Mr Natural

I like how the edges are "roundabout" . Also- I noticed the bridge is "close to the edge". Guess I shouldnt become a comedian- (I had a couple more but they were worse than the first two and those were pretty lame)- seriously though- looking good- and like how you styled the headstock- it flows better than the original headstock. is the cream color you mention like the color of his ric?

Thanks Andy- I am trying- especially after letting this sit for a couple years. I got them out Carl- the one on the bass side upper half of the body was the worst- it was deep- and looked like the end of a 3 corner file hit it and dug in about 1/8". Not sure what caused it- but I put a drop or two of water into it and the other dings each night over 3 nights- and that sort of lifted it a bit Saturday night I got out my old soldering iron and a wet piece of paper towel and started steaming it and here it is a bit of sanding and a bit of grain filler and we will be good to go the only other progress this weekend was with the control panel, though I am thinking I may only do a jack back here- and leave the front without any knobs. still up in the air about that.

that logo is badass maximus. and mary kaye white? how sexy is that- any other shade of white wouldnt have done it justice- great job man. bravo.

i was going to say- that would look cool in just clear good work so far-

It was always the lower horn on les pauls where I would get the blow out- I know what you mean though- I never felt comfortable on headstocks- plus- the diameter of the router bit always caused issues for certain headstocks- I found this video a couple years ago- and have since used this method exclusively since- it takes a lot longer- but man- NO BLOW OUT and to me- the safety factor plus no blow out- I am ok with it taking 10 times longer. O'Brien Guitars drill press router video

smells freakin' great, especially when I have been away from it so long. I also forgot how much I love brushing off dust and curls of wood from the hair on my forearms after a nice session with a router. so- I had to remeasure/rethink everything on this- - lining up center line on neck with center line on the body-checking/remeasuring/retracing the neck pocket for 34 inch scale. after routing out the neck pocket about 3/4 of its depth- I got the itch to "look at this" so I pulled out the chisels, squared up the corners on the neck pocket- put the bridge "on" (I didnt insert the posts all the way) just to get a looksey. starting to feel like an axe, cant wait to start carving the neck. Pearl the temporary shop mascot looks on, She is with us for about 3 months as my eldest child has their new house built. Notice she doesnt get red eye- but rather pearl blue eye. She is an angel and will be missed when she leaves us. Carl- I missed this question previously- here is a pic of the body prior to me futzing with it. I circled the dings. Nothing major- only the top of the body- obviously the ones underneath the bridge could be hidden- and that deep one on the body I can steam out plus I still have a boat load of sanding to do. The neck survived unscathed, and surprisingly was still pretty straight/flat.

well- not much progress- finally got some time off and have spent two days with Christmas lights and such. but at least I am getting back into the groove. cut the neck sides and put a radius (to 120 grit) on the fingerboard -cant seem to get a good pic though.

Nice job. I love the look of black limba- what kind of finish are you using?

Luis- glad to see you are still cranking out beautiful axes- btw- that explorer top is SICK. nice find!

lookin good Scott

nice job on all the axes. and you guys with the sick shop set ups- so jealous!

looking forward to this thread. If you haven't already, you may find some good information on a 355 build a member on here (Blackdog) did a few years back. (I think I inserted a link below- its displaying weird- hopefully you can click this to go to the build thread) There are a couple of Blackdog build threads that are exceptionally detailed with pics and steps/issues/good dialog -might be worth a looksey since many of the build steps would be similar (and realizing the 355 is NOT a hollow body like the country gentleman).And I learned something new on your thread- I had always had in my mind country gentleman were double cuts- looked up the gretsch website and I am now educated. I am sure you have seen- there is an interesting pic of the inside of the hollow body (the bracing) on that website. Pics for me are always worth a thousand words.Good luck with this- cant wait to see your progress

Nice job man. Very nice.

resurrecting a project I meant to start years ago. A les Paul Special for my bro, Mahogany body and neck, ebony fingerboard, p-90s. Nothing fancy, but perfect for me to get "back into the swing of things with". and its always something- I was thinking of using this for the neck- and found a nice little bug hole. too bad too cause this block had a nice ring to it. I have some quarter sawn mahogany from another batch of wood I can use, its slight heavier than this though. this is the 3rd (and final) attempt at the headstock logo. I think I have wasted about $40+ in pearl trying to get this right. Notice on this one the "ord" starts to trail off to the north- ie- if you were to draw a line underneath the name, the "ord" would start to lift and go north of the line. its close enough- I hate cutting pearl-well, cutting words out anyway, I broke the first two in the exact same place between the "o" and the "r".

wow- looks like my last post was in Feb of 2014 or so. **Poof** So- life got in the way for me a bit. I had to concentrate my efforts and time in other places. I am starting to get the itch again. its been a while. first things first, time to clean up the garage- literally - my "shop" has been a wreck for the last 2.5 years, at the speed I move- it may be another 2 months before I make the first pile of sawdust..gotta start somewhere. first things first though. gotta get used to this new site, and clean the garage glad to see some old timers are still around. and wow- a beer convo in one of the other forums- . nice.

+1 to what everyone has said about the SS. That is a beast. Nice job. (the explorer is nice too- but that SS is sick). How thick is the body on that?

I am probably about 85 percent done with the carving. At this point- I will not be doing anymore until I have the neck pocket cut. I typically wouldnt have done any carving yet until that is cut- but I was itchin to get movin on it. I have to go back and clean up with a fine rasp and then the fun of sanding this beotch starts. if you look at the pic of the back- you can still see the center line on the bottom of the body edge-so- I still have some work to make these round overs more "ovalish" than fatty round if you follow me. Right now this is "fatty round". At this point though sandpaper even really alters the lines- so- again- no more until the neck is in. The upper horn especially will be sanded into final shape. (thus the roughness to that edge) as far as the bridge-its a TOM type- so I had intended on putting in a neck angle-but I am waiting until all is said and done- ie- how thick is the fretboard after I get done sanding the radius in- but as far as any tilt -no- the posts are drilled in straight on, and any tilt will occur in the neck pocket only.

now that is sexy

got a bit of work done in "snow bound" Georgia this past week. I ended up plugging the holes I had drilled in the butt end tail section of this- I will have to re-drill them- that one that was out of line was bugging the hell out of me.I am on my second attempt of making a 3.5" wide 14" radius sanding block for the fretboard. I am at a bit of a standstill until that is done. I radius the fretboard before gluing to the neck.

very cool.

Brett- before I highjack about cats and such- great work as always. u guys that have 9-5s (or more) and can pull off all this work always amaze me. ScottR- as sick as it may sound- when I saw the title " cat and a bat" i was hoping the guy was going to homerun the fur ball. my apologies to any forum members of PETA. I guess I had the old cartoon short- bambi vs godzilla in my mind. end of highjack.

I hear ya Scott- my issue at first though wasnt I couldnt get my head around the "3-d" of the shape- looking at (essentially) 2d pics from "straight on" front and back view only. once I found a pic of someone playing one (looking towards the horn from the headstock point of view) and saw that the shape was like a "spoon" with a small curl towards the tip- it all clicked. I typically use shadow lines to help me picture these things- but with this I couldnt quite do it until I found that pic. Now that I have the shape roughed in- it is as you saw- until it feels right. I think my biggest thing now will be making sure all the long lines flow smoothly with no visible "bumps" or waves on the lines. that and making my radius sanding block for this fretboard which is a pia.

wow- almost 2 months since my last post. poof. I finally got back out in the garage- started working on the upper horn of this bass. Went to the router table, started to round over the edge, but stopped short of the top of this as I wanted to do the rest by hand, using the part I did round over with the router as a guide. I was going to do most of this horn with my black and decker 1/2" belt sander tool- but decided to put on some tunes, grab a rasp, and have at it. started out something like this after about an hour I am about half way done. I had to stop and keep referencing my ipad and finding pics on this thing- tricky little carve it is. still a bunch of work to go on this back

Nice builds here Allan- as always. Curious on one thing- how do you shape the sides of your necks? I notice you leave them somewhat rough cut, then attach the fingerboard. Do you shape by hand/rasp from there or do you have another method?

I think one thing that was left our here is the almighty DIGIT- ie- the players digits. I walk into a bar with Eric and Carlos. There are 10 people in the bar and 3 different guitars- and one amp. we ask the people to close their eyes. we tell them to listen and tell us which guitar sounds best and we will let them know who played what guitar at the end. I pick up guitar one and play, and then hand it to Eric and he plays, and then he hands it to Carlos and he plays. Despite using the same guitar I will bet those people will have thought we played different guitars because the same guitar sounded differently in each of our hands despite same amp, same picks, etc. just something I have noticed over the years.