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Ok, went to the home depot today, and bought the ONLY epoxy the guy said they had that would dry clear. It's Famowood Glaze Coat pour-on high gloss epoxy coating. And even though it's a COATING I though "eh, it looks pretty thin to start out, it'll geti nto the grain, plus the guy says it dries really hard. Opinions? Chris

Man, I'm jealous, I wish I had enough time and money to sit and make some 20-30 guitars! I find it hard to get the time to fully build ONE every 6 months or so. And with the money constraint, even less lol Chris Nice work man

If you're planning on using your template as a router template, I'd suggest using MDF and not acrylic. I've got a full guitar building tutorial going that has just got past the template stage. You should check it out, it's VERY detailed, and hopefully if I'm explaining things in depth enough (which I think I'm doing pretty well at) you can't go wrong. The threads here, go to the bottom, a guy listed the .doc file for me. Template Tutorial Chris

If you do the way that he has now chosen to do (as I can see my PRS was done) is that joint REALLY strong enough? with the whole tension of the strings pulling on it etc.? I guess they do say A Titebond joint is actually stronger than just the wood... but it still just kinda scares me like that. Ok, a question: Why do some people put those little lumps in their necks kinda under the nut position/before the headstock begins, on the back? Like here: Just to have like a way for your hand to feel when you're at the end? Or is there a structural purpose I should know about? Chris

That Pagelli guy has done it with a guitar. He even went one step BEYOND just adding a effects pedal, he put in a freakin' Alesis AirFX, that thing you move your hand through the magnetic feild to change the sound! So depending on how closwe to the neck you played whatever effect the AirFX multiFX was set to, it would warp it and change parameters. There's a pick and a vid here. It's called the Avantair... it's towards the bottom. But yeah, regardless of WHAT you put in it, it's most likely gunna turn out pimped out the the max. Chris

no no no, the purpleheart is gunna be where the black and mahogany is on that. The buckeye will be where the maple is on that. As for the carve on the Kritz, it's bigger than you think, I've played several AT their workshop when I lived there, and have ordered 2 of um. It's a bigger carve than it looks to be. Chris

hahaha, sorry, i am looking for a carve almost exactly like that (minus the ULTRA raised bridge part; which they call the 'lift-top') but with buckeye biurl and purpleheart. Chris

yup, like garhan said, it's gunna cost you WAY over the $350 it'd take to buy a decent strat on musiciansfriend to build one. With all the parts, tools, time, etc. It's gunna cost you WAY more to build it than to buy it. In my opinion, you build to make something you CANNOT buy. If you want a pre-existing product.... just buy it?? Chris

With a rotary tool...? As in just using like a course disk bit and freehanding a carve??? I'm a little lost on how you accomplish this? Care to elaborate? Chris

thatnks, I hadn't even thought of that... also, here's where it would be nice to have a copy carver... carve one out of a single wood then use the copy carver Chris PS: Now if only I had a copy carver and the space for it...

I was wondering about something. After seeing dougs hopefully soon to be guitar of the month it got me with THIS idea. I want to get a 1" top that's made from a 5/8" of buckeye burl laminated with a 3/8" purpleheart piece. That way when you carve down, towards the edge the wood changes but the carve stays constant, something like one of my favourite builders do (Kritz) here: But like I said with buckeye as the top of the laminate and the part exposed by the carve being the purpleheart. In a thread earlier MATT mentioned that this is quite a daunting task to get done correctly (in a thread of a different topic though... but it still got me thinking). Anyone wanna give some pointers? Tips? Warnings? Discuss on this idea? Chris

I don't htink anything happens to the originals because I was looking at it in the pics and it shows the thing that follows the FINISHED neck looks like it has like a pad on the end? Chris

Hahahaha, thanks. I wouldn't have even realised that's what those were lol. Chris

Yeah, I know, hense my question, has anyone done just that, and how did it turn out. ie: anyone got pics of this? Chris

Has anyone ever tried doing a grain fill with epoxy BESIDES black or clear? IE: what would happen if you took some of that stewmac stain and mixed it in with your epoxy and then filled the grain with say... red? Cause then you could have a cool "red and white" (provided you're useing a light colored wood) natural looks. OR if you shot say... blue over that, you'd have blue finish but with what I'm guessing would turn out as purple grain 'low-lights' (opposite of highlights??) Chris

God I wish I knew where these things were when I was just starting out lol. So far I'll take that as a "please continue" especially since that's for a strat and this is for a semi-hollow. And plus I guess the more the merrier. Chris

OK, so here's the low down, I've been chronicling my building with what would eventually be, by the end, something of VERY substancial length. It describes ALL steps in detail, has photos for almost all of the steps, etc. I'm talking this things is in chapter form and everything. I know IIII would have wanted this when I was a newbie, but I'm just checking it it's worth me doing this or not. So give me a heads up if people think I should continue something of this nature for the newbies, or if I should jsut build my guitar and post the finished product when it happens? To see what I've done so far right click and save here and then go change the .jpg extension to a .doc (I couldn't find any other way to host a word document... so I hope this works) and tell me what you think. Chris

I'm gunna have to uber-agree with chuckie on this. I'm not sure a headstock that small in comparason would look good. But no offense, I'm not sure that shape of a headstock would work if it were bigger either... might wanna re-think the whole headstock?? Sorry Chris

Drums get hit and beat around pretty hard... so I'd think it'd hold up. Get the samples free and see. They have these satin ones (if you like how they look) that I get a feeling would hold up best... Chris

Got my sample packet from persiciondrum.com the other day. it ROCKS they give you like a 2"x1" piece of EVERY wrap they make in almost EVERY color! For FREE! Tons to messa round with and try melting, etc. EVERYONE should get one and try to vacuum wrap with it, it has got to be the COOLEST thing I've ever gotten for free lol. Chris

I searched and found a couple things on the subject, but nothing really delved into it as much as I would have liked it to. I want to put a synth driver, 13 pun, in a future guitar and I was wondering a couple things. 1) How difficult is this to do? 2) Any other "kits" out there that use piezo saddles, and not that ugly roland one that has an actual hex pickup sitting on the guitar's top... I want something that I can put IN the bridge, like piezo saddles. 3) Would it fit on a Hipshot Baby Grand Bridge? 4) Where's a good place to buy this? (stewmac has nothing, and musiciansfriend only has the external and internal hardware with the hex pickup) Chris

I gave you some good ideas on where to start in one of your other THREE topics that talk about almost EXACTLY the same thing! Don't flood and spam the forum, you could have EASILY done all that in one topic! And like he said, make your own template. And you yelled back about wanting bridge placement information etc... well if you go read the PRS site and look at pictures it pretty much gives that to you. It tells you the scale length, and you can see what frets the neck connects to the body at, and from there you can find the bridge's spot. If you can't, like he said, try something easier. The PRS site is a great reference, it tells you radius, scale length, nut width. I use it so often I've got the number's memorized. So yeah, use what they give you, and use the FedEx Kinko's technique I outlined in your first topic, and build your own plans from there. Chris

If you can't find anything worth using, something that IS a good idea, and that I did to make a les paul type shape with violin side styled cuts.... find pictures on the internet of all the different elements you want of your body, photoshop them together, then do a mask of the whole body and fill it with a solid color. Expand it to "lifesize" using the rulers, and then take that imagne to FedEx Kinkos. They have huge printers you can print out on. What comes out will be very pixelated, but you can still free-hand from there on top using the printout as a basis.... Chris

Cherry fingerboard would look rather cool. And I'm thinking there MAY be ways to do it... and someone back me up here if they agree, or shoot me down here if I'm totally wrong so this guy doesn't go on what I'm saying and it doesn't work. Either way, you MIGHT be able to epoxy the whole piece, like REALLY get the epoxy down in there with something that starts off very thin, little viscosity, but ends up hard as a rock. Almost like a grain fill, but simply used to reinforce. And like someone mentioned before, adding some finish on top of that might not hurt either. With all that it might work. And there was talk about finishing fretboards earlier, and the verdict was: "why not?" and "Rickenbacker basses are..." and "you can finish necks and fingerboards with super glue." So it might all be worth a try. Someone even mentioned fender goes so far as to finish over the frets! Lol Chris

And here's my two cents: My first guitar was a neck through, and apart from buying those carvin one's pre-built there's not much of an option besides building your own. So I did. It was too THICK, too big, etc. Which I found was a RELIEF cause the other guy in my woodshop class way back when I did this went too thin through to the truss rod and ended up having to fill it with puddy and it looked HORRIBLE. So yeah, my suggestion, if you're looking to build a NORMAL neck, aim for building a Santana (HUGE) neck (in terms of thickness and width at nut and a little on the sides) because you can always take OFF with some heavy san-paper, a surform rasp, and a scraper. So aim big, and then once you have a NECK, THEN go for making it feel good in your hands. Cause if you make a mistake on a THICK neck, chances are you can carve down a little more and get rid of that mistake and still end up with a normal sized neck. And you would have learned from that mistake and won't make it the second time around when you're thinning it down. Chris