Chonker

Progress is really slowing, I'm getting more and more nervous as it gets more complete.

I've glue the fretboard on (which went okay but did slip a little, will have to put the bridge slightly higher to compensate). I'm going to have to make the bridge again anyhow as the rosewood one is too thick (and I'm simply not able to thin that stuff, my plane just tears it out in chunks!). Will use a piece of brass to match the brass nut that still needs to be made.

Coming along great

I want a guitar made from the wood of christ's cross, like squisgar squigelf!

Oh man, that neck is something else

nope, photos are broken

Yea that does look quite similar. I might go around it with a small roundover bit to bevel the edge, that should get rid of it I guess.

Did some shaping of the body this morning

While shaping the neck to body curves i took a chunk out of the back face at the edge It caused me to shape down the neck to body which I was toying with anyway but that's not gone deep enough and there's still a small ding in the edge. Any ideas how I can deal with this?

I think Basswood makes great guitars... but then I'm an RG fanboy

Yea the volute was okay until i took the neck thinner, now it looks a bit silly Will make it a bit smaller but will leave it on the large side still as I like the idea of having the extra thickness in that area.

I've not decided, I'm still yet to decide how to finish the guitar so I gues that'll probably influence my decision abit. Most likely I'll be boring and just go for white

Yea I went a bit further than intended really, once I thought I'd finishe with the spokeshave I noticed it was not straight, it was thinner in the middle and thicket at either end. By the time I got it down to a straight taper this is what I'm left with!

It looks bad but bear in mind that it's quite long (29" scale at the bottom) and the body is still overly thick as I've not planed it yet) also my fingerboard is thick and the thickness of this and the fingerboard together is no less than my ibanez 7 string so hopefully that's cool. Only time will tell I guess.

The contrast of the woods is amazing, lovely work!

No progress shots for a little while as I have been mostly waiting for glue to dry!

Finished carving the neck and glued the wings to the body. The body parts slipped a bit as I glued it so I now have lots of planing to do to get it flat. At least I have a little more thickness than I want int he final body to play with. The weight balance seems body heavy at this point which I guess is great. hopefully this wont changed too much with the routing of the cavities.

I've also been following a tutorial on here for fibreoptic sidemarkers, quite pleased with the results, alot of hassle to do though.

ZR trem is by far my favourite, they are sooo smooth

Also some good info on them here:

http://www.jemsite.com/news/edge2003/index.htm

I really like the difference in wood colour, makes it look really interesting.

I like that idea, been wondering how to go about fretting a compound scale guitar

One rosewood bridge

I'm a little concerned as the spacings of the saddles doesn't seem quite right, but I was very careful when marking up and punching the holes that for the saddle retaining bolts so hopefully the string tension'll pull them all into place!

Yea gonna be fixed. I'm going to give the rosewood a try then, worse that happens is it puts depressions in the rosewood and I eventually replace it with a metal one

Yea I was originally going to use a metal plate but I dont have anything suitable and was looking around for what else I might be able to use.

I think the rosewood would look nicer, though I could send the metal bridge off to get chromed, this will take time and slow completion of my build.

The bridge saddles have two little grubscrews running through them vertically to lift the front end up raising the string height. Similar to those on the stratocaster bridge.

I quite like the idea of that neck shape but I am mindful that I have to keep the neck so thick in the middle to allow something behind the trussrod! Also would that not make the strenght in the neck uneven and encourage bending/warping?

Also I need to make up some sort of brige plate to hold my wilkinson style saddles to, I have been thinking about using some of the rosewood leftover from my fretboard. Do you think this might work? My concern is the little height adjust grubscrews burrowing their way into the wood rather than pushing up the saddles.

Done a bunch of stuff today.

Sorted out the volute with much rasping/sanding

Carved the neck, I think it might be a little on the thick side still but I keep getting nervous as it starts to look thin! I'm going to take a bunch off the back of my fretboard and then see how it feels to hold. Can also see the complex angle I cut the head at due to compounded scale, in future I don't think i'd do that again, it was a headache.

Also got the trussrod glued into place and cut to width/planed flat the sides at the body end ready to glue the wings on

Now I'm gonna jump in the bath 'cos with all the sanding I've done I look like a bleeding flour grader!

Oh man that is great, I've just ordered some for my own project

That looks really sweet, I think part of the problem I'm having is just working out the shape it should be because of the diagonal nut. I can either make it normal and put where the midpoint of the nut meets the neck centreline or have it kind of angled.

I've not got a drum sander alas, In fact the only powertools I've really been using is a cheapo bandsaw and a cheapo router, all the rest of the shaping/sanding is being done by hand (my arms are killing me!)

finished shaping the head and drilled the post holes for the tuners, Then discovered the head thickness was 3mm too much and the tuner pegs wern't coming though!

Took the thicknes down with the router and now my volute looks really weird, feels comfortable enough though.

Now just have to hope it doesn't catastrophically fail when i first go to string it up!

Actually, I don't think it was quite as big as 1/4"