Steve Luke

God, that's ugly. My eyes! My beautiful eyes!

Excellent, thanks for all the advice. Incedentally, I was interested in teh post that suggested I fill the holes in the neck and startr again from scratch - what would you recommend I use to fill the holes?

For my forthcoming project I intend to buy a pre-made bolt-on neck. This seems easy enough if the neck is not pre-drilled and you can put your own holes wherever you want. but how do I go about this if I buy a neck with the holes pre-drilled? In particular, I'm thinking of Warmoth's bargain basement necks - they all seem to all come pre-drilled presumably because they are designed to match up with the holes in their own bodies. Fine if you buy both from Warmoth, but I want to design and make my own body. How can I drill the neck pocket to make sure tehy line up with the pre-drilled holes? Many thanks

Good question - I'm glad someone raised this! I'm also after finishing supplies. I need some notrocellulose lacquer, clear and solid colours, in aerosol cans. Stew Mac do the kind of thing I'm after, but it can't be shipped abroad. Failing that, can I get away with car paint in spray cans?

Where are you - UK or US?

You know when you need to drill holes absolutely vertically. It's fine if they're near the edge of the body beacuse you can use a drill press or similar. The problem I have is when I want to drill holes further to the centre of teh body, and the throat of the drill press doesn't give me enough reach over the workpiece. So I need to drill the holes for the strings to pass through a solid body fitted with a strat-type hardtail bridge. Would it be possible to use a router as a "movable drill press" with a drill bit (say 1/4) fitted into the collet? I've always heard that using a router for drilling was not recommended, But recently I saw that Trend do a range of drill bits specifically for the router. Do I need to use these only or could I use a regular drill bit? Alternatively could I use a straight router bit of the correct diameter and just plunge straight down to make larger holes (bridge / tailpiece studs, for example)? Look forward to your comments

I just had another look at it, and I can only repeat - Full marks for workmanship, obviously a very talented and dedicated craftsman, so full credit where it's due. However - Ha ha ha h ahha hahahahahahahaha!!!! Oh, bloody hell!

what in the name of all that's holy is that?

I've made up my mind - it's bollocks

Excuse me, I've got to go for a lie down now. Hope that thing hasn't given me nightmares.

It's awful. You're obviously a talented carpenter, now go and do something presentable in decent company

I think they do 1-piece and 2-piece blanks, and a nice range of caps (in maple and other) for reasonable prices, too. Good luck!

Here's what I did to make a good-ish Jazzmaster template. 1, find a pic of it on the net (must be a good photo, flat and straight on, not at an angle) and print it off - try Warmoth, they've got some pretty good images in teh bodies section fo their on-line catalogue. 2, decide scale length you want (you could maybe half it for convenience). 3, Blow up the photo on a photocopier using A3 until the scale length of the photo matches your real-life scale length. 4, Copy the body area (will probably take a few sheets of A3 which you'll need to stick together 5, You should then have a full size body shape which you can trace onto your template material and shape

Also try these lot. Their web site doesn't look to have much in the way of guitar materials, but if you order their catalogue (free) they have a range of boddy blanks at reasonable prices (e.g. mahogany and alder etc starting at about £30) Good luck http://www.craft-supplies.co.uk/