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ShadesOfGrey

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  1. from what I've been told, cherry is a good wood. Walnut is too stiff for a tonewood, I wouldnt use it exept as a top or maybe fretboard is you feel adventurous. Elm, I'm not sure about. But I think I have heard mention of it of instruments built out of it? Can't realy say. A naturally finished cherry body with a mahagony neck and walnut fretboard sounds like a project I want to do though
  2. I'll remember that 'pre-glue layer' thing btw. It seems like a very cool tip of the trade
  3. Not to mention they tend to infect. A lot. A week or so ago I found some mention of companies selling / exporting bamboo plywood. Maybe that's an option?
  4. Would it help if he told you to get off his lawn?
  5. If you have acces to a laserprinter, I believe that the printing is resistant to the thinner in finish. For inkjet, they some places sell a 'sealer' type of spray you put on top of it so you can protect the ink. In any case, you obviously should do a tester first before you do the actual job.
  6. Was going to suggest that too, but it appeared to me the OP already had photoshop so.. But yeah, I designed a logo a couple of months back on paper, drew it fullsize then scanned it in, then in gimp I made a layer on top of that to trace and tweaked / cleaned it up. Designing stuff like that from scratch is possible with programs, but when going for something that isnt sharp angled / somewhat geometric but rather more organic or curvy I find doing it by hand first is just more intuitive or faster. Annyway, good luck to your project
  7. What is your method? There are a lot of different ways you can go in photoshop (or simmilar progs) to make text. You might want to try drawing the design rougly on paper first, scan it in and clean it up in photoshop instead. I find programs like that not realy conductive to designing unless I already have something to work with. Alternativly, you could try a cad program. There are loads of free opensource cad software to use, I use freecad. Look it up on sourceforge.net. Cad isnt realy that easy to learn, but it might be worthwile if you plan on doing your own guitar designs. Could you maybe post what you have?
  8. That's a somewhat oddball inventory. Some decent stuff in there, but opened glue? Plectrums? It kinda depends on how you want to sell it.. garage sale? Ebay/craigslist? If you sell the soldering iron together with the solder & flux, you could get about 10-15 bucks for it. Depends on brand and condition I guess. The tuner & metronome, I guess about 5 bucks each if your lucky. The hardware, like the chinese strat set, humbuckers (generic brand?) and the locking tuners.. you could sell together too. If the humbuckers are any good, I think you can get about 15-20 for that. If the humbuckers are any good, you could go for much more but cheap generico second hand hb's... well, not much. The instrument cables might go easily, but price depends on brand & length. Guitarbuilding supplies like the fretwire, neckplates, inlays, shielding tape, etc. It kinda depends on how much of the material you have, I dont think anybody would buy stuff like that unless it's a really good deal. Or sell it toghether with the luthery tools. If you sell the whole lot in one, I agree with soapbar. About 200 bucks seems right. It's not so much a question of how much it's worth but rather that a lot of that stuff isnt realy stuff people go looking for when browsing second hand. But I wish you good luck nonetheless. I hope your not having financial troubles.
  9. Cosmetics isnt really the priority for me if I have to use flatsawn. Laminating the neck.. hmm, I kinda took it for granted you would do that. But maybe it's because every kinda of book or tutorial or work-in-progress on the topic I've seen involves laminating, so it kinda automaticaly figures in the mental building plan. I have a few planks of maple and wenge for laminates laying around, and also a paduak and rosewood fretboard blanks that are quite wider than needed and might be cool if enough of it remains after sawing to laminate the neck with. Also, Wezv mentions carbon fibre reinforcement.. do you mean like a trusrod, or something else?
  10. Hmm, I'm not very experienced, have yet to finish even a 'from scratch build', but I think you can safely skip step 1. That might just be me, but electronics stuff is pretty routine. I guess most learn that replacing their pickups and the likes. For me, it's something like changing strings or cleaning the fretboard. Not really building, more of a maintenance thing. But if you never did even that, I guess I understand you want to ease your way in rather than jump directly into the deep end of the pool. I kinda feel exactly like you do then. If you plan on doing a kit build, installing the electronics comes with it. If it were me, I'd say the steps would be: 1) Kit build (make sure it's unfinished so you can experience finishing in all it's gritty details.) 2) Semi-scratch build: Buy a second hand or replacement neck and build a body around that. 3) Complete from scratch build.
  11. Just leave the cavities unfinished, then you don't have to worry about whether the tape will stick or not. That's a possibility, but unfinished means less stable because more moisture can move in&out right? But yeah, an aquantance of mine told me he finishes using 'Rustins Plastic Coating'. Is that stuff any good for finishing bare wood on guitars? I might try that instead and only oil the neck, but I tend to stick with what I know so..
  12. How important is having your neckwood quartersawn? I guess it's pretty important for say mahagony, but can I cope with slabsawn maple for example? Reason I'm asking this is that there is a nice local lumber supplier here that has decent prices and good service. Their inventory is mostly is more of a genera purposes / construction types of wood, altough they carry a few woodtypes suitable as tonewood. Mahagony, Maple, Cherry, Red Cedar etc. However, I dont think they have any of that in a quartersawn. My other option would be to go to another shop I know. It's a more exclusive lumbershop that sells just about any type of wood relevant to instrument building or , have a lot of figured woods, quartersawn stuff etc. Problem is that they overcharge heavily, even the standard lumber. The service is pretty bad, the location is very difficult to get there and a lot of their wood of in so-so condition even though you pay premium prices for it. The only reason they get away with it is the fact that they have only one competitor in the whole country, and it is literaly on the other side of the country. And the other option I like even less, buying wood from the internet. I at least want to see & test the lumber before I buy it. So that brings me back to my question. I dont think slab sawn mahagony is going to be that great for a neck, but maple is pretty hard even slab sawn. So will that be stable enough, or do I realy, *realy* want quartersawn enough to go that the expensive shop or order from the internet?
  13. I've contemplated branding too. I have a heatgun laying around that I could use to warm up a branding iron. Thing is, I dont want to do something too involving as the reason I'm going for an oil finish is that it's going to be my first from scratch build. I'm not dead set on using danish over thru though.. it's just what is available. I'm not realy sure where I can find an importer for that here.
  14. I dont mind visible pores, more a case of economics.. I'd rather not have bucketloads of oil getting sucked into the huge mahagony pores. I was wondering if this works the same as laquer, or that oil penetrates a bit but is less 'fluid' in a way. So you put the finish *under* the decal? I thought it was the other way around A waterslide wouldn't be very longlasting without finish on top, and a vinyl decal wont look very good. But if that is the only way without resolving to laquer
  15. They look nice! I'm not really a fan of the style of the painting (not my cup of tea), but I can see they are very intricate and unique Gives a kind of south-american / aztec vibe. I have a question though.. seeing the Epiphone logo on the bottom guitar, I guess you didnt build them yourself? So, I was wondering.. did you refinish the guitars? Or did it 'on top' of the old ones?
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