gpcustomguitars

Thanks! Putting the kids to bed, and if I'm not too sleepy myself, off to shape the neck I have printed the pickguard template, just have to check if it aligns properly with my humbuckers template before cutting.

Shiny! I hope to start shaping the neck now, and the tenon needs a final fitting. IMG_20161013_213019 by Goran P, on Flickr

Scraped and fretted: IMG_20161013_133821 by Goran P, on Flickr Still have to level and dress the frets, later today I hope I'm getting closer and closer to the matter of the ruined top...

Done! I'll scrape the binding now, and try to finish fretting during the day. The sliver I've added is visible, but I expect the sanding will make it less. Veneer is 22mm wide, and binding will be 6mm, so total thickness of the sides cca 34mm=1.34'. IMG_20161013_073722 by Goran P, on Flickr

And the other half is done too - I'll have to glue in 2 slivers, but that should be quite easy. All in all, this went well. No pics, will post when I scrape the binding. I'm ordering some parts for this today, some I already have, and then I'm moving to the neck, and making the pickguard.

Aaand - half done! Literally IMG_20161010_220002 by Goran P, on Flickr I didn't want to risk the router bearing damaging the veneer, so I did it all backwards. I'm aiming at 1.5 mm thick binding, I have 2mm binding stock I cut to size, and so I have routed the binding ledge with that in mind. Binding was glued with CA this time, I usually use acetone, but I had limited time. Binding was left proud of the sides, creating a channel for the veneer strip I have cut a hair oversize, and pared to fit while gluing section by section. I used masking tape on both ends to prevent splitting, and pressed the veneer with tape and various cauls. The glue did soften and moisturize the veneer enough that I really had no problem with any of the bends. The binding is still a bit proud , so I'll scrape it down when the other half is done. Besides binding which was done a day before, it took about an hour, preparations and all. The pic shows the idea, the arch is also somewhat visible.

Well, my veneer is really dry, probably because of it age, and seems too brittle to manage the tips of the horns without breaking. I have searched the net on bending, but no real luck...any ideas, links? I'll test it first, but would the glue (PVA) moisturize it enough to regain/enhance pliability? If it does crack on the tips, I could inlay a small piece of binding to bridge the gap, or veneer in a patch cross grain? Other bends will be fine I think. I think I'll start with test bending a piece with glue on, followed with bending with glue on with hot iron over paper. Any experiences to share?

I try to, whenever the day to day stuff gives me some space I found a large piece of sapele veneer (I think) in my stash. I might make the sides prettier if I manage all the bends. I hid it from myself obviously, I bought it back in '00 or '01 Will have to look up some basic veneering...

Good to be back! Thanks Carl! Here's what I've been up to: IMG_20160930_172256 by Goran P, on Flickr IMG_20161001_154103 by Goran P, on Flickr I've managed to cut 2 plugs for the mistake routs, glued them in and sanded them flush, with arching of course, with orbital sander. Cut the f-holes, as planned I have moved the inwards, 2 cm closer to the centerline, to compensate for the thick sides. Still looks right, at least to my eyes. The other pics shows the inside while still rough, I've since sanded all the roughness away and routed clean inner lines for the sides. One exception is the dip in the side, it's for the pot to have some maneuvering room. The sides are beech flooring ages old we have in the yard, dry and stable. I don't like beech, but this started as an experiment, so I guess it's OK. It may surprise me yet The center is a nice piece of door frame I had left over, and the neck is a mystery hardwood flooring, scarf joint, that I've made a neck from before and it works and sounds nice. So, it's just a set of frets, rosewood fretboard with some plastic markers, two plywood plates of the 1st grade and a hot rod. What's left to resolve is the glue lines around the plugs - most will be covered by hardware, but TOM is in the dead center of one, and the idea so far is to inlay some aluminium wire into them and add some accents, swirls or something, to have the TOM highlighted discretely if possible. I would still like to have it in the transparent wine red. I've wanted to try inlaying silvery wire for some time now, so I guess the time is now...

Thanks Andy! It will be 34mm at the sides, I like it so far. I'll have to move the f-holes a bit inland, 2cm I think, because of the sides being wider that usual. Drawn out and ready to cut today. I think I'll stick with the usual method for electronics, I've been looking at some pics of covers on the back, and it just doesn't look right... On the not so bright side, yesterday I've routed the pup holes using my usual LP template, route went well, and upon removing the template, I find that I indexed the template off the wrong side of the mark...I couldn't even scream. Can't bring myself to take a pic. Cutting the plugs, rerouted in the proper places already, when the plugs are set I'll bring them flush to the top with orbital...it is an offcut guitar, but this ...I'll have to get creative, as I still want the usual wine red top. One route went to the dead center of bridge position, so that at least gives me a starting point for some sort of solution. At least the bridge will be on hardwood

No update so far on the SG, but I did a experiment or two I'd like to show: This is the head cab I've made for my attempt to make a chip amp (LM3886) with FET driven preamp. It's supposed to emulate JTM45, but as I was unable to find a schematic for one with 4 inputs, I've put together something I hope will work. My first serious attempt to cover a cab, btw. IMG_20160910_163026 by Goran P, on Flickr IMG_20160915_200114 by Goran P, on Flickr And here's the other experiment - scrap wood in form of a 335: IMG_20160927_203617 by Goran P, on Flickr IMG_20160927_222942 by Goran P, on Flickr The goal was to see how well would the poplar 4mm plywood top and back take the arching, glued to the solid (about 1in wide) sides, with solid wood core, carved to proper arch. Actually, it worked great so far! the back is still off, and the neck is not glued in. The neck was started some time ago as my friend wanted me to teach him how to insert the frets. He lost interest on the 3rd as can be seen in the pics, and the thing was just gathering dust, so, this will be a good use for it. Neck body join is at the 20th fret, 26mm deep, 70mm long tenon, whole width, just with two half circles "pinching" into it. It was actually routed freehand, so no jigs to show, but I went slow and it went reasonably well. I'm still trying to decide how to tackle the electronics installation, I was repairing a hollow bass a while ago and pulling the whole thing trough the pickup hole was not fun...anyone tried to make a big hole on the side to slide the whole harness in? Then I could move the input jack on the cover for that? Even thought of cutting a LP style opening on the back...

Thanks!!! Definitely! It was sort of an experiment that went really well (the guitar, not moving in) as it is made entirely from pine. Just the fretboard is ebony. Completely stable to this day, no bending warping etc, really light, and big open sound. Pine is sort of hard to work with, but well worth the effort IMO. Sides are one-piece, while the center is 3 layers, not side by side, but stacked. I wanted to see will I get any warping if the neck is made like a composite bow, sort of. Maybe I was just lucky, but it seems to work. BTW, could anyone verify if my electronic scheme for the SG will work? I made it up by supplementing the toggle switch in the drawing with instructions from Stew-Mac for connecting the pan pot.

Thanks! Waterbased it is, no point in complicating things. Black grain fill...back to the drawing board This might be just a thing to tie up the black hardware to the wine red finish... Waiting on developments on your SG project! BTW here's the Firebird I've made for my wife when we moved in together IMG_20150523_170359 by Goran P, on Flickr

Probably I even thought of solid black, but that would be a shame I think. Based on your 5 string bass thread I wanted to ask you if you had any experience with raw lineseed pore filling by sanding, followed by nitro final coats? I'll probably just go with water-based filler, but oil might highlight any subtle figure this mahogany has. I can't try it out on scrap as I don't have any of that or similar mahogany at hand. I've spent a good part of morning looking over various SG pics, and I'm leaning toward rich deep wine red, with black headstock, plain black Standard pickguard (which might get some binding perhaps?) and the hardware I got is black, due to black Trilogy bridge I have for it.

No pics of actual gluing, but It's nicely back on. I trimmed the fret ends while the fretboard was off, which is a first for me. I liked the freedom of access it gives, but still I prefer the usual way I do it... I'm fine tuning the neck shape now, and changing my opinion on type of finish constantly. I do know the headstock will be black, but the rest - wine red, mahogany+tobacco brown, no idea still. Pore filling soon and a lot of sanding ahead 005 by Goran P, on Flickr 006 by Goran P, on Flickr 007 by Goran P, on Flickr 008 by Goran P, on Flickr

Cleaned both sides and glued back on. Looking at what I've scraped off, I think the glue was the reason it happened. I had the exact same thing on a Red Special copy I made around that time, probably the same batch of glue...

Good thing is that no real harm was done - it came right off using a hot spatula so it's just cleaning and reglue. I guess it could be as much about the glue used back then as it could be about truck drive from Moscow to here, years in storage itd... Scraper is one of replacement blades I have turned a burr on...the crack was not very visible, nothing was warped.

Finally, a small update on the SG! Frets are on, but in the process I found a deep crack in the fretboard glue line. Since I was able to push a scraper blade deep enough without much effort, I took the fretboard off. with no damage. Well, unfinished guitar, changing countries for 10 years, time in storage...I guess I'm lucky it's just that. I'll clean it up and re-glue and then I can proceed with fret dressing and final shaping of the neck. 004 by Goran P, on Flickr

Thanks a lot, I'm really glad you like it!!! I was wondering at some points if I was overdoing it, perhaps a more "normal" guitar should have been made. I'll focus on the SG now, to finally make a normal guitar I readily agree that PVA is not the way to go here, but I was trying to have fun, and this was on my desk, cheap and ready to go. I might make a proper Billy Bo 3+3 neck for it at some point and repurpose this neck on something fender-ish. Right now I'm daydreaming of a full-cherry strat-tele with a large inlay in place of the pickguard. I've sort of started it already: IMG_20151101_210346-001 by Goran P, on Flickr I have in the meanwhile cut the lower horn as drawn. Using these "problematic" pieces of wood is kind of liberating and I think I learn a lot every time, as I have to compensate for the natural faults in the material. As I said before, I am doing some repairs from time to time for the local guitar shop, and projects such as this one help me as practice for more dedicated jobs. Thanks again for really nice comments, I'll print and hang some of them over my workspace

I've put the strings on, and did the setup! Sounds really lively, plays nicely and despite it's looks is not heavy. Headstock became much prettier I think...I have yet to solder it together later this week. As this is a Parts-box-build, decided to get some caps from this old italian mic preamp, and I think these are the right pot caps for this guitar! Then again, if I do make an similarly styled Moderne out of the remaining piece of cherry, I might need all 3 Will try to record a few sounds once I'm done! 0071 by Goran P, on Flickr 0072 by Goran P, on Flickr 0073 by Goran P, on Flickr 0074 by Goran P, on Flickr 0075 by Goran P, on Flickr 0076 by Goran P, on Flickr 0077 by Goran P, on Flickr 0078 by Goran P, on Flickr 0079 by Goran P, on Flickr 0080 by Goran P, on Flickr 0082 by Goran P, on Flickr 0083 by Goran P, on Flickr 0084 by Goran P, on Flickr

Cherry + some oil and wax is just great, and this piece has some black streaks that just highlight the natural look of cherry. I decided to make a guitar body out of this based on the healthy back. The top is pretty rotten (or spalted ) so to get to solid ground I would have to remove about 10mm, so there would be no character left. And I would have to do a lot more sanding I'm curious too, but I do have the rest of that plank in the garage, and it will probably become some mutant V or a Moderne and I'll just mill the top flat and we'll see what happens. I must admit it's not all natural look of the wood. I've filled all the cracks with PVA, so those arreas don't darken as much in contact with the oil mix. I might try "drawing" with PVA at some point, using a pen-like glue bottle on bare wood to make a pattern, sand back and then oil. Areas covered would probably not oxidize or darken and would have some slight shine different to surrounding surface. It's waxed now: 0069 by Goran P, on Flickr 0070 by Goran P, on Flickr I've used an old batch of oil mix which became really thick. I was wondering will it be OK, but, one thick coat I applied was enough, it was completely dry to touch and looks as I've used lacquer. I guess I'll mix some more and just leave it for a while...

Oiled it last night with my home made mix of lineseed, thinner and varnish. While it's drying, I'll reshape and paint the headstock, and then after some wax, it's assembly time! 0067 by Goran P, on Flickr 0068 by Goran P, on Flickr

A small update, but detail by detail, it's almost done! Oil is next! The way I mounted the pickup got in the way of the "BEER", but I went around it: Masked and sprayed the letters, then masked again with the cover in place, and did the "polish back" thing again. I messed up because it's supposed to be upside down, but never mind, it's highly unlikely that anyone would get me a beer during the set anyway 0062 by Goran P, on Flickr 0063 by Goran P, on Flickr 0064 by Goran P, on Flickr 0065 by Goran P, on Flickr My coin-or-plastic dilemma solved itself as while cleaning the garage today I found this remnant of the disk brake. It even has a 3.5mm hole in just the right place. Bent the little lip it has into the pickup well using a vice. 0066 by Goran P, on Flickr

The pup cavity is done, drilled the holes for the screws, trimmed the pickguard to fit the pup. All the versions of the pot caps I have so far - white, dark brown, 12gauge. Also, another dilemma - as support for the bass-side pup screw I have either a old coin (to be drilled and cut in almost half) or another bit of black plastic, perhaps even in shape similar to this on the pic. 0055 by Goran P, on Flickr 0056 by Goran P, on Flickr 0057 by Goran P, on Flickr 0059 by Goran P, on Flickr 0060 by Goran P, on Flickr 0061 by Goran P, on Flickr

Can't decide...we'll see when it's assembled, perhaps it will be more obvious then... Anyway, some more progress, shaped the pup cavity some more, and made the covers. Also, v1.0 of the jack plate. All will get the same sand back /polish treatment of some sort. Covers are shaped a bit, to blend with the existing body curves. Still have to do some minor routing on the pup cavity and then drill for the jack. Then it's just finishing, or lack of it 0049 by Goran P, on Flickr 0050 by Goran P, on Flickr 0051 by Goran P, on Flickr 0052 by Goran P, on Flickr 0053 by Goran P, on Flickr 0054 by Goran P, on Flickr