Akula

I'll set my Danish Oil in a warm water bath for a few minutes before applying the first coat. The logic behind that is that it raises the viscosity of the fluid and allows for a deep initial penetration into the timber.

Applied with a good lint-free rag. The first coat gets a lot of oil, left to soak for twenty minutes, then wiped off. It's easy to see the spots that absorb more oil, because they're left looking dull, which begets them another good slap of finishing product.

I hang the guitar from an S-hook rigged from the ceiling of my workshop, allowing me to do the entire guitar at once. Naturally, the maple takes much less oil than the walnut, and the parts with exposed end grain, such as sides, cutaways, and contours all drink a ton of oil, so I stay in the shop for three hours during this crucial step to ensure that: a) every bit of timber gets enough oil saturated into it, and b) no excess oil is left of the surface for long enough to go sticky and tacky. Obviously, this is quite the balancing act. I have five different species of wood involved, and every individual piece of wood is different.

Case in point - there's a lovely dark feature on the top, above the bridge pickup, about where the forearm would rest. This little knuckle seems to soak up a bunch of oil upon application, yet then spits it back out for about an hour afterwards. The solution is to take care and have patience. Let it take all it can drink, then clean up afterwards. My impression of Tasmanian Blackwood is one of a very oily timber.

What a piece of wood, though!

The first stage was to get the wood surface totally inundated with oil. That was a success. The next step will be to grain-fill the walnut and blackwood with the oil-slurry technique. 

 - Jam

On 9/24/2022 at 7:35 PM, nakedzen said:

Sandwitch body, 44mm mahogany back, 10mm flame maple plus 10mm figured mahogany top.

Love the idea! A touch of flame maple showing like a flirt? Perfect.

64mm thickness, though... Are you going to be chambering it?

 - Jam

On 9/23/2022 at 4:00 AM, Bizman62 said:

Now that you mentioned your cabinet maker friend, Neil Paskin who's one of your fellow Australians and pretty popular in YouTube used to use something similar as his go-to finish until he found something commercial (probably from a sponsor)

I looked him up - great craftsman. I've followed him on my social medias, because its good to front-load the mindless scrolling with some actually useful and interesting content! Thanks.

No pictures today, as all I did was sand up to 360 for the front, back, and neck, 400 for the sides with grain-raising steps in between, and 1000-grit for the binding. I could have scraped the binding, but this binding material was an eBay purchase and seems to invite "skating" with the scraper. I'm halting at these grits for the timber as I'll be grain filling with Danish oil for the finishing phase. Both Tasmanian Blackwood and Walnut are just waiting to soak up that finish... Every time I wet the thing down with metho to search for scratches, I just can't wait to apply the first few coats and watch the figure and grain come to life.

Honestly, I'd like to take a moment to outline the things I could have done better with this build. Unusual for a builder to show off their flaws, but the sanding phase always brings out those moments where I wish I'd done a particular task better, and what better way to remember something than to write it down? 

• The neck-body-top join has irked me on several builds. I fixed a gap in this join with veneer, and it turned out great, but it's something to work on. More box-making, I believe. Moreover, the hard to reach areas of the neck heel are important to get right on a neck through build, because they are difficult to get later with low grit sandpaper. The "I'll fix it later" approach doesn't work. This build just has some areas right in the cutaways that will definitely show some pockmarks from the router through the finish, and they're nigh impossible to get at.
• Speaking of router-rash, I'll be buying some good decent quality bits and bearings to use on future builds, or at the very least do a new purchase of mid-quality bits before each build. The amount of time I spent trying to sand out burn marks was incredible, and not an efficient use of my limited time in the shop.
• Binding channels. Next time, I'm using a proper routing jig or not at all. The top side looks amazing, but the sides and back definitely had gaps from my chisel work, and needed filling with glue and dust, which will of course be visible. It's not a major concern for me, but others would notice.
• Timber storage and acclimatization was mentioned earlier in this thread, as my top cupped and was recovered with plastic deformation similar to how acoustic sides are bent. This wouldn't have happened if I'd realised the city was in the midst of a biblical flood, and had stored my timber appropriately.
• Fret ends. I tried a new technique on this build by shaping one side of each fret before installation, but shied away from doing both because I was afraid of how accurately I could install them without them shifting side to side and looking out of plumb. Now I realise that if I can accurately measure fret slot spacing, I can accurately shape each individual fret down to size before installing, and tap them sideways if installation goes awry. This will make my fretwork much faster in the future.
• "If you don't look after your guitar, it'll end up covered in dents." Well, I'm not much of a writer of proverbs, but stencil this one onto my headstone. My workbench is a hard-weathered MDF top, and after rough shaping I continued to wrestle the workpiece through all other processes, resulting in an absolute nightmare when it came to finish-sanding. I'll be replacing the benchtop at the earliest convenience, and I'll have a stretch of carpet at the ready to velcro down as soon as any future build is past the stage of shaping. Again, if I am to continue building instruments in any reasonable timeframe (especially with my occupation), I need to cut my efficiency down to size, and this is a way to cut at least five hours off my current build time. Be more bloody careful!

These are just my own observations. If you guys have anything to add, I'd love to hear it! I started building guitars in 2009, gave up in 2012, and re-started my habit in 2020, so I have many a tip or trick to absorb.

 - Jam

1 hour ago, Crusader said:

Then I use a home made long drill bit to drill through both ends

Once again, your pure mastery of that particular tool amazes me.

Great build, mate.

2 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

That sounds just like the articles I've read in the Internet about the recipes woodworkers used to know before marketing overran tradition. For what I've learned TruOil is basically Danish Oil, both of which are based on antique recipes containing linseed oil, turpentine and "poly" or "lacquer". The basic recipe is one third each but depending on the purpose the proportions can be changed at will.

I've finished at least one guitar with Crimson's guitar finishing oils which are counter-engineered from TruOil or something similar. It comes in two versions, penetrative and "high build" and I guess we both know what is the difference between those two! Anyhow, the Ovangkol top became quite level and shiny with them. Much more level than your guitar.

Anyhow, now that you've confirmed that oil based polyurethane works with the Danish Oil I feel more confident to mix my own TruestOil!

 

Yep, I was having a chat with a lighting technician at work last night about this - he's a cabinet maker by trade - and he kind of chuckled and said that "Whatever Oil" is something people having been cooking up in their workshops for decades. I believed him, the man's long in the tooth by every meaning of the phrase.

Dude, that Ovangkol top came out looking amazing! 

And yeah give it a go with mixing your own. It sounds like that's what Ben from Crimson did, marketed it well, and made good business from it, and there's nothing wrong with that either. I bought a dozen little glass jars from the dollar-store a while ago, they're great for making different mixes of finishes and easy to label. I even add my own stains and tints to them, easy to do since everything's oil based.

 - Jam

31 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

That's something I've been wanting to do for quite some time! My main issue with the recipe is that I don't know exactly what "poly" means - the vocabulary seems to change meanings even within the English language spoken in various parts of the World and even more when derived and translated to other languages. Here every clearcoat is "lacquer" - urethane lacquer, alkyd lacquer, oil lacquer, nitrocellulose lacquer... You name it! Which one will best mix with boiled linseed oil and turpentine?

Totally! In this case, I mean "poly" as polyurethane lacquer. Specifically, this stuff. It's meant as a brushed-on or rubbed finish, which is why many people to refer to it as "varnish", adding to the confusion.

The Danish Oil I'm using is of the Organoil brand. I suspect it already has about a 1/4 of it's mass as polyurethane, the other 3/4 being boiled linseed oil and mineral spirits, with possibly other elements to add hardness. It's a good product, I've used it in purity on other builds to good effect. For example, I'm currently playing an old build in my kitchen late at night, I'll grab a quick photo:

Nice shine, but not shiny enough. And I do notice pick scratches on this guitar more than my others.

Therefore, adding more polyurethane to the mix of Danish Oil after the grain filling stages should add a bit more of a protective film on top, and will give me a much more solid material to buff up to a sheen. I'm not expecting a factory-grade mirror finish, hell no, but a guitar like this deserves to be a bit more than dull.

4 hours ago, RVA said:

That looks amazing!

Thanks man!

 - Jam

The great binding experience draws to an end!

I put a 9mm bearing on a 12mm drill bit, freshly greased and tightened. The router base got modified with a block attached to the underside of one pillar, at the same thickness of the guitar body, to provide a square cut.

This setup doesn't account for the depth of cut changing, so I went shallow and re-adjusted the depth a few times around the body. My gramil used on the edge provided an accurate depth line, vaguely seen in this photo because it's right on the join between top and wings. 

Sharpened up my chisels and set to the job in hand. Except, as mentioned, the chisel did in fact end up inside my hand at one point. Whoops.

The headstock was a little harder to do, as the router is a bit heavy to get stable on a small surface. I went in with a sharp knife and cut through the veneer, then used the gramil for the depth, and finished the cut with the chisels. 

Glued 'er in with CA. I used masking tape and rubber bands to hold it down while the glue set - the masking tape gunk got stuck to the sides with superglue and was a total pain to scrape off. 

Had a small issue with the binding protruding from the headstock - guess my channels were a touch smaller there, probably due to some subconscious process. That was taken down to flush with sandpaper. 

I guess my chisel skills aren't as good as I'd like, because after cleaning it all up I found some gaps. You'd find it hard to get a fingernail in them, but I did manage to stuff some wood glue and dust in there. Not the best solution, but it came out alright.

Right onto sanding for the finish. Here's a shot of the thing up to about 180-grit, wetted with metho to show scratches. The back had a few decent dings that needed steaming/sanding - I need to get a patch of carpet to velcro onto the workbench as soon as the body is rough shaped. 

I explored a few different options for finishing. My first idea was 2K poly, but I don't have a spray booth or setup. Rattle cans are an option, but they're expensive and I don't have a sufficiently dust-free environment to shoot in. 

Second option was shellac, French-polished to a high sheen. I've never done a French polish before, but after extensive reading I figured it might not be as protective as I'd like the finish to be. This guitar will probably end up going on the road with me, it won't be a home instrument, and I need to know it won't look like crap within a year. 

The last handful of my builds were finished with Danish Oil, and I'm fairly competent with this style of finish. It's still not a particularly hard-wearing finish, though, and it lacks the glossy look I'm aiming for.

Therefore, the current plan is this - Danish oil, applied with sandpaper to achieve a nice grain filled smooth surface, then I'll add more and more poly to the mix on subsequent coats. I toyed with this idea on a V-shaped guitar last year, and although that particular project had many issues with the Danish oil interacting with the black stain, the oil-poly mix was a success. I could buff it to a mid sheen, it was hard enough to withstand pick marks, and it still had that oil-feel instead of plastic poly.

Mostly that was a brain-dump to sort out the ideas in my head into an organised manner. But, it also serves the purpose of allowing all you guys to point out any potential issues with my finishing plan. I hate the finishing process - the guitar's 90% done and I just want to put strings on it already! Patience, Jam, patience...

 - Jam

Well, in a way, I'm glad it's not just me. I was doing a paring cut across the grain at the end of the bass horn when the wood let go and the chisel went whack right through my finger. Dumb move - first cut after re-sharpening and I had my whole weight behind it. I screamed like Homer Simpson.

No point building guitars if we haven't got fingers left to play them with afterwards, right?

Anyways. I finally got the binding channels cut, installed the binding, and sanded it down flush. I've got a few hours of sanding and random tidying-up jobs left to do before I start with the oil and top coats, so I'll get those done before posting about them. But the guitar's in a good place, which therefore puts me in a good place to start working on the next projects in the pipeline as soon as I start finishing. Happy days.

 - Jam

On 8/31/2022 at 1:44 PM, Akula said:

Hoping to have a few shorter working days over this weekend.

That didn't happen. It seems every major band in the world had a two-year mandatory hiatus from touring, and now they all want to get back on the road again! I'm gonna be busy for the next year non-stop.

I got on with binding channels today, but it needs more work before the glue-up, so I'll keep those photos and that discussion until it's done. I also stabbed a precise hole in my index finger with a dead-sharp chisel while doing it, which put me in a sort of a mood for the rest of the day. 

So instead I'll post a nice photo of my truss rod cover.

Got it cut out of steel and shaped on the grinder. Note the Strat-style step behind the nut; I made a channel to accept the cover, which keeps it from slipping side to side. There's also a wedge of maple to be glued to the underside of the cover itself, which fits perfectly into the truss rod channel. Add three magnets, and I'll have a cover which should be firmly stuck to the headstock with no rattle but also easily peeled off with a guitar pick. Having failed with decals in the past, I'm exploring getting this piece laser-engraved with my logo - "Jam Guitars".

More tomorrow.

 - Jam

I agree - drilling string through holes without a press is quite the talent. I got myself a DrillMate for about fifty bucks and it helps out heaps. But looking at the product of your steady hand in these photos, I don't think you need it!

1 hour ago, Nicco said:

Yeah nice. All solid reasons! Ha ha. Looking great, btw

Thanks dude!

One other reason for the steel plate is EMI shielding. Just thought of that one now.

Hoping to have a few shorter working days over this weekend. Super keen to get this thing moved over into the finishing phase.

 - Jam

13 hours ago, Nicco said:

How come you're using steel for the cover plate? I've not seen that before

Several reasons of various importance. First, I made the shelf a touch too deep into the timber and needed to make up some thickness. Second, the steel will provide some strength to a multi-piece timber cover. The gasket is something nice to mount the magnets into. Then the weight of the steel cover and the tactile "snap" as it goes into the gasket is just going to feel great. 

I had steel laying around, and this is a personal build, so I figured I'd try something new, basically.

 - Jam

On 8/29/2022 at 12:28 AM, Bizman62 said:

There's several designs for tools that do that, both for routers and dremel type tools. Also, both designs are commercially available but relatively easy to make by oneself.

The router version has a base plate small enough to ride on the edge and some sort of a mechanism keeping it vertical - an up and down sliding shelf should be easy to build but I've also heard about a mechanism having been built of a swiveling table lamp.

I saw some of those jigs available for purchase, but they racked up in the hundreds of dollars. I'm sure I could make one, and I'm sure I probably will in due time, but I'm not sure whether I have that time right now. I'm still pondering this one. 

In the spirit of trying new tools and techniques, I briefly considered buying some forstner bits to drill the output jack hole, having before had some ugly incidents involving spade bits. Until I get a drill press, though, I can't see myself using forstners. So I drilled a big hole with the spade bit, with the workpiece clamped down and wedged into the corner of the shop and a strong arm. 

Pilot hole is a must-have for this technique, as is slowly running the bit backwards as it breaches the surface to avoid tear-out. I don't think any force on this earth could prevent tear-out on the other side, though, so I stopped shy of the main electronics cavity and used a normal drill bit to complete the tunnel.

Sacrificial timber in the cavity made for some tearout-free pot and switch holes. I got my acrylic circle template out once more and took the recessed dishes down another few mil, Plowed through a bit more of the cavity ceiling as well, as I realised the 3-way switch needed a thinner material to grab onto.

Then I turned my efforts to these steel plates of mine. My new second-hand bench grinder made it easy to whittle the cover down to size, and I marked up the gasket ring on a second sheet.

Carefully cut it out with the jigsaw and a new blade, and cleaned up the outside edges with the grinder, and hey we've got a winner! I'll need to pretty-up the inside edges, probably a dremel job, and then paint and install it. I'll screw it down into the timber and get some magnets in there.

 - Jam

Bridge placement is important, right? Right. I measured many times throughout the build, and my bridge ended up off the centreline by about half a mil. Not great, but I can live with it. The right spot was picked out with two threads strung from the nut to the outside saddles.

Due to my lack of a drill press, which in turn is due to my 7m² workshop, I am constantly infuriated by processes such as drilling through two inches of solid hardwood in a straight line. I picked up this DrillMate last year, and it performs pretty damn well for what it's worth, but there's always room for wobble due to it's construction. A machine like this was never meant for surgical precision, but it is possible to "lean" in the same direction every time and get a passable result. 

I'm going to start exploring the idea of wedging a drill press into my tiny shed. Moving forward, it'll help out with a bunch of things, and for the jobs I have lined up for next year I need to be able to rely on my tools to guarantee quality. 

Last time I did a guitar with binding was on a tiny budget at the beginning of 2020. What a year that was. I had no tools and no money, and I think I ended up cutting the channels by hand with a scalpel blade - not fun! Now I've got a fairly well-stocked shop, I decided to craft myself a gramil, otherwise known as a marking gauge. 

Originally, I attached a scalpel blade to the end of the bar, but really you want the blade to be about a third of the way down instead of on the end. I took a 35mm wood screw and ground the end to a fine point, and sent that through a hole. In terms of ingenuity, you've now got built-in depth adjustment! However, the flattened and sharpened screw point just wasn't sharp enough to cut through timber neatly, and it ended up ripping a rebate instead of cutting. It still works great as a marking gauge, so I'll keep it, but I had to explore different options for my binding.

I did as @Bizman62 said about twenty posts ago, and found myself a bearing. I got one that measures 9mm diameter, and slapped it on the bottom of a 12mm router bit, which should give me a 1.5mm rebate.

This is a test cut on a piece of scrap, so the bearing was obviously riding on a rough and unfinished edge, but the concept works! And it was far cheaper than StewMac.

Now my issue is this - the top is already carved, and even if it were not, the binding should follow the curve of the top in the vertical dimension. With a big router riding on a carved top, not only will the cut be slanted inwards, but it'll be uneven as measured from the edge of the body. Look at it like this - I've figured out how to make a cut 1.5mm rebated from the vertical edge, now how do I make sure that cut is exactly 6mm from the horizontal edge?

As it stands, I'm feeling like I'll route the rebate to a depth shallower than the binding requires, then use the marking gauge to mark up a 6mm depth on the sides of the body. I'll then finish the cut with a chisel.

 - Jam

Got that headstock veneer shaped today. No more chances with saw blades, I just took it down with sandpaper. That step near the headstock is gonna get rounded over into a tiny Fender-style roll.

Neck heel transition. As with all of my major carving jobs, I'll rough out the most part of it, then come back to it the next day. This avoids issues such as removing too much material, especially easy to do with a grinder, and gives a fresh set of eyes in the morning. Also did a carve behind the lower horn, because at first touch the higher fret access was still a little too cramped. That will get a bit deeper, too, but as you can tell by the sides the entire body is still in rough-shaping mode.

The volute and back of the headstock, however, are pretty much done. The main length of the neck got sanded free of rasp and file marks, too.

Cleaned up the pickup bays with a sharp chisel. After the bridge gets it's final position, I'll possibly have to widen one side to line up directly under the strings, but as per the current measurements it should be dead-on.

Tools down. Tonight's the first night I'll have a chance at more than 4hrs sleep since I got back to Sydney nine days ago. 

The steel parts are still under construction. I spoke to a friend at work today about my issues with machining metal parts, and he has kindly agreed to give me his old bench grinder in return for me setting up a few of his guitars. I think that's a very generous deal. I'll still have to cut out the inside shape to good precision with the jigsaw, but at least cleaning up the outside of the gasket will be easier to get bang-on. 

 - Jam

13 hours ago, Crusader said:

I used to use a 1 inch router bit which is good for the upper end but not for the 1st fret end. I had a couple of disasters so now I use ... I think its 5/8" ... 19mm

I bought a 19mm Carbatec bit to do a roundover on a bass guitar a year or two back. That thing scared me. It's been sitting in my bits n' blades drawer ever since. Lurking. 

Nice build. I like the tele pickguard.

- Jam

I decided to cut away some material from that oversized headstock cap with my coping saw and immediately regretted it as I snapped off a nice big splinter, right off the bat. Bollocks. So I glued it back on, but that meant I couldn't spend my precious hour today shaping it. Maybe next week.

I cut my steel laminates to a rough shape with the jigsaw, ready for fine tuning with files. If you look closely, you'll see this one's bent slightly and has been hammered back into a flat. This is due to the blade binding while cutting, resulting in 600W of power slamming the workpiece against the bench. Needless to say, I didn't have a very productive hour in the shed this evening.

Now, I've hammered it flat, and once it's got a timber face glued on it'll be just fine. But the gasket piece which will live on the "shelf" inside the cavity, well that's going to be a very delicate piece to machine, since it's essentially a ring. I've held off on that one, because I want to get a set of brand-new blades for this job. When the time comes, I'll stick it down to a sheet of sacrificial plywood before cutting.

Binding channels are getting close to the top of my to-do list. I built myself a gramil a few months ago, but I have yet to source a decent blade for it, so I'm thinking about crafting one from a scalpel or x-acto blade. Beyond that, there will be chisels. Routers are kind of out of the question because of the top carve. How do you guys go about creating binding channels?

 - Jam

Nice! 

What kind of timber is that?

- Jam

Had some more time today in between shifts - no rest for the wicked - so I went about fixing the bad electronics cavity shelf routing I did a month or so back. First I copied the template onto some thicker stock. The poor result on my first attempt was due to the template being 4mm acrylic clamped to the body with plywood spacers to achieve the shallow depth. A 2kg router on a flimsy template cause it to bend in places, giving me an uneven depth, so this time round I gave the machine something to really ride on.

Much better. Uniform depth all the way around, but this makes for a 6mm thickness for the back cover. I'm combating this by making a 1.5mm steel gasket to drop into the shelf, which the cover will snap into with magnets on both pieces. Should make for a very satisfying sound and feel - and the cover itself will be a laminate of steel sheets and Tassie Blackwood from the top. I glued up some steel with epoxy so I've got some blanks to shape tomorrow.

Another odd job was to inlay the knobs with abalone dots. The knobs are a little worn, I really should've bought new ones specially for this build.

The original plan was to stain the headstock black, but after seeing the Blackwood top in the flesh I reckoned I needed a matching headstock. Just to set the scene, I have a 10" bandsaw equipped with a 6TPI blade, which isn't the ideal setup for making veneer. I cut a rectangle from the top offcut, then resawed the 16mm stock into two 7mm pieces. This way, if I mess it up, I get another go at it. Which is handy, because I'm taking it straight over to a router-on-rails.  Risky? That's me.

I'm planning on taking this down as thin as possible, because my headstock is weighing in at 14mm as is, and taking material away from that will be a pain in the ass now it's shaped. Why oh why didn't I do this step while the neck blank was still a square stick of timber? Anyways, the Blackwood gets taped down to the bench, and the runners are sacrificial. I blew out a corner, as you can see, but I've still got plenty of room to fit the shape.

Hell yeah.

After a solid hit on one face with the sander, I achieved less than a mil. That's about as low as I dare to go. The funny thing is, lacking a thickness sander, I was forced to explore this wildly unorthodox method, and looking back I very much doubt I could've done this with a thicknesser without destroying the workpiece. 

I rough-shaped it with a sharp knife, and glued 'er up. I don't dare get out the router for final shaping, so I imagine I'll take it down to the required shape with a dremel and a sanding drum, finishing up by hand sanding. This thing is so fragile, I nearly snapped it in half getting it off the double-sided tape in the routing phase. Anyway, now I know it works, I'll be using the same technique on the other half of the resawed stock for use on the cavity cover, although that will be more like 3mm and much more robust.

I'm still trying to figure out which timezone I'm in, but if I can wake up before midday tomorrow I'll be heading straight back out for more sawdust-creating shenanigans. 

 - Jam

I'm back!

I spent the first morning back putting frets in. With a hammer. At 7am, because jetlag sucks. Luckily there's construction works all over my suburb, which helped mask the noise. I really hope they've finished jackhammering the roads by the time I get around to applying finish - there's dust everywhere.

I borrowed a technique I've seen several people use, most recently on Instagram from ShockTheFox - shape the fret ends before installing them. I only did one end of each fret, the logic being that it would be easy for me to cock up the lengths and end up with a wonky edge, so the plan was to line up the nice end with the fretboard edge then flush up the other side after hammering in. It worked, but my nippers aren't sharp enough to cut stainless steel frets without crushing them somewhat, so I had to file the protruding end down before doing the bevel. Lots of work.

There's still some work to be done, but my fretwork is reserved for rainy quiet evenings. Can't be wasting a perfectly sunny day.

Carved the neck with my tried and tested method of rasps, files, then sanding. One day I shall acquire a spokeshave and learn another skill, but this way has always turned out well for me, even though it is quite dusty.

The profile of this neck is a fair copy of a guitar I built with a pre-made neck about twelve years ago, seen blurried in the background. Lacking a contour gauge, I first made the basic angles along the length of the neck and then "broke" them, checking against the master regularly. The major variation is that I wanted a volute on this guitar. I've struggled with carving volutes, but this time I marked everything out first and went slow with a small set of round files. The back face of the headstock still needs some attention, but the curves are all there and feeling good under the hand. Heel isn't shaped yet, I'll bring out the grinder for that one.

 - Jam

On 7/26/2022 at 5:16 AM, komodo said:

It looks like Gary Bucy.

Yep, that's me! 

On 7/25/2022 at 6:51 PM, mistermikev said:

that said I honestly wish I could stop seeing your avatar... i'm gonna level w you... it makes me think you are a not nice person... I'm not even sure why... cause you seem like a nice person.

Glad I seem like a nice person! The way I see it, I'd rather be scary-looking but actually a good person. The real scary thing is when somebody looks nice but they're not! Haha. Anyways, I'll think about changing the avatar, but I don't think I have many flattering photos of myself...

On 7/29/2022 at 10:59 PM, ScottR said:

This is a huge advance in your technique, since you first started, and the thread is damn good too! You're gonna love this when it's done! Got your pickups picked out yet?

And you've started signing off with -Jam.

Thanks, Scott! Two years ago I restarted building, on a trestle table in my back yard. Now I've built a workshop, and I've got a few clients lined up for commissioned builds next year, so I figured I'd build one last instrument for myself for practice, and get the craftsmanship up. Glad you like it.

Pickups are going to be EMG 81/60, but I'm installing shielding and a ground wire so it'll be ready to accept standard passive humbuckers in the future. 

And yep, Jam is the name! Akula is a silly old username I chose when I was a teenager, signed up on this very forum well over a decade ago. I'm tempted to change my username to Jam, but then nobody would recognise the name... maybe that's a good idea actually!

I've got a to-do list for when I get back to Australia. Starting with frets, I've got to nip all the tangs and install the frets, then carve the neck. After that, we're onto some littler jobs such as installing binding, making cavity covers, cutting and installing a headstock veneer, etc. Let's hope I don't get slammed with busy work as soon as I get off the plane.

 - Jam

On 7/16/2022 at 8:27 PM, komodo said:

On that control cavity oops, couldn't you just route down .5 mil and then run the whole damn shebang through the planer and take off a .5 mil? It'd save weight!

That is one solution. I don't own a thickness planer, however, and the top of the guitar is already carved and thus not flat. I could do it with a hand planer, this is true. However, I think I'll just route the entire shelf down another half a mil and install a steel gasket - it'll be a real nice "click" when the cavity cover drops home. This is a classic example of turning a mistake into a feature, something I've had practice at only due to the frequency of my mistakes.

Anyways, a week ago I cut twenty four stainless steel frets to size and put them in the block. I bevelled the fret slots, and polished the fretboard up to high grit and wiped on a good coat of Danish oil. Then I cleaned up the workshop, isolated the power, locked down and bolted the doors.

I've buggered off to Italy for a few weeks! Time to meet the wife's family and just get out of rainy cold Sydney for a little bit. When I get back I'll be checking everything is still straight and true, then doing the frets and carving the neck. This build has really come along in the last few weeks - there's nothing like a deadline to get stuff done.

Here's a shot of the guitar wetted with metho, so I had some pretty photos to show off to the family abroad:

And, just for fun, here's the real Italian countryside

See y'all in a few weeks

 - Jam

On 7/14/2022 at 4:41 AM, Bizman62 said:

Have you ever tried to sharpen them? I've heard it can be done. The bearings should also be something you should be able to buy inexpensively from a bearing shop if you know the exact size. The latter reminds me of something that happened when I was much younger: I went to a bearing shop and asked for one that would be about the size of this or that. So they asked if I drive an Opel car... Why??? Because there was a certain bearing that would cost a fortune with the Opel logo on the box but just some pocket money as a common SKF (actual manufacturer) bearing.

That's a good idea, which I've never tried so far. I sharpen my chisels and knives, so I might just give it a go with a router bit and see the difference. I quite regularly bring my stone into work and sharpen colleagues knives in our down-time, it's a good way of ensuring I never have to buy a beer myself after work! The bearings are another thing - I noticed that bearing I had used where it bit into the top was quite clunky to rotate, so I think I'll lose it and go source a pack of bearings for cheap. Another trick I'll be using is to double up on bearings, so there's more surface area and thus less pressure on the "template".

I didn't get many photos of my fret slotting process, but it's pretty rudimentary - mark with a knife, cut with fretting saw, glue and taper fretboard, then radius, then re-cut fret slots with a depth stop. I installed inlays right after radiusing the board, so as to not "lose" any inlays in the sanding process. They're 3mm abalone dots, bound with aluminium tube. The ironbark timber held a brad point drill bit really well, actually, and I didn't get many problems with wandering. 

Shined up quite nicely. If I could find or accurately cut 1mm abalone dots, I would've been tempted to use them as side dots bound by 2mm aluminium, but instead I'm just going for aluminium dots. I foolishly drilled those side dots before remembering I was planning on binding the fretboard - damn! But then I laid out the faux-abalone binding on the fretboard edge and decided it would've been just way too much "bling" anyways. I believe you can go over the top with abalone and turn a luxury touch into a tacky statement, quite easily. So it'll just be the body and headstock that get the flashy treatment.

 - Jam

Had another quiet day in the shed creating sawdust. As we know, luthiery is all about patience and carefulness, but I am definitely working towards a small deadline here - I leave for Italy in one week, and I want this project to resemble a guitar as much as it can by the time I leave. I most likely wont have much time free once I return to Australia.

Screwed the template to the body, just like I did with the headstock template, and for exactly the same reasons - it removed all fear of a slipping template, and allowed me to go heavy-handed on the router, dominating the workpiece.

Speaking of router bits, I really need to invest in some good ones. Like, really. I got zero tear-out, which is good, but between bearing bite and burning, I'll have to do a good job sanding the edges of this guitar to rid it of these scars. 

Those nice control dishes we see on all the fancy guitars? Well, I've seen a few different ways of doing it including forstner bits and patient sanding, large-calibre rotating bits, and even Ben Crow's modified spade bit method. I chose a template of a perfect circle cut into acrylic with a hole saw, made up to height with more acrylic, and routed with a 6mm radius cove box bit with a bearing down to a depth of 5mm. 

It'll need some TLC to clean up, but I like this method because it's consistent, doesn't cause huge tearout, and doesn't require modification of tools.

Electronics cavity. I did a whoopsie and didn't set the depth correctly on the first test-bump, as is very evident here. One idea for fixing this is to file is out at a shallow angle and make it the finger-grab-part of the cavity cover, but it's in a strange place for that. Other idea is to route the whole shelf down to that plane, and install a steel gasket. That idea absolutely shines with professionalism - it'd be a great contact surface for haptics, it'd look great, and form a good contact surface with shielding. But cutting something so precise out of 0.6mm steel will be hard, so I'll make this decision later.

Pickup bays got routed while the top is still flat. Tassie Blackwood seems take the router bit fairly well, but I got some "fuzzy" edges which will get knifed off sharp. I'll also be squaring off the corners and ears with a chisel after the bridge is installed and final string geometry is worked out.

Carved the top with an angle grinder loaded with a flap-disk. I'm fairly new to top-carving, so please lower those eyebrows - it works for me. I will definitely invest in some good gouges at some point, but a big two handed grinder seems for now the easiest way to remove large amounts of wood with some kind of control. A word of warning for others to follow down the grinder path: take your damn time. I did this carve today, and I'm happy with it. When I crack the shed doors tomorrow, I won't be, so I left enough timber to reshape. I'll do this several times before the carve is actually done.

A lot of this will get cleaned up with the detail sander and by hand. 

This shot shows a great deal of how rough it is at this stage. The join between the neck and the body is waaay too delicate, so that last bit will be done with a rasp, file, then sandpaper around a dowel. The line of the carve along the lower waist isn't even, so that'll get turned into something more flowing. But the main shape of the top is done. One thing I need to address is the height of the carve, because at the moment the back end is about 6mm above the wing-top line, whereas going around the horns it goes more shallow, to about 10mm from wings-top. It looks okay now, but I'm creating a second "line" after I install my 6mm binding. 

I think I'll carve lower and deeper into the top, to keep a consistent 6mm line between the top and the wings all the way around. The bass horn cutaway will be bound, but the treble side cutaway will not. 

Oh, and I glued on the fretboard. 

 - Jam

Routed these two "slots" into the wings before even looking at the top. About ten years ago, I was drilling a wiring hole from the pickup bay to the electronics cavity, and I snapped the drill bit off in the guitar. It was a cheap drill bit, and nowhere near long enough for the job, but it left a sour taste in my mouth which has persisted for a decade. Two years ago, in the midst of a lockdown and with very little money, I built a guitar out of stacked 18mm boards from a hardware store, and I had the brainwave to carve the wiring "channels" into the body before gluing the top. Revisited that idea on this one, and hopefully it'll all work out.

Weight reduction chambers were not part of the original plan. But when I weighed up the rough-cut body and top, I was surprised to see 3700g on the scales. That's a lot, considering last year's 5-string bass weighs in at 2800g and my favourite guitar a feathery 2.6kg. No good, so I took out some material with some hastily procured templates. Holmesian minds shall deduce the purpose behind their shape.

Rough cut the top with the bandsaw. The really important part here was the neck-wings-body join, and I cocked it up. Removed too little material with the saw, to be on the safe side, then idiotically decided to file away the rest of the material instead of chiselling. After filing away like a farrier on a mission, I ended up with gaps! Dammit. I swore like a sailor, then glued some strips into the gaps. 

That top flattened out very nicely over the last few days, so I gave it the benefit of the doubt and glued it up. This is your standard clamped up photograph, taken before cleaning up squeeze-out like always.

Fretboard all cleaned up and epoxy sanded back. 

When I get home at 8pm and need to be up for 5am, it doesn't leave much time for getting out to the shed and getting stuck into a job. However, pre-positioning the fretboard and appropriate tools on the kitchen bench allows for some work to be carried out by marking the fret slots in my free time. Done with an X-acto blade, straight edge, steel rulers and reliable calipers.