tirapop

I like the Albert Lee because it looks like a cartoon caricature of a strat.

I'd advise against routing out big slabs of cured graphite. Most of the epoxy resins the fibers are bonded in are toxic. You really don't want to breath the dust or track it into your house on your clothes. The graphite itself is very conductive. If you get a lot of the dust into electric devices you can short them out. When NATO bombed Yugoslavia, they wanted to drop the power grid without doing any lasting damage. They dropped bombs that dispensed graphite filaments to short out power substations and transmission lines. I think there are some tool wear issues with cured graphite. I know they make special drill bits, brad point looking things, that are supposed to reduce fiber breakout... when a fiber on the surface of a part doesn't get cut by the drill and wraps around it, getting pulled out of the resin surface. If you want a hollow bodied graphite guitar, mold it hollow or take a couple thin cured skins and bond them to some bent/formed sides.

Instead of a square cut, how about a triangular (V-shaped) cut. You wouldn't have to match the length, just the angle of two straight cuts. The end grain glue joint would be scarfed instead of butted, making it stronger.

Try www.aircraftspruce.com

Yes, you can do graphite at home. It's a fiber, just like fiberglass and you can use the same resins. High end structural composites or highly automated manufacture use expensive things like autoclaves, vacuum-assisted-resin-injectors, pultrusion dies, etc. Here are a few graphite construction sites I've come across. Making motorcycle bodywork. Making graphite tubes. Building your own graphite bicycle.

Hey, I love the Bocaster. The single cutaway Bo Diddley... really cool idea. The dual guides with the jigsaw will probably work. The problem with jigsaws are that the blades are flexible. As they work through changes in the grain there'll be a tendency for the blade to wander a bit. Even with the guides, it might bind. If you have access to a handsaw and a hand plane, you ought to give that a try. Less noise, a chance to aquire/improve some skills, and planing is pretty fun once you get the blade sharp and the plane tuned.

http://images.grizzly.com/bursts/splash_H6084.gif

I doubt it will make much difference. Most of the energy transfer is going to be through the bridge. The big thing about string-thru is the break angle the strings have over the saddles. With a top-loader, the break angle (the change in the string angle as it crosses over the saddle) is small. The force the strings apply on the saddle and on the body are relatively small. Geek-toid: the force a string applies to a saddle is twice the string tension times the sin of half the break angle (that assumes there's no friction between the string and saddle). The bigger the break angle, the bigger the force on the saddle. The shallower the angle, less force is driving vibrations into the body. Energy is stored in the string between the nut/fret and the saddle in kinetic energy: the mass of the string moving back and forth (in little circles and figure-8s). Think about the string between the saddle and the ferrule/chunk of walnut. How much energy is stored there? It's in tension, so energy is being stored. But, how much is that tension changing? Not that much, so, it isn't putting much energy into the body. Some of that is due to friction over the saddles. I have a Tele with a top-loading bridge. Pluck a string and put your finger on the string just to the neck side of the saddle and you feel almost all that energy damping out under flesh. Pluck the string and put your finger on the string between the saddle and the stop end of the bridge and you have almost no effect on the vibration of the string. Think about how the load the ball end of the string is putting on the guitar being reacted. It's pulling straight up. What's pushing back? There's a component of the bridge load that's pushing straight down. The load from the string-thru is putting the chunk of wood between the ferrule/chunk-o-walnut and the bridge in compression. Think of the greatest tone wood... now imagine it's 1"X3", 1-3/4" thick. Whack on it with a mallet... what kind of tone and resonance would you get? I think you're getting most of your tone from the wood between your bridge and the neck (and the wood/metal running up the neck to the nut/tuners).

This might be a stupid idea... but, I'll just put it out there. Since you're dealing with a hand held tool (limited weight, torque, etc.), you could "cast" threads with a filled epoxy like JB-Weld. You could drill an oversided hole in a piece of wood as the outer mold. You'd need some kind of barrier that the epoxy won't stick to... a thin coat of grease. Plug the end of the Dremel, coat the threads of grease or maybe one layer of teflon tape. Whatever you use, test it first to make sure don't ruin your Dremel. Fixture the Dremel to keep it upright and then mix and pour in the JB-weld. Once it's cured, disassemble it. Sand the outside of the epoxy bushing, so you can glue it into a base. I'm not sure if the JB-Weld is strong enough for you to torque down the threads. Give it a try. If it fails, you might try making a saw cut through the bushing and the base it's glued into and make the attachment into a pinch clamp. Either way, you should probably just use the bushing to locate the end of the Dremel and have another clamp to secure the whole tool. If you're trying to do everything on the cheap, you could make the base, and most everything else, out of wood.

Go to Lowes or Home Depot. Threaded inserts are pretty cheap.

Alabama chrome

With a bolt-on neck and deep cut-outs, you might have a problem with too little wood to get the neck bending loads into the body around a thru-the-body pickup route. With a set neck you'd have the full thickness of the body to transfer the load from the neck, to go around the hole. You might be able to reinforce around the neck. A couple times, I've seen pics of a guitar with the treble side cut-out extends all the way under the neck... the strings have nothing behind them but air. I got the impression that the bass side of the body had been reinforced with carbon fiber.

Only half joking about the bowling ball grip. I don't really get the purpose of the monkey grip. With a guitar strap, a case, and the neck to hold onto, is there really a pressing need for another way to transport a guitar? Is there some sort of stagecraft associated with the monkey grip or is it just the looks? After seeing yet another JEM replica build with a monkey grip, I thought... why not a bowling ball grip. Three holes and it would be just as useful and a lot more unique. In addition to the swirl (bowling ball) finish, you could put on a maple fingerboard with lane marker style inlays to complete the look. Dress to shred in a bowling shirt and a wrist brace on your picking hand... and remember to follow through on those big chords.

Forget the monkey grip... Go with the bowling ball grip (3 holes), and a swirl finish.

That looks scary. String tension is trying to pry the the neck off the body. The bolt nearest the headstock are in tension. The neck is pivoting around those forward bolts and the base of the neck is getting jammed down into the neck pocket. You're reducing the distance between the bolt and the end of the neck, reducing it's leverage... that increases the tension load on the bolt and the bearing load on the base of the neck/pocket to react the string tension... on the bass side of the guitar where the string tensions are higher. If you actually trim the end of the neck with that angle, the string tension will try to twist the neck. Think about making a fingerboard extension that overhangs the body and has the trim you want without compromising on the neck joint.

Found plans here and here. Work for you?

You could also try sifting through Brad's Page of Steel. So, you're planning on building your own metal body? Steel or brass? Donmo has made some surprisingly good looking resonators out of galvanized steel. I assume most of the original National was stamped, drawn, and die cut. It would be difficult to accurately duplicate that.

Check out Jim White's "Alabama Chrome". It's been rattling around in my head for a while. His Banjocaster's plinky twang is tapping into the roots of the blues, all the way back to West Africa. Southern Gothic lyrics about madness and religion... moody stuff.

Get The Mandolin Manual, by John Troughton. It has plans for a Mandolin and two Mandolas and step by step construction details.

Trying checking over at MIMF.

Is there a question in there?

living: Richard Thompson dead: Django Reinhardt

Just an aside... cost of production and retail price are related, but, not that tightly. Aside from the "what the market will bear" stuff, you aren't paying Stewmac for what it costs to produce. You're paying for them to stock it in their inventory, pay taxes on that inventory, pay their suppliers, develop new products, ship them out, produce catalogues (that they send to us for free), pay employees a living wage to take/ship orders, handle customer service, and earn a profit. Shop around for cheaper alternatives. Make your own tools/jigs when it makes sense. if you think you can produce and market a tool cheaper, go for it. Stewmac is a great resource. I've got Luthiers Mercantile catalogues going back to the '80s. There's so much more available today and at fairly reasonable prices. It's easy to bitch about the prices for tools, but, having the option to buy, for a lot of them, is a recent option.

the other jellycaster

I've got a BT3000. It works pretty good. Pluses are that it's inexpensive, when the fences are set up right it's very accurate, and the blade it comes with cuts really clean... some of the wood I've cut looks like it's been planed. The downside is that the blades spins much faster than a normal tablesaw, so, aftermarket blades are turning faster than they're designed to. It uses a lot of aluminum and if the fence lock is overtightened, it will dent the aluminum rails. It isn't as sturdy as a fixed based tablesaw, but, it should be compared to similar sized/priced contractor (benchtop) tablesaws.