts cleanly. It take a little setup, but the results are pretty reliable and repeatable. I used the same jig on my SG since the headstock was the same. Problem is that third son wants a different headstock design. drawing of headstock with angles measured and bifurcated binding angle cutting jig OK. Jimmy Vaughan is finished. Now listening to Hound Dog Taylor. Puts my "project" in perspective. He made a living 30 years ago playing cheap cheap Japanese guitars through Sears Roebuck amps. More later.

MG, just noticed your signature. Celebrating Bastille Day?