S.Dodding

Apart from not wanting to make the neck out of a massive block of wood and waste some of it, not really. I looked around the net a bit and saw a couple of similar ways, and took a look at the construction of various guitars I have access to, and from that just drew up a way of accomplishing a 13 degree back angle on the headstock. Recieved the fingerboard today, it's a really nice piece of birdseye maple. Here are some pictures of it with the fret slots cut and dampened slightly with a very small amount of water to show the figuring more, the fretboard is still very rough and so does'nt look it's best. Another picture of the fingerboard Picture of the body planed flat and wiped with a damp cloth to bring out the grain Another picture of the body Picture of the glued neck blank, unplaned Another picture of the glued neck blank, unplaned

Started work on the neck today, first job, set the headstock angle on the neck. To do this I cut a 13 degree angle, ending at the nut into the neck, then did the same with the headstock, with the angle starting at the nut. Then planed the cuts down smooth and glued them. Currently the neck is setting in the clamps. Have'nt done much more on the body yet, it's all been planed level however i'm waiting to finish the neck heel so that I can make final adjustments to the design. Neck pics: http://uk.geocities.com/gibmeistar@btinternet.com/neck2.jpg http://uk.geocities.com/gibmeistar@btinternet.com/neck3.jpg http://uk.geocities.com/gibmeistar@btinter...ckangleplan.jpg

I think there's been some confusion here. The guitar is a normal right handed guitar, the front of it is where the maple shows, with the mahogany strpe going through it, not the plain mahogany backing. The mahogany back is, as i've said, only to make up some depth on the guitar. Wes: Cheers for the tip on knot filling Have'nt made any real progress on the guitar since the last post, mainly because i'm waiting for the parts to arrive (should be tomorrow or the day after) and also as i've been too busy this weekend.

The top is going to be more or less as it is, natural finish (possibly Danish oil?) with the maple and mahogany stripe. As it's my first guitar i'm not going for anything particularly fancy in case I mess it up.

American_Jesus: That looks much better, cheers for the help. Started cutting the body shape out of the blank today using a jigsaw, and a very fine blade (to prevent tearouts), went very slowly and it all turned out perfectly. I did'nt cut up and around the top as until the neck is finished, I don't have an exact template to accuratley draw the neck pocket in and so don't want to cut any away in case I need to change the shape slightly. Having cut quite a bit away, it's still quite rough, but i'm really pleased with the way the mahogany backing came out, there is'nt a noticeable join line at all, just a change from Maple to Mahogany. The hardware should all be arriving on monday/tuesday, so i'll be able to really get some proper work done. I've also got a nice piece of birdeye maple arriving, which will be used for the fingerboard. I actually ended up giving voxhumana a miss and ordering the neccesary parts from www.axesrus.co.uk and from http://www.craft-supplies.co.uk/ (who have an absolutley brilliant guitar section full of great woods and parts) In any case, here a few pictures of the cutting progress on the body blank, and the mahogany backing on it. In case any of you wonder, the lines i'm cutting to are drawn on the back of the blank, not the ones on the top. In the below one you can see a knot in the wood, i'm not totally sure how to fill that. Any ideas?

Having looked at the headstock design in relation to the body again, I have to say I agree, it's not the right shape, I'll post some new ideas later once i've re-designed it. As to the switch and knob placement, i'm not the type of player who needs to reach them quickly in the middle of a song. I'd much rather have them a bit more out the way to make sure they arent accidentally knocked once i've set them up. The Body progress is going annoyingly slow, mainly in that the glue takes 24 hours to totally dry and cure. The main blank turned out fine. However, when I started gluing the backpiece of the body, I ended up putting one of the slats of wood on the wrong side, so I had to cut it again and re-plane and glue it, meaning another long wait In any case, by the end of today or beginning of tomorrow I should have the body blank as a solid piece. I'll post some more pictures once it's all glued and planed up. I may start on making the neck today, however the amount of work I can do is limited by the fact that none of the parts for the guitar have arrived yet. I did make up a neck template however, based on the neck from my Jackson PC3. As the headstock is going to be angled back I figured i'd cut the neck and headstock seperatley and then cut the angle and glue them together, as i've seen done a few times on this forum. Something i'm puzzling about is finishes, I want to leave it more or less totally with it's natural colour, I was thinking a plain laquer or a simple oil finish however i'm unsure what products or suitable or where I can get them. Can anyone help with this? bear in mind I don't want to import from america (europe is okay). Thanks for the kind words and suggestions, Sam Edit: Photos added to this post rather than create a new one. Gluing the magogany backing onto the main blank, you can't see much as it's all obscured by a multitude of clamps and offcuts (to stop the clamps damaging the wood) This one is just to show how stupidly big two of the clamps used are. It's what happens when you don't have enough of the proper size

Hi all, Having been reading these forums for a while now and doing as much research as possible on the subject of guitar making, I've finally started my own project. As I live in the uk and don't want to import from america I spent a while looking around for places to buy the hardware for my guitar, and found www.voxhumana.nl which i've also seen linked to a few times on this forum. The basic specs for the guitar are: Mahogany and Maple Laminate body Solid Maple 24 fret bolt on neck Dual WSC Closed cover humbuckers (Click here for the link and scroll down to find it) Single coil hot Strat pickup (Click here, again, scroll down to find it) Les paul style Bridge and Tailpiece Control wise - Single tone knob, Single gain knob, Strat 5 way switch Here are a few pictures of the design which I knocked up in Neopaint for the rough idea of what I want, ignore any errors or incorrect spacings and sizing, it's just to give an idea of what i'm trying to achieve. Any discrepencies between the specs given and what it looks like is being shown in the pictures are also just rough, the specs given are what i'm doing, what is shown on the guitar in the pictures was just me toying round with ideas. The full thing The body design The Rough headstock shape As you can see, it is, by no means a conventional design. The reason is fairly simple, I want something that completley stands out from any other guitars around it. I spent weeks fiddling around with various aspects of this design before I was happy with it. So far i've finished planing, cutting and scraping smooth the various body woods and they are currently gluing in clamps. I used a japanese pullsaw to cut the wood to size (I can't reccomend them enough) and a no.5 smoothing plane to level and straighten the edges, then finally a scraper to smooth it. A few pictures of the gluing wood, In the photos you may be able to see the outline of the guitar drawn on roughly with a pencil using a sized up cad drawing, printed over several a4 sheets, pieced together and cut out as a rough template. It's just there to make sure the wood was glued in the right spaces, and as reassurance that it fits on the blank. The Maple you see in the pictures being clamped is actually thicker than the mahogany, once properly glued it will all be levelled. A detail not shown in any of the pictures is that the guitar will have a mahogany backing on it (about 1 cm thick), as well as the mahogany stripe that runs down the center of the guitar, this is mainly to make up thickness as the pieces of wood I have are not thick enough. Any comments, opinions, advice or constructive criticism welcome Cheers, Sam