ArieBombarie

This weekend I got some work done on the neck.

First I marked out all the dimensions on the neckwood and cut the scarfjoint on my teblesaw with a special jig I made.

After I had cut the scrafjoint, I planed the headstock piece to the correct thickness, I figured this would be easier then doing this after I glued it on...

Then I glued on the headstock piece and clamped it.... This is the headstock after gluing...

I had to add the 'ears' to make the headstock wider. But because my headstock design isn't straight, I first tapered the headstock so that the glue-lines of the ears would end up at the top of the headstock instead of the sides where they would be more noticable...

Then I clamped it and here is the rough headstock shape... I will add a zebrawood veneer on both the top and the back of the headstock so all the gluelines you see will be hidden.

I also cut the tenon and routed the truss rod cavity

Next up is shaping the neck and adding the veneer...

Grz Arjan

Its entirely feasible, and you're right it would fit the theme of your axe better than plastic.

Three major things to be careful of:

#1 Make sure you are certain of the taper of the fretboard, then leave 1/8" or less for your bindings on either side. If you're not certain of the taper, you'll end up with binding that won't be parallel to the outer strings and could look weird.

#2 Titebond works great, just make sure you clean out the slots very well, wait about 20 minutes after you glue up and the Titebond will come out easily with one of those StewMac slot cleaning tools. If you fail to do this, your frets will pop up at the ends.

#3 Don't make the binding any thicker than 1/8", otherwise the amount of fret that is unsupported by the tang gets too long and it will bend sideways when you level the frets.

alright then... thanx for the info!!!

Gr Arjan

I'm in doubt, (about a lot off things but here I'll stick to the ones regarding my guitar )

I'm currently building a Les Paul style guitar (I started a build thread, see signature for the link)... It has a mahogany body and neck, a zebrawood carved top and a ebony fretboard..

At first I wanted bindings around the body, neck and headstock. But my design has a rather pointy horn and I figured that it would be hard to get a plastic binding around that horn, so I dropped that idea. Instead I used a natural binding around the body, so the height of the side of the topwood is the same around the body (about 6 mm) and I won't stain it, but leave it blank.... On the headstock I'll use zebrawood veneer on the back and front (for hiding the scarf joint and for the looks). The front veneer (about 4mm) will be thicker than the back and I will leave a natural binding on the front veneer aswell...

I still want to get a binding around the fretboard but I think having a plastic binding there won't look right (as it would be the only part with plastic bindings). So I want to use thin pieces of zebrawood (about 2mm) as binding around the ebony fretboard. This, I think, will give the guitar a more together look.

I already made strips of about 4 mm which I can bring back to about 2 mm ones there glued to the fretboard.

Is this feasible? What mistakes should I avoid? Is the procedure the same as with plastic bindings (only with different glue)? Should I do this in the first place?

In short... I'm in doubt ... I would really like to hear your views on this one…

Grz Arjan

Not my cup-of-tea, but nicely done....

How did you do the letters on the neck? If you carved them to, your fretboard won't be flat...

Grz Arjan

I had the same problem with my piece of neck wood (2" mahogany), I went back to my supplier and exchanged it for a level piece... I just didn't see myself planing it....

I did straighten the topwood (1/2" zebrawood) with steam but I had a hard time straightening it out completely, so I don't think it's a realistic option for your neck blank as it is even thicker.

If I where you, I would use this wood for the wings or something and get a new piece for the neck. If you use smaller pieces of the warped wood, the warp per piece is smaller, so if you plane the individual pieces you will lose less of the height of the wood...

Grz Arjan

Star grounding sure works on strats , i can attest to that. See guitarnuts for that. Isolate the pots by putting electrical tape under the pots. don`t forget to cut the shielding a little wider than the holes. Use one of the full coverage strat scratch plate shields available on the net. Callaham guitars makes one, they work well OR just buy noiseless pickups. Much better as most of the noise comes from the pups.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm using humbuckers so they should be pretty noiseless. But if I understand you correctly you’re saying that I should make sure that the shielding doesn't touch the parts... Funny thing is that in all the posts I read on either shielding or ground loops, this wasn’t mentioned…

Grz Arjan

Hi there,

I posted this question at the end of another thread, but somehow you all missed that one So here is my question regarding shielding and groundloops:

I've read in a post that it is important to avoid ground-loops with your wiring. So you should always use one single point to which all your ground wires will connect and not have multiple paths to ground. In another post, the importance of shielding the cavities is discussed to reduce interference from electromagnetic fields (cell phones etc......)

But if you use shielding in your cavities, your pots, pick-ups and switches will touch the shielding and in doing so you will create an alternative path to ground. You will end up with ground loops between these parts...

Is this a problem? Should I make sure these parts don't touch the shielding or am I just paranoia here ?

Please advise...

Grz Arjan

Hey, coming on great! I love les paul inspired builds. I'm also a Dutchie, just wondering where you got your wood from as I'm planning to do a build in the summer holidays.

Glad you like it... got the wood at de Amsterdamse fijnhouthandel (www.fijnhout.nl) .... you could also try de Arnhemse Fijnhouthandel (www.af.nl)....

Good luck with your project...

Arjan

thanks. sure is. the only reason its there is because the blank would not have been wide enough for the body.

Well that was a blessing in disguise then... it looks Great with the walnut center...

Grz Arjan

Tom,

stewmac gives this drawing of the push/pull pot:

So I guess it means that the middle contacts are the common contacts, in the down position contact is made with the lower contacts and in the up postion with the upper contacts... If so, you should run the "live" wire of the bottom single coil to the bottom contact and the "live" wire of your upper single coil to the upper contact... The middle contact should run to whatever it ran to when it was still a HB configuration.....

I'm not sure if all push/pull pots have the same configuration, so you could (I you have a multi-meter) figure out how it works by measuring the resistants between the contacts in the up and down positions... (and to state the obvious, 0 Ohm or a beep means the contact is closed, -- Ohm or no beep means there is no contact...)

And another thing to remember is that there is no relationship between the pot-part and the switch-part of the push/pull pot, they may as well be two seperate components...

Hope this helps...

Gr Arjan

Well, thanks for all the kind words... I'm rather pleased with it myself....

And now I have a deadline... A colleage of my girlfriend is the guitarist of Claw Boys Claw. They will be playing at the Lowlands festival in September. (Lowlands is the biggest 3-day festival of the Netherlands with over 60.000 visitors). And if it's finished and it playes well, he will be playing this gig with my guitar!

So... no time to waste...

Arjan

Next thing I did was to plane the angle in the body for the neck using a planning jig I build (I posted a tread about the jig Adjustable planing jig thread)

Then I used the jig to roughfly route out the carving:

Then I used an angle grinder with a sandpaper disk (the kind with flaps) to smooth the rough carving. Then it was time to take out the sandpaper and sand everything smooth...

as you can see I lost much of the bookmatched effect after the carving. This is because graindirection in the topwood wasn't perpendicular to the top, but had a slope to it... so when I carved the top the grain 'ran off' in different directions. I had already figured this out before I started so no unpleasant suprises there... all and all I'm still pleased with the endresult...

I just ordered all the hardware yesterday at stewmac, so in a week or so I will have everything... In the meantime I'll start with the neck...

Arjan

And yet another shielding question... In other post I've read that it is important to avoid ground-loops with your wiring. So you should always use one single point to which all your ground wires will connect. But if you use shielding in your cavities, your pots, pick-ups and switches will touch the shielding and in doing so you will create a ground loop between these parts...

Is this a problem? Should I make sure these parts don't touch the shielding or am I just paranoia here ?

Please advise...

Grz Arjan

I stubled upon this CAD drawing (DWG format), nothing about bodythickness though...

CAD Drawing Explorer @ Guitarbuild.com

hope it's *something* you can use...

Grz Arjan

well having no real place to work is a bit of a bummer... cutting, routing, and sanding will leave you with (hopefully) a beautiful guitar and a lot of dust! I think you can do without a workbench and a lot of the power tools, but your real challenge will be keeping your apartment clean.. So here's a thought... when cutting mother-of-pearl, most builder use a vacuum to suck the pearl dust away.. (this dust is sharp and hazardess to your health)... So maybe you can use an (old) vacuum, attach a funnel of some sort to it, and sand close to it so most of the dust will be sucked away before it can mess up your apartment...

I say go for it... having build your guitar in your apartment will only make it more special...

Grz Arjan

PS if you use regular woodglue, you can let it dry inside your apartment...

Before I glued on the topwood, I pre-routed the wiring holes in the body... (and of course cut the bodyshape in the topwood)

I glued on the topwood, clamped it and let it dry for a couple of days... After that I routed the topwood even with the rest of the body

Next job is to carve the top.....

Grz Arjan

Hey,

nice build! Looking good so far. Could you go into details about your drum sander, please? How did you realize it, and how could you center your shaft to balanced turning?

At first I tried to buy a big enough drum sander, but I couldn't find any... but I had a small drum-sanderbit thingy for my drill lying around.. (something as shown on the picture..) it was about 3 cm high and had about the same diameter... it was too small for sanding the side of the body. I cut a piece a PVC pipe (4 cm diameter and about 6 cm high) and I used ducktape to increase the diameter of the small drumsander untill it became a snug fit inside of the PVC pipe.. The smaller drum sander sits right about in the middle of the larger one. On the PVC pipe I use double sided tape to attach the sandpaper.. It's not exactly a precision tool but it got the job done...

Another possibillity is to make a 'real' one yourself.. I came across a website of a guitarbuilder how made one herself (see pictures below). It's made of solid PVC, the trick here of course is (like you say) to center the shaft, I don't know how she did this..... but I think she use a drill-press of some sort...

Anyways.. even with this "real" one, I would use doublesided tape to attach the sandpaper, its easier and (I think) smoother then with this jig and srews...

Grz Arjan

I started a couple of weeks ago, so I have made some progress already.

Here is the wood I bought:

I started with making templates out of 8mm MDF, then I got some work done on the body...

The Mahogany wasn't wide enough for the body, so I had to make it a two part body.

After the glue set, I cut out the basic shape with a bandsaw. Then I attached the template and used a router to get the sides lined up with the template...

Then I sanded the sides with an drum-sander which I made out off PVC pipe (the one you find under your sink...)

Grz Arjan

After a long time thinking about it, I finally started my first build. I always liked the Gibson Les Paul, but I didn’t want to make a replica, so I let the Les Paul be my inspiration and designed my own guitar. I wanted my guitar to have more of an attitude, to be more 'rocky' then a regular Les Paul. I came up with the following design:

Here are the specs:

Mahogany body

Mahogany neck

Zebrawood Top

Carved top

Ebony fretboard

Angled set neck

scale length of 24 3/4 inch (628,650mm)

Angled Headstock

Zebrawood laminate on headstock

Chrome hardware

2 Humbucker pick-ups

Tune-o-matic bridge

Custom 12th fret Inlay

Transparent Black Finish

As this is my first build, I obviously lack experience in building guitars. To make up for it I'm taking things slow..... so bear with me

Grz Arjan

The tele looks very nice too....I especially like the cap over the bridge of the tele, you don't see it that much nowadays and I find it gives the tele a more classy look

Good job!....

Grz Arjan

I'm currently building a router planing table which uses two thick rails down the length and two across the width. Rather than angling the rails, i'm building in a height adjustable "shim" on the table which raises the workpiece to the required angle instead. I decided on this approach as i'm using CNC machine rails and pillow blocks which are a little more awkward to create angles with accurately and economically. I decided it was best to keep the rail geometry sharp and aligned, and manipulate the workpiece instead.

Your L-sections are a great idea as they have stability built in for their comparative weight, plus they don't cost much. You might consider investing in some toggle clamps to secure your workpiece, or perhaps use scrap aluminium and cork pads as per David Myka's angle routing jig. That said, whenever adding hardware into the tooling path, be very careful that there is no chance of the cutter hitting anything other than air or your workpiece!

Are we going to be seeing a build thread on this instrument soon? Looks good.

I hope you'll be posting pics of your jig too... I’m curious how it turns out...

I've used the jig for three 'jobs' now, namely 1) to plane the topwood even... 2) to plane the neck-angle into the body .. and 3) to roughly form the carving....

With job 1 & 2 I just used an anti-slip mat (is that English?) to stop the body from sliding. When I was planing the neck-angle into the body I really didn't want it to move, so I use double sided tape...

On my website I'm posting my progress on this guitar. But I think I will start a build thread on Project Guitar, I've been active on this forum for some time now and there is a real positive buzz... It would be nice to get some feedback on my progress here... But this is my first build and to compensate for the lack of experience I'm taking things slow and try to think things trough before I actually do something... so it might become a long running thread

Grz Arjan

What about getting or making a set of spacers in common sizes? I assume you're dialing in the final thickness using the router anyway, so having something that's known to be an inch, or a half inch, or 40mm, just throw one of those (or a couple) under each rail, and tighten it down from the top, might make things easier? Could also have sets for commonly used angles in your builds.

But cool , this looks awesome. I've been meaning to make something like this.

Thanks for sharing!

Great idea! ofcourse there will be the challange of making the spacers exactly the same height... but you could also fill the bolt with a couple of nuts (from the botom up) and use washers for the fine-tuning....

thanks for the tip

Grz Arjan

Nice clean very authentic look.... but I have to ask... did you use kit parts or build it from scratch?

Grz Arjan

Tape is cheaper than a new workpiece :-D

I really should get around to purchasing the steel rails for my jig. So expensive.

I use aluminium instead of steel, mainly because its much lighter.. I use four L profiles of 1 meter each (3x3cm), which set me back € 30 (that's about 24 UK-pounds) in total...

I used the jig today to plane the topwood on my guitar, and it worked like a charm ...

Grz Arjan

I don't want to buy new fretwire because , well, I'm a cheap-arsch right now. I'm trying to collect enough scrap metal (LEGALLY) so i can buy the parts I need as fast as I can. I'll probably put a nice inlay in the spot though.

(I'm of dutch descent so it's nice to meet someone from the Netherlands)

Well it's nice to meet someone from the States from Dutch descent

Your guitar would look something like this:

(I know your sratchplate will be black, but I'm no wizard with PhotoShop by any means....so I left it the way it was)

I like the idea of putting the jackplate on the back, as you can see on the picture, it will give your guitar a cleaner look

But I still think the fretboard would look funny (even with a nice inlay), 2 feet of fretwire would set you back about $3 to $4.... so I would collect some extra scrap metal and go for a full-fretted fretboard...

Grz form the Netherlands... Arjan