RGGR

This is quote from higgingshardwood site: I have a similar experience, with the Wenge laminates in my neck. In the Wenge there are these long lined pores. To get a smooth neck surface these somehow need to be filled in. Not sure how I'm gonna attack neck finish yet. Maybe layer of clear and sand it back, maybe tung oil. Not sure yet. Javacody, I would be interested in that rifle article. I'm currently waiting arrival of the router bits I ordered. I have marked out two necks in my neck blank and will use bandsaw to cut them out. When router bits arrive I will futher route the body and one of the necks. Pics will follow. Need to order some other hardware and electronics so I won't have to wait for them as built goes along.

I miss the T & A too, java. ;-) Thanks and then to think the fun part is actually starting now, routing and shaping the body & neck. That's what will make or brake this build.

So that information of Ibanez using Tung Oil was incorrect. What would be best then?? You spray clear coat over neck and sand it down till almost no clear is left?? How did you do this Marcel?

Will the varnished tung oil have a better pore/grain filling capacity??

Talking about finish, I'm not sure yet what to do with the neck. From what I understand (not sure if this is correct) that Ibanez is using some sort of Tung Oil to finish up their neck woods. I was thinking using a similar procedure, but this way I won't be able to fill the grains in my Wenge laminate. I have seen people use a clear coat on their neck, and then sand it almost all the way back again. This could be solution to fill the pores/grain of the Wenge, but I'm not sure if I can use Tung Oil after clear coat (having sanded this back almost completely) I haven't been able to find any good info to tackle this problem yet.

I hope you guys can bring back of this free spirit then, cause I have experienced this forum to be a rather uptight lately. My love for playing (and finally building) guitars have brought me to the forum. It has tons of great info, and great people out there with even better advice. I would have never started building my own guitar without the info a lot of you have posted in here. But commenting others on their spelling mistakes, hotlinking pics, ..... come on!! Yes, some people will be rude, inmature, or inconsiderate in their comments. But doesn't that come with the territory? Just lighten up a little. Where is your rock 'n rolls spirit. I never have seen Ozzy be politically correct. All those rules won't make it a great forum........people contributing with great info will. And to get to that great info you sometimes have to deal with some garbage. I'm just happy to share my lessons, screw-ups, mistakes with all of you. Politically correct or not. You simply can't police the whole wide world (although some countries/people might try). Just an opinion.

ASM - That's some true Rock 'm Roll rebel spirit. ;-) That same spirit got me playing and building guitars in the first place. You may not word everything so politically correct, but who says you must. Freedom of speech is a great good (no matter how right or wrong you may be).

So don't post it. In the current digital time all new software, cd's, dvds, movies, etc...will be avialable to the public for free within seconds of release........ We may not like it, we may bitch about it........but it's a simple fact of life. Get over it and start building some more great guitars.

Yep, that's right.........I am thinking along the lines of the House of Kolor Candy Apple red. The HOK Kandy's are transparent and must be sprayed over uniform base color. I was thinking using Orion Silver base coat, applying a coat of clear with Silver Flake mixed into it. This will leave bumpy surface so this needs to be smoothed out with multiple layers of clear. Then a layer of Kandy Apple Red, finishing up with layer of clear. Similar procedure was used in this guitar. Kandy Apple Red I suspect Ibanez having applied a similar procedure for their JS1200CA. Although they may have used a Silver Flake clear on top of the Candy Apple. These Metal Flakes can be used in the base coat, color coat, or clear top or all 3 for special effects. Over a dark base they exhibit, intense pearlescent color matching their reflection color. Only a small amount is needed. HOK recommends spraying a sample to see how much pearl/flake you have mixed and to see the color you are getting. When using in the clear coat you mostly use it in first coat only, followed by 2 or 3 coats of plain clear. I will test these procedures to see what gives best results. Aiming for sparkly rich deep Candy Apple red like JS1200CA. Best is to paint empty Dr pepper cans for samples, than toss out when you get what you want.

Darn workerbee. Makes us all look pale in comparison. But Hyunsu, with all this building going on. When do you have time to play and impress the girls????? Isn't that why we started playing guitar to begin with???? :-)

I think on RG type instrument, you hardly would need any bondo. There is so much flat area, that a simple planing job wood do the trick. Good filler/primer should be enough. The JS body shape is a bit more complex, and to get the shape nice and smooth, I suspect I need a bit more help, and filler or bondo might do the trick to get it really smooth. Today I've gotten access to a bandsaw. Yippppeeekayaaa!! Will make taking the rough neck shape out of the wood a little easier.

GuitarMeastro, I think we are on the same page. Bondo has gotten bad name from people using it to mask bad workmenship. That doesn't mean Bondo CAN have a place in building a great instrument. I read the painting tutorials from ReRanch: http://home.flash.net/~guitars/solids.html but it was Marnix Gghesquiere: http://users.pandora.be/marnix.ghesquiere/ondex.html (Under body - body work - finishing: Preparing the body) who got me thinking of using filler and primer direct on the bodywood. In the store I discovered this Dupli-Color -Spray putty. I read Marnix used quite some layers of Filler/Primer to get all grain and imperfections filled. That got me thinking using layer of Bondo (spray putty) to get grains filled and fill in all other imperfection, before using the primer. All I can say it worked out magically. Some epoxy filler probably would have worked just as good. And although epoxy might sound little bit better than bondo. I'm still loving it. I totaly agree with you.

The stuff I use is called Dupli-Color Acryl Spray - Spray Putty. (not sure if it's available in the US.) After spraying couple of even coats on wood, I have sanded it back with 180 - 280 (dry) sandpaper (loading up very quickly.) After second layer of Spray putty I will sand it back again with 180 - 280(dry). This should leave me a nice smooth surface. After routing headstock, I will sand back again with 280 (dry) - 400 (wett). And then layer of Dupli-Color Acryl Spray - Filler and Primer to get layer of primer on the spray putty. I handn't thought of that. That might do the trick next time. I did use a handplane to plane the head stock, but that would still leaves me with having to use a grainfiller or a putty/filler to fill the grains of the Wenge laminates. With using a little Bondo the headstock is planed at same time as woodgrains in Wenge are being filled. Not nasty or unprofessional....just smart. But I agree with you that Bondo never should be substitute for good workmenship.........And as the best Hot Rod and Bike builders use tons of this stuff to get their body panels totally flat.......I don't think Bondo is a 5 letter word in guitar building....... Can't wait for my router bit to arrive, so I can get going on body and neck. Also made up my mind of using the Edge Lo Pro trem on this built. Here is nice link with some nice pics of the Lo Pro. Lo Edge Pro Details And as Joe and Steve are still using the Egde and Lo Pro's it actually will be closer to the real thing. And the OFR??? Well.....I simply don't want a OFR on my Ibanez copy and paying $350 for Edge Pro just doesn't make a lot of sense. (then trem would be as expensive as all the rest of the guitar).

As for the rules on this site. Can someone explain this one pic rule to me. Aren't the pics hosted on my server??? Don't quite understand??? Sorry for asking, but what is 600X or less in size??? Kb???? Mb??? GB??? I wasn't aware of posting any pornography...........(although religious right may disagree.) Okay, back to topic. Neh, didn't mess up that bad. And the fingerboard is covering up this area anyway. Overall the channel is routed very nicely. Just on initial go the router bit wobbled all over the pace. I want my guitar to look good, but I'm not a purist who needs every little detail to be perfect. (at least not the non visible parts. ) Still glad the fingerboard is covering up this area, though. ;-) As a next step, I have started putting Bondo (Dupli-color spray putty) on headstock area. Thought of doing this early on in the project as I currently still have the whole neck blank to work with. (easy handling.) Sprayed first layer of Bondo and after drying sanded 99% back off, leaving a nice flat headstock area and filling most the grains in the Wenge. Sprayed second layer of Bondo and after sanding this back I will have perfect flat area for routing out the headstock. Bondo is such a nice product as it clearly marks and fills all lower areas. By doing Bondo first and routing later, I still will have clean wood on the sides of the headstock. As top of headstock and body will be painted, these will be the areas where I will use Bondo...........gosh, do I love that stuff........ And, nooooo, I know........Bondo should never replace good workmenship. ;-)

Looks like giant EDIT is attached to upper horn. Your typical girly bass I would say. ;-) ADMIN EDIT- Watch the language. This is your first warning.

After planing neck blank one more time (with glueing, laminates tend shift a bit as they have mind of their own, no matter how good you clamb 'm) it was time to route the truss rod channel. Well, I must confess I'm glad this truss rod channel hides under my fretboard, cause it wasn't pretty. I had bought this cheap Dremel knock-off machine and the little guiding rails that came with it were a piece of *&^%. During route, the bit would be all over the place. A firm hand and some additional guiding was needed to get decent channel routed. After hour into it, my Dremel knock-off was getting overheated!!! What a piece of junk. My advice......buy real Dremel tool and not cheap Chinese knock-off that I bought, it's a pain in the butt. Next up was getting the 13 degree headstock angle in the neck blank. With Japanse type saw I cut the neck. Maple and Wenge are some hardwoods and it was bit more work than I expected. ;-) After cutting neck angle I discovered the cut to be crooked. I think the guiding wood I used caused me not being able to correct when cutting. I re-did the cut but this time without the guiding wood, and now it was straight as an American Freeway. Bit of sanding and this will look awesome. I have to re-do some of my trussrod routing, but that's okay. Wenge looks real nice in between the Maple. Almost like tiger stipes of black and chocolat. Very cool. Almost shame the top of headstock will be painted. So, today I started with having some screw-ups, but I recovered nicely. Still happy camper.....although today there have been times I really wished I'd bought some second hand "project" of Ebay. )(*&^%^%#^%!@(&#(!@# ;-)

Today I finished glueing the neck. Tomorrow when glue is dry I will plane it one more time and then I'm ready for routing the neck shape out (that is hiding in the wood...) I figured I can get 2 complete necks out of this piece of wood, and with still a complete Limba body blank available I think this won't be the last guitar I'm building. ;-) 225 for Lo Pro is good price. I might go that route. Haven't made up my mind yet. Still lots of work waiting for me. Don't worry about it now.

Just received my new grade "B" Ebony fingerboard from lmii.com. Great service.

I have seen that too. I was always under the impression that this was done to safe weight or so. Cause my limba body is still quite heavy, and although I'm still early in the built, I thought it would be rather okay to loose some wood by routing the control cavities like that. The control cavity route will be last route I will do on guitar anyway. I can always make up my mind how I design these cavities. I do like your idea of leaving some additional wood there for tone. Trouble is, I don't like the OFR design that much. I think the Ibanez Lo Pro and Edge Pro are so much more beautiful. I think Ibanez prized their trems rediculusly on purpose, so people won't be building knock-off with their trems. Huuuuuuuuuu!!!! I think I have to bite the bullit anyhow. I have chosen quality parts up to now, and might as well ride it out. Pain will be temperary, pleasure of great guitar forever.

As I'm still early in my built, I still can make adjustments as I go along........and I would like your input on what 7 string tremolo to use. This are the options I'm considering: Ibanez Edge Pro: 299 Euro Ibanez Lo Pro Edge: 225 Euro Original Floyd Rose: 160 Dollar I was planning on using the new Edge Pro......but I have little difficulty with spending 299 Euro on just a tremolo. What are your opinions on the alternatives? Would like some input. I saw Marcel used a Lo Pro on his awesome 7 String, I know LGM is using Original Floyd Roses on his new guitars........

When I first started looking into building my own guitar I thought of ordering a Warmoth strat body, then I contemplated doing an RG body and quickly I made up my mind of doing a JS/Radius design. Looking at the decision tree, you can see trouble written all over it. ;-) As a first project I'm in well over my head, cause as you said, the JS shape is not the easiest of body shapes. It's simply impossible to take exact measurements......(a dupli carver could come handy in project like this, I guess.) I'm thinking of using something in between exact measurements and carving by feel. (And even if you have exact measurements you still have to use a lot of feel anyway.) I have tons of pics of JS and Radius guitars from all angles and together with the Cad drawings (http://www.speakeasy.org/~sven/site/radius.html) of the Radius I think I can come a long way. On the Cad drawings the side curvatures (on multiple spots) are marked out. I will make templates of these curves........it has rough shape detailed on there and a final detailed shape. I'm planning to use both drawings as base. But I won't shy away from making changes to original design. Cause I don't see how a AANJ/Radius/JS/7-String/24 Frets/Tilted headstock can be an exact Ibanez copy, anyhow. Although I discovered lately there actually has been a AANJ Radius available in the past. So I guess my guitar will be a Radius-7 string copy with 24 Frets. But who will care anyway, as long as it sounds and looks good, right!! AANJ Radius I haven't decided exactly what type of control cavity shape to use........Radius type design or JS type design. They both have slightly different knob/switch position and resulting cavity shape. JS control cavity Radius control cavity JS has angled output jack and more round shape control cavity cover. Personally I'm leaning a tid bit more towards the JS design. And as I will be using 7 String trem, my control cavity will have to be adjusted to accomodate this anyway.

With glueing of body wood done, I sanded the center of the blank along the glue line nice and flat again. I had cleaned up most of the glue that gued out of there while clambing, so hardly any sanding was needed. Next with doublesided tape I stuck my JS/Radius template to the bodyblank. I traced template with pencil so I had some reference in case template would move. If I had a bandsaw I would have sawed the rough body shape out of the blank, but as I don't have a one available I needed to come up with other plan. I'm planning to use a template with template router bit to route out the JS/Radius bodyshape. From what I learned these template bits are not really designed to plow all the way through the bodywood. There are mearly to fluss trim little edge off. As I didn't have a bandsaw I decided to use a frostner bit to do most of my heavy lifting. I cut holes in my body blank as close as possible to the template. This limba wood really dulls the frostner bit fast, and took me most of the morning to get all holes drilled. My body blank looks like swiss cheese at the moment. ;-) I drilled for 80-90% through the blank, this way I still have nice flat working area (think neck pocket) once I'm done with routing first couple of passed. With maple neck blank cut, I started glueing my neck. I copied Marcel's (see GOTM) design with the the two dark wood lines running along the neck. I'm using Maple and Wenge. More on this later. Can't wait for my router bits to arrive.

Finally!!!! Got my wood back from planers. I guess the trick of sending my girlfriend in hotpants worked. Just kidding!!! ;-) Sanded sides of Limba (Korina) body blank with 280 grit and glued them together. Used small pieces of wood to line the blanks up, cause wood tends to drift a bit as wood is being clambed in. Some say you shouldn't sand the wood blanks before glueing as you take the small wood fibers off that are needed for bonding. I did anyway, just to make sure all sides are nice and flat. Used small pieces of fat-free/kitchen paper under small pieces of guiding wood, as wanted to make sure they wouldn't be glued to body blank. I think you also can use some pieces of plastic bag or so......but being in the kitchen it's amazing what you find. To be honest I tested the fatfree-paper-not-sticking-to-glue trick last week when someone cute was making cookies. ;-)

Following comes from http://tangentsoft.net/audio/new-diyer.html Might gives you some helpful insight. As some of us, are not very helpful..... I think there are no dumb or stupid questions. We all have them. What Kind of Soldering Iron Should I Get? Most any pencil type iron will work. You can get them at Radio Shack or a home improvement store, but I find that most of these irons have rotten tips; they have broad tapers so they're unsuited to delicate work, they crud up easily, and they don't stand up to the frequent heating/cooling cycles that happen when you clean the tip on a damp sponge. A specialty electronics shop will have irons with fine tips that will last a long time. This isn't to say that you can't use a cheap iron, just that it won't last very long and it will be frustrating to use. A decent iron will cost about $20 including the stand. (The stand holds the iron when your hands are otherwise occupied, and it has a sponge which you dampen and use to clean the iron's tip.) Higher-quality irons add fast-heating ceramic elements, burn-resistant cords, grounded wiring, antistatic construction, and various levels of temperature control. A high-quality iron will also be designed to be repaired, rather than replaced. Most irons come with a conical or a chisel tip. (Sometimes called needle-point and screwdriver tips.) You can get them in various tapers and widths. I've used both kinds. I used to be partial to fairly sharp conical tips, but now I'm going more towards small chisel tips since they have more surface area for faster heating. Either way, don't get a tip that's too big, or you won't be able to solder small parts, which is critical since parts are getting smaller all the time. Big, crude tips with broad tapers will only result in frustration. As for temperature, the wattage of the iron determines how hot it gets. You want an iron that will melt the solder readily, but won't burn your board or damage heat-sensitive components. If you get a non-adjustable iron, 15W to 30W iron is about right. A better solution is to use a temperature-controlled soldering station; a basic station is around $100. You have to be serious about electronics to justify buying one. Above all, don't use a solder gun or one of the small butane torches sold for soldering. Solder guns are too clumsy for delicate electronics work, and butane torches are only for things like plumbing and other big metal-to-metal jobs. There are butane-powered irons that heat with a metal tip instead of a direct flame, but these are for portable use, away from a wall outlet.

Tumbs up for lmii.com, this was their reply: How you can turn a disappointed customer into a happy one?? ;-) It's nothing short of what I expected, but still great customer service. And I could use the current fretboard for a future RG-6 string I might build next. As 6 sting fretboard is slightly less wide at bottom, so coloration will fall off fretboard. Yibbidi Yibbida fooks!!!!!