Akula

Whacked the frets in. 

Pre-shaping the fret ends is a game changer for me. After installation, I've realised I'll still need to bevel them a touch more in order to get a real smooth feel, which is something I couldn't have done prior to hammering them in. But that'll be fairly easy - the basic shape of the fret ends is there, so a quick touch of the file and they should be good. 

Of course, in the classic tradition of nipping the frets to length after installation, we end up with a dead straight line when looking down the fretboard. This is not the case here, as even tiny discrepancies in length are easily seen, and even if my frets were perfectly accurate in length it doesn't account for the wandering of position while hammering them in. 

In the future I'll be refining this process by computing the length of each fret using a spreadsheet, cutting and shaping to exact size, then I'll install them up against a "fence" clamped to one edge of the fretboard. I'll have to take into account the roll of the fretboard, but I think this is achievable.

For standard frets, I'd probably not bother with this whole process, but for stainless steel I reckon it's going to save me time and headaches in the long run. In perspective, it took me average 8 minutes to cut each single fret, shape the ends, nip the tangs, polish the ends, and install. When my process is perfected, all that would be left would be a levelling. Just figure I'd prefer to shape the frets without a delicate piece of ebony in the way, gave it a shot, worked out alright.

 - Jam

Cut and shaped the frets... all 48 of them!

Instead of fifteen photos and a drawn-out explanation, I made a video. If you've got just over a minute to spare, check it out!

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CnEkVNmJSTz/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

 - Jam

3 hours ago, henrim said:

Looking great, beautiful workmanship!

I had to look at this picture a while before I got what is going on with the neck  At first I didn't notice there is two bodies on top of each other.

Thanks!

Ha! That photo freaked me out for a second as well. I could blame the terrible lighting in my workshop, but really I'm just a terrible photographer. I'd ask my partner to take some decent photos, but there's spiders in the shed and she won't go near it 

Ok, unclamped the BC fretboard and radiused it with a sanding block. I re-cut the fret slots carefully, then went to about a thousand grit wet sanding. My timber yard have never yet failed to supply me with decent ebony, although I do try and suggest more sustainable Australian hardwoods to people. I used Ironbark on a build earlier this year and it was stunning... But a heavy metal guitar looks less fearsome with a brown fretboard. Anyways, shiny ebony:

I started cutting some frets, too. I finally bought a good set of nippers, as opposed to my previous method of sawing fretwire with a hacksaw, but I haven't yet ground the ends flush with the cutting edge. 

My method for fret preparation is to cut each length to exact dimensions determined by laying out the wire across the fretboard. Then I take the piece to the bench grinder and shape the ends to a rough semi-hemispherical shape. Next the tang is nipped and tidied up with a file, and the semi-hemi ends are tidied up with files and sandpaper.

Again, my apologies for the awful photography. Need a good camera and a macro lens. 

I'm intrigued to see how much legwork this method saves me - I've always hated shaping fret ends after they're in the fretboard, because I somehow always end up marring the fretboard with the file, even with a safe edge on the file and masking tape on the board. I am a little concerned that by installing frets with a hammer they will move sideways in increments and I'll end up with a wonky line of frets. I'm tempted to make a rudimentary fret press using a caul and a quick-grip clamp. 

The COW7 fretboard got glued. Tomorrow I'll repeat the process of tapering and radiusing the fretboard, then begins the fretwork.

 - Jam

Cut my fret slots. I should really invest my time in making a fret slotting jig, but for the last half a dozen guitars I've been happy enough just free-handing it, with the saw following the scored lines marked with a sharp knife. My saw, however, has the world's most unergonomic handle, and my fingers went numb by the sixth fret in. Very inconvenient. Then the handle came off from the tang entirely, and I had to hammer it back on.... Hey, there's an idea for a rainy day, make a new handle for my saw, and an acrylic fret slotting jig as well.

On the note of jigs, I concocted this travesty to accurately drill string-through holes. It works the same was as the pin in the drill press system used by all, but it allows me to use my Drillmate. The plywood still has some bendiness to it, so I doubt it will see further use. Perhaps another version constructed from steel box section would be more accurate. 

This jig worked pretty well, in hindsight. It doesn't allow great visual access to the workpiece, and I managed to slam the chuck into the top a few times. That'll have to be sanded out. 

Here I am marking up the electronics cavity. Last build I did, I just drew up the templates freehand on paper, so this time round I decided to create a standard cavity template with CAD. This design is pretty versatile, I'll be able to use it for both of these builds and probably many more in the future. Transferring the design to plywood in exact measurements proved rather difficult, so I think I'll end up 3d printing the templates.

Time to do some carvin', Marvin! I use an angle grinder with an 80-grit flap disc for the most part, tidied up with sanding drums, files, etc. I know the grinder may appear to be a rather oafish way about things, but I can carve a top in about half an hour now. Don't spend too long in one place, keep moving, and let the disc remove material at it's own pace - to push the grinder into the wood just results in burning and scratches a mile deep.

Then I'll go to town on it with an orbital detail sander. Same thing, just don't press too hard or you'll scar the timber and probably melt the velcro on the sanding pad. 

Last job for the night, gluing up the fretboard on the BC. I would've liked to glue up the COW7 as well, but being such a vital glue join I figured each fretboard could benefit from all the clamps in the shop.

 - Jam

That is bloody inspirational. Really nice work there mate!

11 hours ago, henrim said:

Strung it. Looks like everything is reasonably well within tolerances. I’ll define the neck shape with the strings on and then take it apart again to finish up parts individually. 

 

Very nice!

May I ask why you shape the neck with the strings on? I'd guess it's either to feel the play of the neck while carving, or it's to do with string tension... maybe both?

Did some pickup routing. First there is swiss cheese, done with a simple twist bit because I have yet to invest in a good set of forstners. These templates are getting rather old and weathered, in fact this particular one is very lucky to have survived my last purge of MDF from the workshop - I won't allow that particular material anymore. I'm visiting family in a week or so, and I'm tempted to hijack my dad's 3D printer to create some new templates as a proof of concept. We had MDF templates, then laser cutting acrylic became an option, and now 3D printing seems, at least in my mind, the way forward for luthiery templates, and possibly indeed for entire parts themselves.

Lovely.

Carbon fibre reinforcements glued in. I stupidly used a fast-setting epoxy on the first attempt, and used far too much of it, so I pulled it out, scraped the glue off, cleaned up the slot, and tried again with more forethought. It worked, but the slots were routed to exactly the depth required, and the added volume of epoxy made the rods sit proud of the surface just by a fraction. Incredibly frustrating, since I'd planed the neck surfaces flat ready for fretboards already. Oh well, break out the levelling beam with sandpaper. Carbon fibre dust really sucks, by the way! 

The Cow7 received it's neck pocket. I've been on a bit of a neck-through spree lately, so I had to think back and remember how to do this.... Clamp the neck in position, three pieces of straight timber clamped around it, remove neck, thus a neck pocket template, right? Right. Well, it worked. 

The benefit of having a job which requires both early mornings and late nights is that it completely messes with one's sleeping patterns, thus providing time late at night where power tools would be considered un-neighbourly in which to do quieter jobs such as marking up fretboards. 

 - Jam

I've seen these fibre boards before - I looked into them while building a Warwick-style bass a few years ago. Those German dudes make their own material, mixing maple dust with resin and dye under pressure to make a thin accent stripe in their laminations. 

I love the idea. Why cut down a new tree for aesthetic reasons when you could create it from the waste product of a structural material. Brilliance.

My two builds are beyond the point of changing the design brief, but as mentioned before, I appreciate your input greatly. Thank you for the links - I'll be plugging them into the big calculator for future builds. I think it'll save me time, money, and definitely trees.

 - Jam

@Bizman62, you speak words of wisdom. The client hasn't specified a headstock veneer, however, and although I could probably sneak one onto the back face without much ado, I wonder how much strength half a mil of continuous grain would help in a face-drop incident. Really, it all comes down to that - if you drop any guitar hard enough, it's going to eat the brown stuff. I've arrived at the conclusion that I should trust in my glue joins, and in the future owner's ability to store his guitar properly.

Speaking of glue-ups, I had to do a 3-piece body to allow for the BC's shape and dimensions. This is gonna be one huge axe! The bass side wings were glued together separately, then the whole thing together the next night. 

Ran the pile of blanks through the bandsaw and received a pile of guitar-shaped objects. I did have to resort to the jigsaw for some of the tight curves on the BC shape, simply because I have a rather wide blade on the bandsaw at the moment and was far too lazy to change it out. More to the point, I'd misplaced my gloves, and only a pure maniac would unravel a tied-up bandsaw blade with bare hands. 

Shaping day! Pulled my usual trick of screwing the templates down in opportune places such as the tuner positions and pickup areas. Coupled with double sided sticky tape, I find it's a great way to keep the template from slipping without using bulky G-clamps. 

That's the BC shaped. This session was kinda like a piece of string.... very long! It took me six passes and nearly five hours of labour to get this one cut out. I figure a superstrat has three really sketchy parts while routing - two horn tips, and the tip of the headstock. This BC has ten such pointy parts to take utmost care with to avoid tearout. 

The Cow7 was easy, in contrast. Another benefit to using acrylic templates is that the router base just glides over the top of them, and I'd just purchased a new set of flush-cut bits, too. Beautifully satisfying.

 - Jam

Thanks! They're both cool concepts, and I was glad to take them on.

I'll skip the boring photographs of raw timber and leave you with this lovely picture of my hand plane surrounded by mahogany shavings.

I laminated the necks as three-pieces; the COW7 inherited some Black Bean veneer stripes because it was bolt-on, thus the length of my material could fit  giving some aesthetic benefit. The BC build will be solid colour painted, so there would be no benefit.

Scarf joints away. Being laminated necks, both scarf joints rely upon total alignment, so I used an old trick where I drill two 1.5mm holes either side of the nut position, and use drill bits as pins to guarantee a perfect line-up. It also has the benefit of stopping that sliding motion while clamping up to glue. 

Used an age-old jig to route the truss rod slots on both necks. Carbon fibre reinforcement is new to me, but I figured I could use the same jig to achieve the slots. My 4mm router bit seems to cut at slightly more than 4mm, unfortunately, so when I come to gluing the rods in place I'll have to wedge a sliver of veneer in sideways to get a snug fit.

Glued up the headstock ears. Jeez, start a new build and you just wanna get on with it - every beginning step requires a 24hr glue-up in between! It's worth it, though, as it requires us to take our time with the most important parts of the build. One thing I'm wary of, after seeing the many laminations of mahogany making up this headstock, is that it may cause a weakness on the lower tuning machines due to string pull at an angle. I've seen Jacksons with snapped headstock ears, and I'm rather tempted to inlay a carbon fibre rod into the backside of the headstock to staunch it up a little. Thoughts?

Here's where I'm at, after tapering the necks, gluing body blanks, then rough-cutting body shapes on the bandsaw. A good ol' stack of guitar on the bench!

 - Jam

Hey,

Started two new builds, vastly different in shape, size, and format, but since they're aligned in time I'll be posting them up in the same thread. Hope it doesn't get too confusing. 

BC

This was drawn up by a client who envisioned a Beast and a Bich having a strange lovechild. It's spiky, aggressive, and large. Definitely prone to tip damage, but it'll likely dish out as much as it receives. Here's the template.

It's a full mahogany build, neck through and wings, with an ebony fretboard and carbon fibre reinforcement. Client wanted a quilted maple carved top, but given the price of sourcing such a piece of timber in Australia he decided for a solid mahogany body and a painted finish.

COW7

The cow! Friend of mine bought himself the Jackson Cow7 a while ago, and liked it a lot except for the blocky neck-heel transition. He's a previous customer of mine, so he commissioned this one as a loose copy of the original - I put my own spin on everything - with the improved features including a nicer heel, JEM-style output jack, and a stained finish. Here's the template:

It's another full mahogany build, but this will be a bolt-on as opposed to neck through. Ebony fretboard, stainless steel frets, and a carbon fibre reinforced scarf jointed neck like the other one.

Although the two guitars are different in size, shape, and construction style, I'm building them side by side to test a theory that I learned as a chef - cook in batches, save time. 

 - Jam

I like it!

As others have said, router tear-out is something that can be avoided by taking away small amounts of material in a single pass. Do a million small passes instead of one large one. Router direction is something to be mindful of. Really, just pay attention to how the machine feels and sounds, and tell her nice things.

Warped timber? Yep, Bizman has all the right advice here, listen to this guy. I had some good luck earlier this year with steaming a piece of timber back into shape, but that was a relatively thin top, not a neck blank. Laminated necks are the way forward - with the right arrangement, a twist in the timber will be counteracted by the other half. 

My advice? Give it a red-hot go. You can always buy more wood.

 - Jam

On 12/5/2022 at 6:56 PM, Bizman62 said:

I also just recently saw a height adjusting system for a set router, might have been at Banggood. Can't tell if it's any good but until now I didn't now such things exist.

Yep, and that's really the part that I need to figure out is the raise system. I can easily create a baseplate for the router which sits inverted, but I don't want to wrestle with the machine under the bench. I'll get round to it one day...

Marked up two big circles on the baffle.

And cut them out with my aged jigsaw. Also note the black panhead screws I used to fasten along the joins - these are inset from the edges so they grab into the pine framework, pulling all the plywood panels into a airtight cube soaked in wood glue.

Every face sanded to remove those awful splinters, painted rattle-can black, and a quick thick coat of lacquer on top. Check out the old cabinet in the background for size comparison.

Big stainless steel ball corners, black extrusion on all edges, road case handles, and locking castor wheels. This bad boy will travel extensively. 

Last things I need are a grille, jack plate, and to swap the Eminence speakers to this new cab. The old cab will be getting some Celestions.

 - Jam

Righto.

Cut all my pieces of plywood to size, and made a mitre around all edges using the router. I don't have a router table as of yet, so I used the plunge router and a straight edge. Results were alright, but a table is now next on my list of builds.

Glue-and-screw construction. The pine pieces you see here will form a frame inside the ply box, adding mass and reinforcement. 

My box-making skills are nowhere near as good as my guitar-building skills, but then I build guitars far more often than boxes, something I wished to rectify with this exercise. Anyways, a few of the mitres got damages during assembly and didn't quite line up, but there will be trim around the edges when it's done. The most important thing was to get it airtight.

Baffle and front fascia attached, solid and tight.

 - Jam

A couple of years ago, I bought a really beat-up no name quad box loaded with Eminence speakers, for very cheap. The monstrosity was made out of chipboard and held together with mould, and it weighed a ton, so I sold two speakers to a mate and built this cute little thing to house the other two speakers:

It did get a grille eventually. 

Now, this little thing measured 650*650*350mm and weighed nothing at all - I could pick it up with one hand to chuck it in the car. It featured a weird convertible design where I could undo four screws and remove the back, turning it into an open-back. I rarely used that feature. It also has a switch to remove one speaker from the circuit, hence driving the one speaker really hard at a lower impedance. Kinda cool, but for the most part I'd want both speakers firing while playing live.

I was happy with this cab up until I recently played through a massive oversized quad box, and was just amazed at the low-end response. My little cab is all about the mids and highs. Hmm. Something might be done...

Stopped by Bunnings on the way home tonight and purchased a full sheet of plywood for $46. 

Plan is to build a new cab using entirely the existing parts of the old one, right down to the wheels. It'll be airtight and reinforced, and a fair bit heavier, being a few centimetres larger. 

Let's see how this one turns out.

 - Jam

On 11/2/2022 at 3:38 AM, mistermikev said:

looks pretty sharp.  that faux paua binding against that top(dark flamed maple? walnut?).  nice job.

Thanks mate. It's Tasmanian Blackwood with a flamed figure, lucky find from the local timber yard.

21 hours ago, Crusader said:

I noticed your pickup wells are very square and I wondered how you did it. So I scrolled back and found where you said you chisel them out, don't think I've ever seen that before, is there a reason for it, do the pickups you use have square edges?

I'm using EMGs which are fairly squared anyways, and the smallest bearing I have for my router bits is 12mm. Instead of buying a bunch of smaller bits and bearings, I just knocked the corners off dead square with a chisel. The pickups will be mounted on steel rings anyway, so nobody will ever know haha.

 - Jam

I did a thinned coat of poly about a week ago. This is right after application:

I won't drag on about the weather again, I feel like I've spent this whole thread flogging that dead horse. But a week later and it's finally dry... Considering the moment, I think I'll let that be the final coat. I'm going to start wet sanding up to a high grit as soon as I have the time, starting from a fairly high number. That first coat of poly was rather thick so I don't think I'll be in much danger of sanding through it if I'm careful. I'd love to hear from other builders in these humid parts of the world about how to manage finishing in such a climate!

My pickup rings arrived in the post, and of course they're a fraction too small for EMG's to fit through, and the mounting holes aren't the right spacing. I pray in the future somebody will buy out all major pickup manufacturing companies and standardise this kind of stuff. The Gotoh tuners aren't black, either, like the rest of the hardware, they're what Gotoh call "Cosmo Black". Ah well, good enough. They are pretty.

Hopefully I'm only a few weeks away from final assembly and setup. This is the last guitar I'll be gifting to myself for quite a while, and as excited as I am to bring it into life, I'm also keen to start ordering for the next run of clients. My father taught me not to start another project while the last one is still on the bench, and although that isn't always possible in the world of small business, it's a good ideal to uphold.

 - Jam

Nice jig. I guess you just ride the plane down over the MDF spacer and keep going until you hit the desired angle? I'd love a walkthrough of how that setup works.

 - Jam

It's been nearly two weeks since the last lick of oil/poly garnished this guitar, and humidity actually dropped a bit in the last few days! Oil coats are finally dry and cured. I wiped on a bit of straight polyurethane today, and regretted it...

Should've thinned out the poly first. I reckon that'll dry up with a bunch of ridges and runs. 

Plan is to thin out the poly with metho and wipe on another coat or two - this poly overcoat will be thin, for sure, but I just need enough thickness to be able to level it with wet sanding. I'll go high with the grit numbers before I start buffing.

Ordered a set of Gotoh locking tuners today, and a set of pickup mounting rings. The original idea was to direct mount the pickups, but I had a job on my bench last week which turned me way off to the idea of direct mount. I'm considering building some rings myself out of ebony and binding them with this abalone stuff, but that might be a touch too flashy.

 - Jam

I'm up to my poly/oil mix coats now. I've had to two major issues to date, the first being Sydney's ever-biblical weather. We've been raining for days, again, and as a result the humidity has reached 90% and has stayed there. There's supposed to be a period of 70% tomorrow, which will at least allow me to apply another coat with less risk of clouding up, but it's still taking days for each coat to properly dry.

The second issue being that this Blackwood was far more oily than I had anticipated. I really did throw on quite a lot of Danish oil, and coupled with the weather that means I'm not convinced the oil has dried off yet, making me reluctant to seal in that gooiness with a layer of plastic. I've done a coat of oil/poly at 2:1 and another at 3:2, which has the effect of thinning the poly acceptably, but yeah unless this weather starts acting like it's season, I'm going to hold off with application for the time being.

To kill some time, I worked on the electronics side of it. I'm using an EMG system, the 81/60 pair, which comes with a volume and tone pot and a nice easy connection hub for their Quick Connect cabling. Unfortunately, I managed to lose my pickup cables along the way, and most places around here charge upwards of ten bucks for a single EMG cable. So I did some research and discovered that these are just Dupont jumper cables, of which I purchased a 40-pack for five dollars on eBay. 

This is my first shot at using copper tape for shielding, as opposed to insulated cables or conductive paint, so I made sure to plan it out. I made a paper net of the 3d space of the cavity, and used that to prepare some pre-cut lengths of copper with tabs cut along their edge.

That went okay. Also seen here: magnets. Magnets, man.

Cocooned the rest of the cavity with tape, and added a run of super glue around the edge to prevent any dog-earing in the future. This will contact the steel cover plate and provide a fairly decent cage against interference. I'm using active pickups, but I drilled a ground wire hole to the bridge to future-proof pickup changing options.

Let's hope the weather here dries out sometime this century!

 - Jam

Very nice work!

I'd love to see more setup and fretwork on these forums. Having started out building guitars with pre-made necks, I didn't actually have to do any real fretwork of my own for a good while, just action relief and string height stuff. In the past two years especially I've done levelling and full refretting for many guitars, but it's a never-ending cycle of development towards perfection, and I'd love to learn more from the greats.

 - Jam

16 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

Looking great. I use Danish oil on my necks all the time and sand in the slurry coat like that, but I've never thought to warm the oil up first, I'll give that a try. Thanks for the tip.

Thanks mate. Warming up the oil to lower viscosity is based on thought experiment, I have not actually tested it scientifically... But I figure it's worth the effort, and the fan heater makes the shop a bit more comfortable to work in as well!

 - Jam

Onto the slurry coats. The theory behind this, for those unaware, is that while applying the oil with sandpaper with moderate pressure you sand off the exposed fibres of timber into dust which mixes with the oil and then sinks into the grain, creating a flatter surface. I did this three times with 400-grit on the back, top, sides and headstock, leaving the maple alone. There's always a risk of tainting the maple with walnut dust, but a quick hand with a clean rag prevents this.

Action shot. I sand in little circles for the first slurry coat, knocking the heads off any fibres silly enough to poke their heads up. The second and third coats at 400-grit get sanded along the grain. 

Since this takes longer than simply applying with a cloth, by the time I've sanded dust and oil into the top, sides, back and headstock, it's usually about time to start rubbing off excess oil - or adding more with sandpaper, if the area calls for it. 

I leave each coat for at least 24hrs to dry before the next. After three coats of 400, I stepped it up to 600-grit tonight. As seen here, the wavy grain of the top is starting to look nicely sealed and filled, but could do with more flatness. I'll probably go up to 800 before going to the polyurethane coats. This is application number 5 of Danish Oil now, so I think the timber has slake it's thirst by now.

 - Jam

11 hours ago, ScottR said:

The way I've gotten a high shine with Danish oil is to actually make the wood shine first. Sand/polish up to an insanely fine grit like micromesh 12000, and then wipe on the Danish. Let it soak in and then wipe off the excess. Repeat until no areas will soak in any more and then up up that excess and let it dry for a couple of days. No abrasion resistance but man does it look great!

That does make perfect sense - a shiny surface to begin with is the way to go. I'm interested to know what kinds of wood you've done this with? My Tassie Blackwood is very open-pored with a wavy grain, so I had assumed I wouldn't be able to go much higher than about 400 grit, but I'm now kicking myself for not giving it a go anyways.

I'm going up to 600 or 800 with the slurry coats, or even higher until I'm happy with it. After I start adding more polyurethane to the mix I'll go to finer grits again.

 - Jam