SJE-Guitars

Hey,I mean the results speak for themselves. I have used it for numerous years and numerous projects from guitars to furniture and it does exactly what it says on the tin (well bottle) At just over A$70 for 500ml (shipped) it's relatively on the expensive side but it's way better than anything you'll get from Bunnings! The 500ml does become 1 litre when diluted with methylated spirits, which I do, but then I'll do numerous coats (I think I did 10 or more on this neck). Then polish it with micro-mesh, as with anything the final finish will always come back to how well the wood is prepped in the first place. I've used traditional shellacs before and it's way, way, easier than doing an actual french polish - but also is way harder wearing - but in the same way as normal shellac it takes a few weeks for it to fully harden.

The last photos before it gets colour, thought I might well get a photo of it together in it's primer . . Back of neck . . and of the finally shiny view : now to get the paint and give it some colour loving

Fun little update . . . had little time to spend on progressing much (spent the weekend tidying up the garden ready for spring as winter is nearly over down here) but did several coats of hard shellac and then polishing with micro mesh . . . just reached 6000 grit in what I intend to be the final polish and got a pic: I will most likely do the 8000 and 12000 tomorrow .....

For a first build it's look neat, as you point out yourself the fretting part is the stage when it becomes somewhat tedious! The very first fret board I ever did. I struggled with getting the cuts perfectly parallel and thankfully I was in a position where I had plenty of spare timber around redo and remake things. Unless you have a proper fret cutting jig (mitre block) to hold the fretboard you will struggle when you have already cut the fretboard to the neck. It's far, far easier to do any fret slot cutting when the board is still square - since you can just use a square held up to the side and use that to keep saw square, also do any cutting prior to radiusing, you can always recut them to depth easily after the radius is cut (however, I know this order varies from person to person) Also I just noticed Stewmac and othedr no longer do the cheaper fret slotting jig, now just offering a horrendous looking over engineered fret slotting miter box for several hundred dollars!!

First coats of hard shellac: A bit of a levelling out and polish to ready for more coats but fretboard is already mirror finished: Another few more coats and fully polished to the 12000grit micromesh and it'll really be mirror finished

Well stripped the headstock . . . still looking a bit rough in this photo . . but didn't take an any other Masked it up ready for its initial priming . . The reveal: So a nice initial prime before it's levelled, next is to hard shellac the rest of the neck and leave it to cure for a few weeks then it'll be back to masking around the headstock to do the finishing coats. At that point this will be applied: Free ad for the seller if you are looking for decals Slowly coming together,

Whilst waiting for the decal and finishing material, the neck pocket is much better.

just when you think things are going perfectly Just levelling the clear coat to the old finish and discovered the logo is not under the finish as I had assumed: I guess they put the decal on before the finishing coat, since there is still plenty of the old lacquer finish left yet. Maintaining the old finish and logo was taken as the de-facto aka easiest path - so this now requires the full job to be done - a new decal will ordered, finish will be stripped and the headstock will be sprayed to match the body, On the upside the pocket is nicely shimmed out and the the screw hole of the old tuners filled - photos to come.

I think it's ash, it's not very heavy, the darkness in that photo I am pretty sure was take after I had wiped it over with the damp cloth to bring up the grain for the final sanding before priming

Yeah lacquer was tough but definitely not that thick! I have been very carefully to be removing as little of the actually wood as possible particularly with the neck pocket, you'll see on the photo's of the body I didn't even fully remove the finish out of the pocket. Anyway - primed body - will add the material to pocket and put a finishing primer coat: The said gap in the pocket .... Neck strip complete and a down to 800 grit ready for oil: However before oil takes place gotta fix up this damage found on the head stock finish: That's brings things up to date.

This is what thicknesser are for! I ran it through both side the smallest about off possible (around 0.3-0.4mm) off each side and what was left I then sanded with the orbital sander and hand sanding around the edges and body cutouts. In general there was quite a few chips and scratches on the back - cosmetic stuff - really if I was just going to refresh it and keep it for me then I would have kept it as was - but since it "needs" to be pink, the original finished had to go! The thing I am mainly surprised about the guitar is just how poorly fitting the neck pocket is - one job that is outstanding to do on the body is to add some extra material to the pocket and route it to fit the neck snugly. There is a literally 2 or 3mm gap between the neck and pocket.

Rather than attacking the fretboard immediately I decided the next thing to do is strip the body back: As I stripped the pockets back I use the router with tracing bits to strip the bottom of the pockets and after taking a mm or so discover that the humbucker pocket has an about 2mm of wood and when I finished it was paper thin! So I had to fill it in with additional material, not the same timber but hey under paint it won't make any difference! It's already progressed beyond this - but I just need take photos.

Well it's been a considerable amount of time since I have been on here and this is a project that has been sat around for quite some time, initially intended to just do a clean up and be done, but my daughter (10 year old) has been pestering for a guitar and she only does pink! I actually found this abandoned Samick whilst walking back to my house from town when someone had put it out front of their house for trash. I forgot to take a photos of it when I found it, but here's a few of it before I started the major works: As can be seen it lived a bit of a hard life before ending up being thrown out on the pavement as rubbish! Next before work begins - I soon discovered the lacquer used on the neck was tough and thick! But also looked nasty and an oiled neck in my opinion is far superior so - As you'll notice I have masked off the from of the headstock since I intend to keep the finish and Samick logo on the headstock.

A quick hop skip and a jump and it's looking like a guitar:

That is a great system Cheers - just one $18 piece of Alu + 1 router bit + $4 roll of tape + router table = perfect radius I also tackled the elephant in the room (the truss rod routing . . ) and it came out pretty well - it is about a mm off centre but I aren't complaining it's totally straight - now I just need to die the thread down the rod and cut it to size (along with fitting it correctly! You can see the jig(!) I used in the background of the pic - nothing special merely a piece of wood thicknessed and clamped to the in feed side of my fence, this ensured the rear of the neck was level with the widest point of the headstock, then just slide it over, it was real easy in the end!

Chopped of the top and bottom - along with a shot of the finish produced by the radius bit: A pretty perfect radius - I think you'll agree: The finish - it shouldn't take more than a few minutes with some 400 grit to shine up: Now to sort out the truss rod routing!

Well I radiused the fretboard tonight . . . using one of my radiusing router bit . . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7iyOj_zY-k%26

Well it's been a while - some progress: The top has been carved - I started out not really intending to do a fully carved top - but hey - here we are! All came out very well - done via the combination of router steps and an angle grinder with sanding disk: Neck - hmm yes I kind of got carried away and shaped the whole thing up without doing the truss rod - hey it's been a while since I made a neck! Never mind I'll manufacture a jig to do it once I have the rod: The scarf joint came out excellently even if I say it myself, the line is barely visible, will be interesting to see how visible it is after shaping..

1 x 10" remaining. . . . Back orders being taken . . .

Update - just 1 x 10" and 1 x 12" remaining

Update - just 1 x 10" and 1 x 12" remaining: 10": http://www.ebay.com/itm/181665488138?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649 12" http://www.ebay.com/itm/181665491167?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

10" Guitar Fretboard Router Radiusing Bit 12" Guitar Fretboard Router Radiusing Bit 16" Guitar Fretboard Router Radiusing Bit Cheers

So the Radius bits - what can I say - they are pretty darn fantastic! A demo of the said bits Currently have 1 x 10", 2 x 12" and 2 x 16" available - any other radius will need be a custom order.

Howdy all, Just listed a few new things on Ebay - so if anyone on here as the Steel City 40200H or 40300H or Carbatec or Hafco spiral head thicknessers you might want to take a look at: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/181658506085?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649 http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/181658506640?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649 The radiusing bits will appear soon

Hurrah! Router Radiusing bits are back baby! Ok so I have received my samples + 1's - the + 1's will be up for grabs as soon as I've completed the testing. So looking through the post from a few years back I was selling these for $49 + P&P, which albeit a relatively reasonable price when you look at the price of router bits it wasn't a GREAT price, sooooo this time I am looking for merely $25 + P&P for a single bit and a special of $69 + P&P for a set of 3! A set: A close up of the 10": The bits are K01 carbide for use with all extra hardwoods. I will be performing a few tests in the next few days and posting videos. Also if you want any crazy kind if one of radius I can fulfil those wishes - however there WILL be delays in getting them produced as I have to produce the CAD and the manufacturer has to do there CAD and then produced etc etc. The manufacturer has produced me some amazing carbide inserts blades for my spiral Accu-head thicknesser - which I will also be selling at far cheaper prices than the like of Steel City (US), Highland woodworking (US), Carbatec (AUS) and Machinery House (AUS) sell them for! Plus also I am selecting the carbide grade to be used rather than getting whatever carbide grade they are selling. Here is a quick sample pic (K04 carbide here - not that you can tell by looking at it obviously!):