Chonker

Fixed the inlays today, used a bit of 1/4" aluminium, much better, nice and round and even.

Parker fly's have glued on frets I thought, composite fingerboards too. Beautiful guitars

Got a bunch more done, picked up a die to sort the trussrod out too turns out it isn't imperial it's metric but with an odd .8 thread pitch Trussrod channel routed, head profile finished and roughly cut out, tuning post holes drilled. Rough carved neck (loads of carving still to do though) I just routed the trussrod channel to 10mm in the end to save time/headaches, will just have to deal with the chunky neck, can still take a little bit off the back of the fretboard to make it a wee bit thinner.

I like the idea of cutting part of the trussrod channel into the fingerboard itself, good idea. I've already put a 12" radius on the fretboard, it's so thick in the middle because it's so wide I guess, otherwise there wont be room on the sides to fit the position dots. I've also kept it quite thick because I'm trying to get away with not having a neck angle, my bridge saddles are really quite low profile.

Ibanez new generation of S series with the ZR trem system don't require trees, which is pretty sweet.

Run out of money to spend on it at the moment so it'll have to wait, I'll probably just cut down some aluminium bar stock. Today I finished planing the head angle into the top face, I've also roughly cut the neck sides out and had a quick go at carving the neck. How thin can I go with the neck? The trussrod channel's got to be 10mm deep and the fretboard's 9.2mm thick in the centre so already that's going to be chunkier than my ibanez 7string's neck.

Well they're not really very round, and they've come out different sizes. Tried to photograph them but it didn't work, but I've just found macro mode on my camera!

Did a bit more today, cut the fingerboard to shape and radiused and started cutting in the headangle. I also had a go at the "melt solder into holes drilled in the fingerboard" method of inlay as suggested on the front page tutorials, seemed like a nice idea and I have the bits lying around, I wish I hadn't though as I'm not at all happy with it Not really sure where to go from here.

Hehe, well there's no point in making something I could just go and buy!

Yea it is a slight concern I guess, I was going for the parker fly style head where a couple of strings span fresh air, I think it looks really elegant and wanted to incorporate it, I guess parker's are made of quite exotic stuff though. I'll probably tone it down slightly, bring it further out and increade the diameter of the cut. I've been referring to it as "compound scale" but I really don't know what I'm talking about The high end scale is 635mm and the low end is 725mm. (25" - 28.5" ish)

Work so far: Design done, I'll be working straight from the dimensions from this cad drawing (pardon the square edges on the body, I had an argument with the curve tool). Woods: Maple neck blank, Basswood wings, Rosewood fretboard. Bit plain but they were fairly cheap and I'm sortof expecting to screw it up at some point! Fretboard slotted, body wings rough cut I've got all the hardware, modifying a bass trussrod to length but hit a problem with that as it's an imperial thread and my Tap/Die sets are all metric. Have recieved the magnetic pickup and also a set of wilkinson style graphtech ghost saddles with the associated electronis.

Brilliant, that's what I'd hoped the procedure was. I've already marked up the rod channel and am having body-end adjustment so as not to reduce strength where the head joins. Thanks again!

I'm just getting started with my first project guitar and I'm a bit confused with what to do for the trussrod. I've already bought one which is an aluminium square shaped channel with a steel rod running inside. I've read through Melyn Hiscock's book, which doesn't directly deal with these rods, but does suggest that they should be glue into a flat bottomed channel cut into the neck face beneith the fretboard, and that they don't require a fillet. I've also read Dennis Waring & David Raymond's book and it suggests a similar rod which isn't filleted but they do not mention gluing at all. I have also read this http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/neck.htm and the rod used looks alot like what I have, but he makes a curved channel and covers with a fillet. This has left me really confused, I really don't want the hassle of cutting a curved channel or making a fillet so, do I need a different type of rod?