Chuck_Chill-Out

Okay, life has been a bit crazy. Cleaning out MIL's house and traveling for work. Now, I am able to get back in to work on building this thing again. I am hoping to build THIS one correctly.

Haven't been in here for a while. I have wrist issues (too many times snapping my left hand back while speed skating), so the trap neck is comfortable for me. Each to their own. By the way, your guitars are AMAZING!!

May daughter said it looks like water. Great job!

Okay, sorry I haven't been in here (and building) lately, I've been out of my local area due to work. Well, it's one way to make the money for this, and the other things in my life. I was able to get to the wood shop today to reassess the bass. I've decided to take curtisa's advice and scrap the neck. I will continue to use it as a learning experience and a template on what I want it to look like, but remember to step back and drink a cold beverage when I begin to get nervy. One other thing I am doing, my friend who has the wood shop is a decoy carver. He is working with me to carve an American Goldfinch for my daughter. She loves sitting quietly and still (almost impossible for an 8 year-old) to watch them come to our porch. I appreciate this site for the expertise of the posters and the amazing work y'all have done. Oh, I have maple left over for the neck, but I am thinking of black walnut with it instead of cherry. Any thoughts?

Curtis, thanks for the info. The truss rod is a 3/4" square aluminum bar, so the upper end of the neck was thin. I do have extra cherry and walnut for a new neck, but I'll need to get some maple, which is not too expensive around here. Lucky for me (maybe?) the wings are not attached to the neck yet. For me, it was easier to shape the neck and fretboard. I cut the top 1/4" off of the cherry for the wings and hollowed it out to try and lighten it. The tops were then reglued.

Well, I had time to work on this over the weekend (sorry, no pics yet). I repaired the hole on the neck and continued to shape the neck. Just my luck, I ran into ANOTHER issue. The truss rod started to be uncovered near the headstock and i could feel the wood bow under the truss rod. Routed too deep. Well, from reading the posts on here from demonx, RestorationAD, and others, I decided to take a few breaths and reassess. Using a small saw, I cut out the section of thin wood and measured a replacement piece. This is a bit frustrating, but a learning experience.

+100 on the guitars, the repair (I STILL haven't found the piece you replaced) and fixing up the book press.

Patched the hole and letting it dry before reshaping. Sorry, no pic. As it is drying, I started on some body work. A question for y'all. How thick do you make the control cavity cover? I'm using an extra piece of cherry for it.

+1, +2, +3...........and so forth. SR Drat, I didn't know about #6, so I didn't video the last neck I screwed up.

Thanks for the explanations. Increasing my knowledge in here.

Explain "buzzing" I guess "buzzing" was the wrong word. I mean noise. I was thinking shielding. My bass had a lot of noise until I shielded the pickup cavities with copper.

Just a question from a newbie, but how are you going to keep buzzing from occurring with the pickups?

I am NOT showing these to my daughter. Outstanding work, sir!

Okay, hit a snag when shaping the neck. I want a trapezoidal neck since I have a bad left wrist (I am a recovering adrenaline junkie) and this feels better when playing. When I was routing for the truss rod, I had a yip with the router. I didn't think it was a problem until... I am planning on squaring up the gap and gluing in a piece of the maple. UGH!

Scott, my 7 year-old daughter was looking at this thread with me and was constantly saying "WOW" at them. She now wants me to build one for her. Thanks alot!

Her it is with the Gibson amp that my Mother-in-law said was in her attic. Blew out a lot of dust and had a friend give it a once-over. Nice sound out of it. I restrung it with D'Addario nylon coated strings.

We had a large amount of blue spray paint at work, and I was told to use it. Voila, boiler blue. Rebuilt and painted headstock. I do plan on stripping and refinishing this at some time. I realized that I didn't fill the pores on the body and it does not look good. Pickguard cut out Painted pickguard, two six string humbuckers and Fender short scale roundwounds.

When I stripped the paint, the plastic position markers, which I didn't know were there, and plastic binding came off. Also, the frets were in horrible shape and I didn't have the proper tools to either redress or replace the frets. I decided to cut some maple strips and inlay them as the frets and position markers. From reading a forum post somewhere, I learned how to bend the maple to the shape of the fretboard. Also, I worked on this at my former place of employment, a Japanese company that was in Lancaster, PA. This project was done during my lunch breaks. The President of the company came back in my lab, saw this in pieces and said he used to have a Teisco guitar in the 60's. Fretboard and binding finished.