Akula

Those large-radius bits can be deadly. I used a 19mm round over bit on a bass guitar a year or two ago - same problem, had to take the base off the router and make my own out of MDF with a larger hole to clear the bit. It's a good heads-up that a bit of that size is probably designed for a shaper table instead of a handheld router. Still, I did it at low RPM, a strong arm, and a mindful ear, and apparently you've done the same with good results.

Nice work dude! 

Haha, I'm sure that's a common thing between us here! Inebriated actions often reflect sober thoughts, which is my way of justifying those late-night eBay purchases - I was technically sober, right? Right? Oh and I just impulse-bought some abalone binding for this thing right now. Whoops.

Didn't do all that much today, so you can all have some relief from my image-intensive posts...

I did get the top glued up. After it's overnight treatment, it came out gooood.... We're talking less than a mil of difference between edges and middle. Tomorrow I'll make the call whether to repeat the process or to re-thickness it to flat, but I decided to get it glued up now so I have something to get on with tomorrow.

Rough-cut the body shape for the wings. I mean really rough; I nearly didn't share this photo because it looks like total ass here. The final shaping will be template routed after the top is glued on. So why rough-shape now? Well, if the top and wings are all rough-shaped, I can get clamps into spaces where it really matters, whereas if everything was a big 350x600mm rectangle, I'd be clamping down into areas that are going to be removed, and possible resulting in a poor join in the middle. Cauls can help with this, but for twenty minutes of double-handling, I'd take this method.

This is the top of the neck at the join with the body. I kept the straight line from the body until it hit the neck taper, otherwise the bass-side wing would have a gap where it meets maple. On the top, however, we don't want that - you'd see that sliver of maple protruding from under the fretboard. So I have to sand that off tomorrow, and then get the neck "pocket" cut precisely into the blackwood top before it gets glued down to the body. That'll be fun, but with enough dry-runs I'm sure I'll manage it.

There's a whole list of things to do tomorrow. It's a rare entire day off - well, almost, I've got to load-out some show at 10pm. But that'll give me a good long day in the shop, and with any luck it'll start looking a lot more like a real guitar by tools-down-o'clock!

 - Jam

1 hour ago, Bizman62 said:

I'll store the heating method into some empty drawer in the back of my head. That's so logical! It's rare to see a cupped acoustic guitar side and for what I've understood the cupping in those cases has developed in a very long time with some abuse involved.

I am not skilled nor experienced enough to be building acoustic guitars - that lays probably a decade away from me. And I cannot pretend to know as much as I should know about the cellular structure of wood, our most basic building material. But I do know the difference between plastic and elastic form, and if that bit of Blackwood is flat tomorrow then I've done myself good!

Thanks for following the saga.

28 minutes ago, Nicco said:

Akula, I see your hardwood dowel and raise you a ground and hardened steel dowel.

Now that is something wild! Good idea. As for removing them, maybe use a tapered piece of the same material and hammer it from one side - works great on truss pins at work.

I like the accent lines and contrasting timber you're using. What kind of veneer is that?

I stored the wood inside the house on stickers for about two weeks before I moved them out to the workshop five days ago. In the workshop they live on a rack shelf which has decent airflow, again on stickers. None of the other timbers warped, so I have to assume the top is adjusting to having the dry insides of a large thick slab suddenly becoming exposed to moisture after being sliced in half. Ergo, this is the shape the tree is trying to be, and the only way to change it without re-planing and re-thicknessing is to plastically deform the boards.

Enter, the hot air gun. Affectionately known as The HAG among set-builders and art departments all over, this thing can strip paint, dry paint, toast toast, and I'm hoping it can solve my little cup-problem.

Here's the process. Hear me out all the way through before you use that gun to heat up the "crazy" branding iron. 

I was pondering how to plastically deform wood, and I came across the thought of acoustic guitar sides, and specifically the old idea of heating a popsicle stick over a kettle and bending it without splitting it. Tassie Blackwood is often used for acoustic guitars, I thought it would be worth a shot. Of course there can be little chance of bending a 16mm thick board without cracking unless there's moisture involved. Having mentioned for what seems like this entire thread so far, most of Sydney is underwater, and yet the rain still falls, so only a pure sociopath would actually add moisture. I lightly spritzed a highly absorbent rag and did a quick wipe of the boards. I'm telling ya - if you spent a week in the desert eating salted chips and smoking cigars and then dragged your tongue across the timber, you'd still be adding more moisture than I did.

Then I whipped out The Hag and blew hot air across the top side until it was just too hot to touch. Placed cauls at the apex of the bow, and slowwwwly tightened the clamps until they were flat. No horrible cracking noises! A few gravity-clamps in the middle, and I'm leaving it for a few hours. Let's check back on this soon!

Moving on.

In the meantime, I went to work on the headstock. I needed to calculate the exact position of the tuners and mark them on the template for reasons which will become clear in a moment, so I went back to my paper plans for consultation.

Here is the reason. Template-routing headstocks simply scares the bejesus out of me. The area is small, the router can tip, and there's nowhere to clamp the damn thing down without having to reposition clamps every two inches and risk slipping the template. Calculating and marking the exact position of the tuners allowed me to drill and countersink holes through the template to attach it firmly to the timber, with a little help from every stagehand's best friend - double sided sticky tape.

Hell yeah. I think that's the first time I've done a headstock with absolutely zero tear-out. My router bit is a touch dull and needs replacing, so I got a little burn, but the absolute confidence in having a solid template with no slippage allowed me to have a clear mind and assert my dominance over the tool and workpiece. 

Onto the fretboard timber. This is Ironbark, a very hard and dense timber from the eastern seaboard of Australia known for it's strength and durability, most often used as beams, railway sleepers, and bridge members. The board in question is resawed off a lump of wood my neighbour took from a condemned building last year, and it probably over a hundred years old. It appears I'm either terrible at tuning my bandsaw or inept at using it, because I've gotten these horrific blade marks. 

This cute little detail sander loaded with 60 grit could hardly make a dent, literally speaking. Just behind it and to the left in the photograph is a bit of 40-grit attached to a flat maple block. That made a bit more of a difference, but it put me in serious danger of breaking a sweat. 

This is gonna shine up pretty well. 

There's a few strange holes that I've attributed to termites, or maybe little tiny aliens, so I sealed them with epoxy mixed with sawdust. They'll probably get another treatment of sawdust and CA once that's dried. Even though only one side "matters", I did this to both faces, just in case any critters are still in there. Hey buddy, you crawled into the wrong bit of wood, now you're staying here forever. Woah. Dark....

Cut a step into the neck blank. This takes the blank down to the same thickness as the walnut wings, so the top can sit perfectly flush with both. Of course, I couldn't cut this before I knew the final thickness of the top, which means it's been a few hours since I performed my crazy wet-heat-clamp-kill idea.

Shall we have a look at that top?

Well I'll be damned! It bounced back elastically, yes, but only by about a third of the cupped-ness it had before. We're talking 1.5mm difference between the middle and the sides now.

I was ecstatic. I was overjoyed. And in these moments we forget ourselves, so I kicked back for two hours to see if this troublesome arch-enemy would slump back into it's warped old self. It didn't move, not one hair.

Here's my final photo of the day. I glued up the wings onto the body, and repeated the process of spritzing, heating, clamping and weighting the top boards. The first time, they were clamped down to the bench for four hours, so this time I'll leave them for 18hrs, with the additional weight of a plunge-router in the middle. 

I'm aware that I've spent a lot of time, paragraphs and photographs documenting the early stages of this build, such as timber storage, planning, planing, surface preparation, and gluing. I had an epiphany that I've never gone into too much detail during the "boring" parts of my builds before, yet these are the most important steps. A wise craftsman once told me to practice making boxes - because if you can't build something dead square and true, you can't progress to the more interesting aspects of carpentry. So forgive me for these long and boring posts, but they serve me as a form of diary if nothing else. I do hope it'll become more interesting as I move forward..

 - Jam

I too like that idea. Nothing like a hardwood dowel to keep everything tightly aligned.

Jarrah's a timber I've considered using, as well, due to it's abundance here. How does it go with your tools? I've heard it can be pretty harsh.

Really liking the builds so far mate!

15 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

Hopefully you're living on a hill! The Sydney downpour made it into the news here. Looks kinda moist.

Yeah, I'm gonna stop building guitars and start building a boat...

Cleaned up the headstock front and back faces, and cut the taper of the neck. I took the width of the body part down to 56mm, then tapered to 44mm at the nut. For this task, I clamped down a bit of plywood with a trustworthy straight-edge and went to town with a flush cutting router. Good enough finish, but for the parts of the neck-through which will be joined to the wings, I smoothed out the machining marks with the plane. 

Cut out the templates for body and headstock. Nobody likes cutting acrylic, or even dealing with it in general. It cracks easily, the fumes suck, and the dust just gets stuck to everything. I invested in some nice thin jigsaw blades specifically designed for acrylic, and it went a lot easier. Some sandpaper wrapped around dowel will create smooth edges for the router bit to ride upon. 

I'm also going for a 6-in-line reverse headstock. Like I said, I'm not setting out to copy an existing guitar, I'm merely influenced by a beautiful guitar, and I like my in-line headstocks.

Couldn't resist. This is gonna be awesome, as long as I don't screw it up somewhere along the way.

Problems. 

Being bookmatched from a thicker piece, there was always a risk of warping setting in after releasing and unbalancing all those tensions in the wood. I imagine the weather did not help at all - it's wetter than feta!

Now that it's cupped, I've got it resting the other way up on the work bench overnight, hoping it'll equalise the moisture on both sides of the boards. I've done a little research, and I've head of people wetting (or even ironing) the cupped side of the board to bring it back to flat. I'm a little wary of putting even more water into the timber, and I have no idea what that'll do for the glue-up process. I could always take it back to the timber mill and get them to run it through their thicknesser again, but I'd prefer to keep the full thickness of the board.

Any advice on what to do from here?

Had a very nice day today, despite the continuing downpour of rain here. I'm enjoying having a quiet week at work - I was home by midday today - so I'm trying to make as much headway as possible before I go abroad later this month. If everything works in my favour, I can have the major geometry completed before I go, so it can rest for a good month before tidying up, fretwork, and finishing.

Those boards definitely slipped during glue-up. The revelation about the oversized veneers came too late, I'd already started the process, so I had a lot of cleaning up and dressing to do. I hit it hard with the electric planer to get both faces flush, then got the Stanley out for fine-tuning to get everything square again. Started out with 51mm thickness stock, and ended up with a bee's over 48mm. But the veneer stripes came out stark and bold, just as intended!

Got out the paper plans and transferred everything onto markings on timber. There is a point in every guitar build where you step away from paper plans and start measuring and designing on wood, and that switch takes place now. The simple act of drawing lines square around all four edges and marking it "B" is cathartic - that line is now sacrament, for it marks the absolute position of the bridge, which holds all other measurements in relativity.

Today's main operations will concern the neck geometry, so I paid special attention to the truss rod, neck thickness and profile, headstock, and volute. I'm modelling the neck dimensions from my favourite guitar of all time, my main touring guitar for the last four years. The loss of 3mm of stock thickness means I can achieve a 9 degree break angle. Drawing out the fretboard, nut, tuners and thus string lines shows me a decent real string break angle, and I'm still toying with the idea of a string tee for the bass strings. This is going off a 14mm headstock thickness, to which I may add a slice of my Tassie Blackwood if I can successfully cut a thin piece on the bandsaw. 

Been using this jig for years. I'm thinking of improving it with thumbwheels and threaded inserts, but it works just great as is. The truss rod is a 440mm dual-action, with the socket placed directly behind the nut and the end of the rod dictating where the neck profile transitions into the heel. I've always done truss rod routing and access in a fairly simple and somewhat rough manner - I mean, it's all hidden by the fretboard, right? Well this time I'm going to try out a few more professional touches.

I've had a 10" bandsaw in my possession since my friendly neighbour handed off his old one to me back in the winter of 2020, but I must admit that it's been left quite alone until now. For rough body shaping I've previously been handy with a jigsaw, and for removing large amounts of material such as the underside of a neck I've normally gone with a router-on-rails. But a few months ago I bought a new blade for the big machine and learned a little about setting up and tuning. I know it's only a 10" bandsaw with a 1/2hp motor, which I guess puts it in the hobby class, but I discovered it can easily plow through two inches of hardwood, so long as you treat her well and tell her nice things. 

Now I've tasted the sweet taste of large-calibre power tools, I can't imagine going back to my old methods of routers and layers of dust everywhere. I think the reason why I've shied away from the bandsaw for so long was fear, to be honest. Just like how I was afraid of the router when I started using one at the age of 16. With experience, that fear is replaced by respect, and it is my belief that this transformation from fear to respect is actually what creates safety. 

Fancy footwork with the truss rod access. I took this photo at a very rough stage - this will get cleaned up. The comparatively low headstock angle makes for a tight fit with the allen key, so I'm thinking about routing a T-shape to facilitate some left-right swinging room. It'd have to be wide and deep enough to make a difference, but skinny and shallow enough to fit underneath the truss rod cover and not wreck the strength of the area.

Glued on some ears. I took the offcut from above the headstock face, made it into two offcuts of maple, and glued them back on with the same grain orientation as the original piece. Revisiting past builds, I remember using the smallest offcuts to glue on to create real estate on the headstock, and usually that meant triangle-shaped bits that were a mother-pain in the orifice to glue without slip. This time round, I went for some oversized rectangles far larger than the requirement. I will be shaping to a template, so I'm keen for the extra stability under the router base. 

Tomorrow I'll be tapering the neck, making templates for body and head, and hopefully trueing and gluing wings and jointing the top.

 - Jam

It too me almost eight years of living in Sydney to finally find a good timber supplier. I do not take them for granted! If you do a search for "hardwood timber Sydney" you'll find a dozen places selling tongue-and-groove flooring panels made of particle board with veneers poorly dashed across them. Anagote took some time to find, but now I've found them I'll recommend them to anybody in town looking for good stuff. I'm sure they would sell international, too, if anybody's strange enough to be searching for Australian timbers.

This new plane glides nicely. The boards I had were pretty flat from the yard, so all I had to do was take off the machining artefacts and smooth out some high spots. I used to do this with a router sled and sandpaper, I had a cheap electric planer, I had some terrible cheap hand planes. So much easier with the right tools for the job. This plane will end up being one of the best investments I've made, and it'll be around for far longer than I will be.

The veneers needed a bit of love. Like all ebay veneer purchases, they came rolled up in a tight ball, which is why I had them dry-clamped for a few days between the maple before getting to the glue stage. Also, they're raw slices. I didn't want any surprises of getting my veneer and finding some horrible adhesive cloth stuck to the back, so I went for "raw timber veneer" - and they are raw.  The grain was so rough. I know the age-old argument against sanding a surface for gluing, but these are 0.6mm veneers and I can't exactly plane them. I decided to go for 300 grit, and got them smooth to the touch. Cabinet scraper took the last few curls off, carefully.

Four boards of maple, five bits of veneer. The outside stripes are paired, and the middle one is a single, due to me breaking a veneer by accident during sanding. I'm aware that making, essentially, a 9-piece neck just creates 8 potential points of failure during the gluing-up process, so I took time to get everything spread evenly and clamped appropriately.

Looking back, it would have been easier to cut the veneer to exact size (52x1050mm) before laminating. But, at the time, I thought it would be fine to have the veneer oversized in width and trim back later. Then I started the glue up, and realised it could throw the alignment of maple boards out by a few millimetres due to glue slip. I placed some known-thickness pieces of scrap under each of the four boards and hammered the tops until they were down pat, showing the veneer proud on the top surface and flush on the bottom surface. Now I only have to cut excess off from one plane, and the bottom plane should be dead true. If the pieces slipped, I may have to lose a fraction of thickness - but we'll find out tomorrow when I sand back the faces and plane them true.

 - Jam

Ok, timber shots!

I regularly keep a notepad on my person at work, and it proved invaluable in the planning of this build. I have full-scale drawings at home, but I'll write down numbers and draw ideas in my down-time on the job, and after three months I finally got a break long enough to shoot off an email to my local timber yard with some board dimensions. The guys at Anagote are great, they had some decent sticks lined up when I arrived one afternoon, yet they offered me to look through all their stock for the stuff I needed. That included a fine piece of Tasmanian Blackwood with some hella nice figure. Ben bookmatched it for me with great skill.

In the background there, you can see the walnut I'll be using for the wings. A more expensive timber, being that it's imported into Australia as opposed to being grown here, but I've always had an affinity for that particular species' tone and look.

I got a single board of maple cut down to four pieces, so I can reverse grain and laminate into the tightest anti-warp structure I can fortify. I ebay'ed some veneer sheets of Black Bean, which I believe the rest of the world calls Moreton Bay Chestnut. That's purely for the stripes, there's no tonality-based decision there. Cut that down with a good blade. 

Here's the neck blank just clamped together for a few days with the veneers sandwiched. Nothing's glued yet, because we've got torrential downpours and high humidity here, but I couldn't resist a taste of how it's going to look. And it stops the veneer curling up and splitting on me before I get time to get it glued.

Here's my fretboard blank. Last year, my neighbour (who likes to destroy old houses for a living) chucked me a bit of Ironbark over the fence. It's dense as all hell, solid and hard. I resawed a slice off on the bandsaw and liked what came out. This bit must be over a hundred years old.

It does have a pinhole or two. I'm guessing this came from some long-dead parasite, and my plan is to fill with epoxy and dust when the time comes. If anybody has profound advice or warnings on this, I'd love to hear it!

Drew up the plans onto acrylic at 1am yesterday morning after getting home. I'm a far way off from digging out the flush-cutting router bits, but I like to see what the outcome is going to be a time before shaping, because it allows me time to identify problems and make changes to plans that you wouldn't be able to "feel" on paper.

And, a new addition to the workshop - I got a Stanley No. 4 second hand for a very reasonable price from a refurbisher today. The blade is already much sharper than it would be from a store-bought plane, and it seems to be in very good nick from the get-go.

If this demonic rainstorm would kindly bugger off by tomorrow morning, I'll be setting all the maple faces true and gluing up the neck blank by brunch-time!

 - Jam.

About three months ago, I visited a music store to buy cables and strings. I could've walked in, made the purchase, and walked out again, but we all know that's not what happens when you walk into a room filled with hundreds of guitars hanging on the walls. I picked up a few different instruments, all makes and models, just for fun and to see how they feel and how they're put together. My friend pointed out a PRS, and I initially declined - "If I pick that thing up, I'm gonna have to buy it."

Well, I picked it up, loved it, and was very tempted to make the call. But I went home instead, looked at heaps of pictures on the internet, and just like a coke addict with the possibility of a score, I started drawing my designs to build something just like it.

Like the few guitars I've built in likeness of others, this will not be an exact copy. I have no time for searching out exact dimensions of existing guitars, my drawings were done by hand sketching while looking at pictures. I simply do not care if I don't get the exact thickness Mr. Smith used on his guitars. I want something more personal, but obviously pulling influence from that guitar I picked up at Manny's that morning.

Specs:

• Figured Tasmanian Blackwood top
• Walnut wings
• Abalone binding

• 4-piece Maple neck with Black Bean veneer accent stripes
• 660mm scale length
• Reverse headstock
• Ironbark fretboard
• Stainless steel frets
• Aluminium side dots, aluminium and abalone inlays
• Abalone binding on fretboard

• EMG 81/60 pair, direct mount
• Volume, tone, 3-way switch
• 18v double battery
• Recessed controls
• Black metal knurled knobs with abalone inlay

• Hipshot-style hardtail bridge
• String-through with ferrules inset on back
• Graphtec nut
• Gotoh locking tuners
• Timber electronics cavity with magnets

This is a build for myself, and my job sometimes dictates insane weeks with no sleep followed by days of boredom, so it shall be slow and steady. Fellow Sydneysiders will also know of the wild weather we're experiencing - a summer of humidity, an autumn of rain, followed by a crisp, cold, and now wet and windy winter. Not ideal build conditions. Moreover, I make no claim to be an "experienced" luthier, so there shall be mistakes, errors, and questions to the hive-mind along the way. Which is exactly why I take the time to capture photographs and write up the build on this forum - you guys are my education; you share both the humour and the exasperations of a budding guitar maker.

Let's do it 

19 minutes ago, Prostheta said:

Amazing that you built a lefty version as well!

In this day and age, you forget to H-flip one video.... Haha.

Thanks guys.

I am definitely a pick player, taking my lead from the greats such as Matt Freeman, and in the realm of Warwick bass guitars, Marco Hietala. I wish my playing were up to their standards, but it's not.

Anyways, I'm satisfied with the aesthetics, ergonomics, and sound of this bass, and there shall be more photos to come - as long as tomorrow's a sunny day in sunny ol' Sydney. 

Well done mate! Looks and sounds great, and it appears you had a great time finishing the thing off. If I see it around the pub rock scene here, I'll say a g'day!

On 9/28/2021 at 1:48 AM, ScottR said:

Man, you work just keeps getting cleaner and cleaner.

Thanks mate. There's always room for improvement, which is why I keep doing it! 

Did the finish-sanding, which I view as a seperate step to shape-sanding, in an afternoon. Grit numbers are hardly applicable here, as even 400-grit can be "shaping" when used on something like this mahogany, whereas you'd need 240 to make such a difference in physical shape on hard maple. But after a few hours I'd gotten the bulk of the body up to 400 grit, and then I raised the end grain and went 400 again, then raised, then 600. An interesting note here: the neck heel carve is essentially end grain, although not as oblique an angle as the bottom of the body, so I made sure to raise grain here as well and sand back - nobody likes a "fluffy" neck heel.

And then, when all was said and done, and I was happy with the smoothness all around, I applied the prooftint stain.

And, of course, nothing ever goes to plan when using a new finishing product for the first time. I knew that bleed underneath the tape where I masked off the neck-body and neck-headstock transitions would be an issue, so I went crazy light and dabbed it on. That worked pretty well for the heel.

Not so well for the headstock transition. 

I got that one fixed up by moving the tape-line a few mil further into the neck, and having another go. This photo shows some crazy difference in colour, but after some more blending an hour of drying, it's very hard to see the difference.

Only other issue I had was at the end grain on the bottom of the body. Hanging a guitar from a 200cm ceiling can definitely make for some awkward angles, and I quite simply missed a bit. Or just didn't rub the stain into the end grain. Or perhaps I didn't get the sanding quite thorough enough and left some low spots.

Fixed those bits up by dabbing more stain, then blending it in to avoid the two-layer colour. This is really easy to do with this particular product - I literally dab on the stain into the areas needed, then use a gloved finger to rub it in with the surrounding areas. Wish I'd gotten a photo of the result.

One thing I'm concerned about is the maple on the back of the guitar, came out rather blotchy compared to the front. I'm reluctant to sand it back and start again, because I'm afraid I'll never tone-match the top, and it's only this one area highlighted in this cropped photo - but it's enough to piss me off. It's one of those things where you're sure it's fine, just a result of timber being an organic material, but knowing it's there... Well, we've all been there.

I can vouch for Danish Oil as well. Just finished a bass with walnut wings, I did a slurry finish applying the oil with sandpaper and it turned out pretty damn smooth.

7 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

You mean no blocks? If so, I guess you like it because that way the dust doesn't clog the paper?

Partly, yes. I also find it easier to tell when the sandpaper starts to clog, since I can't hear the sound change due to my blaring music. Another reason is that for a carved top I find it easier to follow contours. I can also move my fingers around on the piece of sandpaper, thus "using up" all of it. And finally, not to sound too artisan, but I feel like I'm more at one with the workpiece when I'm directly connected to it. This all applies to complex shapes such as guitars - I wouldn't exactly sand layers of paint off a cabinet without some help from blocks or power tools.

Drilled a lot of holes today. 

First up, let's attack the string-through ferrule holes. I marked out on both sides where the holes should be, and used a Drillmate to get the top holes drilled to the depth of the ferrules at 5mm with a brad point.

Lacking a drill press, I invested fifty bucks in a Drillmate a while ago - for those unaware, this is a kind of portable drill press set on a base and two pillars, with it's own chuck and bearings. It's fantastic for places a drill press wouldn't reach, for instance, if you need to drill a straight perpendicular hole in a wall stud or a bench top. It's no replacement for a good solid press, of course, but I definitely lack the space for a press large enough for my needs - I've just about managed to squeeze a 10" bandsaw into my shop, and it's getting very cosy! Here's the Drillmate mounted to a jig:

Let's take a closer look at that jig. It is a pretty standard thing used by a lot of people, albeit usually on a real drill press. The bottom layer has a "pinhole", in this case 5mm in diameter, through which I poke the shank of a drill bit and locate it inside one of the ferrule holes in the top of the guitar upside down. This should theoretically allow me to drill holes into the bottom of the guitar that line up perfectly with the ones on the top.

Even looking at that last photo now, I can understand why this jig system didn't work as well as planned. Think about a big solid floor-standing press - it's solid and heavy, and should travel downwards in a smooth fashion. This Drillmate has just the slightest "wobble", to the point where it is felt more than seen. And the MDF jig just was not stable enough. The distance between the two inside faces is the same as the guitar body thickness, so it doesn't lean over in use, but in future I would consider making a similar thing out of steel.

The bottom ferrule holes came out ever so slightly wonky. The strangest thing is that the 3mm holes going all the way through 45mm of rock maple to the other side, well they were fine! Dead straight and perfectly aligned when they popped through. But the 8mm holes that only travel ten mil deep? Nope, they wandered. 

The photo looks terrible. I measured the deflection, and we're talking about +/-0.25mm. But it only takes a tiny amount for the human eye to be drawn to it, and label it a mistake. So I enlarged the holes every so slightly, and will have to glue the ferrules in with dust and CA, using a jig to hold them in a straight line. Luckily, there's a good flange on the ferrules, which I'm hoping will hide the issue. Failing that, I'll route an opening and install a steel plate to hold the ferrules.

We're doing an oval jack socket plate, which means it's an easy install - spade bit right through to the cavity. Had I the forethought, I would've done this before routing the electronics cavity. Not that there was much if any tear-out on the inside, but y'know, it can't hurt.

Tuner holes, standard stuff - measured out the tuner size, spacing, and string paths, then went at it with a handheld drill with some sacrificial timber clamped to the back of the headstock.

Knocked through some pot-holes, and set to it with low-grit sandpaper. As seen a few photos ago, the edges of the body are still marred with router scorch marks, the top carve has grinder scarring, and there are still tooth-marks on the neck from rasps and files. I purposefully leave all of this "shape-sanding" until the last step before finishing, because I have previously spent hours sanding guitars at every step of the way, just to accidentally slip while dressing the 24th fret, or something similar. So, thus begins the sanding mission. I do it all by hand, or shall I say, fingertips. There's always music and a few beers involved!

I've packed it in for the night - tomorrow I'll take it all to a higher grit, struggle with end-grain for hours, and hopefully get some stain done.

4 hours ago, asgeirogm said:

I've seen a lot of talk over the years about using gloves around power tools as a huge no no

I think it comes down to personal preference, and at the end of the day, common sense. I use a plunge router extensively, and my hands are on the opposite side of the machine to the bit - if something goes wrong enough for that bit to come into contact with my fingers, I doubt the gloves are going to help me out. But, heaps of people are more comfortable with them on. Side note: I regularly use chain hoists at work for flying truss, and while gloves help keep chain grease off my hands, I prefer going naked-handed. And my rings come off at the start of a shift, and whenever working with power tools. If you ever want a horror story about rings, send me a PM, I won't say it here...

4 hours ago, asgeirogm said:

I made the the spindle thing myself with a hole saw, and it's not as straight/consistent as I would want it

I made one of these too! Here's a tip - get your uneven hole saw plugs all rigged up in the drill press, then get a true and square piece of timber with some sandpaper attached, and move it into the spinning hole saw spindle sander bit. You'll sand down the spindle bit and end up with something true in rotation.

Do one better than me, though, and smooth off the thread on the bolt to get a better grip and avoid damaging your chuck.

18 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

Definitely a good idea to make the control cavity large enough, and close enough to the edge for the jack.

Just a few weeks ago, I installed electronics in my 5-string bass build, which I have yet to complete posting upon - I found that my electronics were so compact within a large hollow body space, that the input jack was actually fouling upon the tone potentiometer! How could I make such a mistake? Well, I did, and I've fixed it in a way, but I'll never have that issue again....

I always make my electronics cavities too small. Every single time, I end up trying to cram all the components and wiring in there, and this time I decided I'd had enough of it. So I turned a large part of the lower bout into swiss cheese with a drill bit.

Not quite a "bathtub" route, but there's definitely ample room there for any future upgrades. Specifically, if we ever want to add another pickup bay, there be room for a third potentiometer or a switch. Or a battery, for active pickups.

And a touch more shaping on the heel. Not quite there yet, not quite. But with a tool as aggressive as an angle grinder armed with a 120 flap disc, I find it's wiser to shut off for the day and have a feel tomorrow, instead of realising you'd gone a fraction too far.

9 hours ago, Dave Higham said:

So I soak the edges of MDF templates with water-thin CA; hence the stains you can see on the surface. It hardens them up nicely.

I've been doing this too. MDF has always been a "cardboard" material in my eyes, but lately I've been soaking with superglue right before final shaping of my templates, taking advantage of the the fact that it soaks liquid up like a sponge.

Really, and I mean this, really nice build so far. 

On 9/12/2021 at 3:09 AM, Bizman62 said:

And quarter sawn for that matter! That's a nice piece of timber! Looks like a dozen high quality fingerboards to me!

I'll be paying the man good money for any more reclaimed timbers he can throw my way. Only problem is, being the kind hearted man he is, he thought it prudent to grind off all the nail heads sticking out of the timber, so I don't cut myself.... And now I can't remove the nails! Bless the man, but probably half of that chunk of wood can't be used, for fear of wrecking blades and bits. But still, that makes about half a dozen fretboards!

Very little work lately. I've been downgraded from a covid "close contact" to a "casual contact", which means I have freedom to do grocery shopping again, but not much else. And the weather's been fairly crap, which has dissuaded me from venturing to the end of the garden. What a week. 

I did rout the pickup bay, though. 

Every time I make a new template, I eff it up and have to do it again. I'm aware of all the jigs that use a few pieces of factory-edge timber, but every single time I end up going: ah well I'll just make this one out of MDF with a jigsaw and files, then I'll do the rest properly. Never again.

Route came out pretty good. Just need to chisel out the "ears" a touch to make this Duncan Distortion fit.

Because we're all locked down, and the postal service here has quite literally fallen apart at the seams (along with public transport), I was getting quite worried about procuring the correct items for finishing this guitar. But then, I received two packages in the mail the other day - a can of oil, and two different flavours of "Prooftint" stain. Here be a test patch.

Loving the build so far! I built a few guitars on a tiny budget last year, and the idea of buying some solid hardwood furniture instead of pine shelves, well it just never occured to me. Ingenious. So good on ya, mate! The timber looks amazing, and your process and design tells me this will be a great one to follow.

Also, sustainable timber is a big plus from me. I'm currently building two guitars for clients who've asked for Ebony fretboards - but if it were up to me, I would've used ebonised oak, or even richlite. I just found a possible source for Aussie reclaimed timber, and I'm all over it like a dog on peanut butter.

Got the frets flush by hand with a "flush file" - read: a half-round that I've snapped in half. It works, to an extent, but besides flushing the fret ends it gets too messy. After this I went to sandpaper wrapped around a steel object to get the frets nice and flush and bevelled to 45'. Bear in mind that the fret ends still need some fine tuning that won't happen until after proper levelling and dressing, and that's when I'll properly polish the sides of the fretboard. It's a game of do some now, some later.

Carved the neck. Same way as I always do, rasps and files. Because of the uber-thin fretboard, I got to 20mm at the 3rd fret before starting the widen out the carve in a nice shallow shape. Honestly, the neck is still a whole mil thicker than spec, but it feels thin as hell due to the shape of carve. More material will come off during final sanding, which should hit the 19mm spec.

Neck heel join feels huge at the moment. The neck is 20.5mm at F20, but 45mm at F24 - that's a hell of a radius! So I'm going to take this area of the join to a lesser thickness, using a combination of router and grinder.

Besides neck shaping, I got the bridge recess done. I went to 9mm depth, which is insanely low for a T-O-M recess, but I figured it's better to have the adjustment room and not need it, instead of needing it and not having it. By my measurements, the bridge can now adjust to -1mm of zero-action.

Worked on the top carve, made it a bit deeper and more concave to the clients request. Angle grinder is one hell of a tool for carving, so I purposefully left a good margin of safety to be completed by hand-sanding. Once material is gone, you can't put it back.

Two words: gut carve.

I'm stuck at home again for another few weeks - besides being in lockdown, I've also been identified as a "close contact" with covid, so I literally can't even go grocery shopping. As much as that sucks, it means I can pour some time into this build and others. So expect updates!

In an unrelated note, my neighbour chucked me a decent-sized board of Ironbark over the fence the other day - reckon this will make some good fretboard timber for future builds? It's reclaimed, so who knows how old it is! Heavy as hell - I measured it at 1100kg/m3.