ScottR

I radiused the fretboard to a 14" and polished her up. The ebony is still fighting. I had to leach in some thin CA and re-clamp in a couple of places. Edges only-no structural worries. Ebony is brittle and likes to chip. When you re-set your slots after radiusing, be sure to pull the say to the center. It's a good idea to bevel the slots prior to re-cutting, again pulling to the center. Do yourself a favor and put some 220 grit around your triangle file when you bevel, and your file won't knock out any chips either.

This is the first time I've used abalone. Oh my god that stuff polishes up like liquid opals. I WILL be using this again. I can't seem to capture the fire with the camera, but believe me it is blazing!

Brett, I know it's against your principals to use fret marker dots or inlays.....but you've got to find a way to use some of this. Side marker dots maybe.

SR

Continuing on the the headstock carve you can see that the spine from the volute to the tip carve that is normally present in my headstocks is reduced somewhat. I decided I like the midsize Gotohs better than the minis. These are the Deltas which are just like the 510s only with a 21:1 ratio. You can see that I had to carve a relief for the top tuner.

Be sure to save all your offcuts until you are done assembling. They help everything fit in the vise.

SR

I've wondered how these were going.

I like the hardware combination.....but I'm on the fence a bit on the pickguard.

SR

I was thinking of running a length of Wenge down the center to break the two sides up as they are not book matched but I think I'll get awy with it as is.

I think you will too.

SR

I've been there and gone out with you afterward.

It's the beer.

There is no cocoon.

I love the headstock too! It is a great mix between traditional and kinda shredder

I love the fact that you do that volute by hand. There is just something about when people do such perfect work by hand that really gets me. I hope I'm that good someday

Thank you.

For me, there is something very satisfying about shaping wood by hand. It's very therapeutic.....a cacoon of peace sort of settles around me while I'm carving.

Of course, beer and blues may have something to do with that as well.

SR

Nice view!

SR

Nice Scott. Looking good so far. One thing you could look into is drilling the tuners before doing any shaping. My headstocks are tapered on the back so drilling tuners is a bit tricky. The thing I do is I drill a 5/16" hole and use the Stew Mac Tuner Counterbore to drill from the back of the headstock.

I think I might be getting a full size drillpress soon and when I do you have convinced me to add a cross-slide vice.

You know........

My original plan was to drill the tuners before shaping. I went to get the drill over a week ago, and all they had was the floor model which they refused to sell to me. A new one was on the way...due any minute. A week later I found one in stock in a different location. And the head stock work had already begun. And the vise is the cat's ass. Way easier to get the work located and stable.

SR

Thanks guys. I'm still looking at it thinking I haven't got to the point where there's anything very cool to show yet.

I love my standing drill press. Its so handy for all sorts of crap.

I used to have a milling vice like yours untill I dropped at the top of the stairs in the workshop. It had split the bottom runner by the time it stopped on the floor

But then I came home to find it back on the drill with 30 inch of travel on the bottom runner. The joys of having a mother who is a machinest/welder

I realy dig the way you do those headstocks man

Paulie, that's a seriously usefull trait to have in a mom. But can she cook?

The changes I've made to this HS are not very visible in these shots....and they are fairly minor so they may never be too obvious to anyone but me, I guess.

SR

I decided to go ahead and add the side dots while the side and top of the neck was still still square. I put them right down against the edge of the fretboard join to insure room for the radius.

Then I went ahead and located and drilled the tuning machine holes before the headstock was completely thicknessed. It is very difficult to get a backer block behind the holes with my carve, so this allows me to clean up any minor tear-out as I get it to the final shape and thickness.

That milling vise made lining up the bit to the punches a breeze. I am very impressed with it.

As it turns out, I had no tear-out at all.

SR

I had kind of a strange week for building. I got a little bit done several nights after work, which is new, but there is now light later into the evening, according to our clocks. Then I had a four day weekend, since I took a couple of days off to entertain my parents who had come to visit. Four days of no building till about the middle of today.

I finished rough shaping the headstock and started rough sanding. I'm slightly modifying this from my previous headstocks. Just a little.

I did buy a new toy that I've been wanting for years. A floor standing drill press.

That was a lot more of a challenge to acquire than it should have been. This, on the other hand was relatively simple. I've been looking at these at Harbor Freight for years thinking how useful it would be if I had a big drill press.

SR

Damn, Chris! Your work gets consistantly better all the time.

+1!

SR

I recently discovered I have a place like that too.

http://www.clarkshardwood.com/products/exotic-woods/

I was pointed to it by a fellow PG member, and like RAD, I can pretty much walk in and back out with pretty much anything I want.

SR

Yeah, those blades have been stuck in my head ever since you got them. Between your comments and Brett's over the last year and my love of the P-90's he built me, my desire has steadily been rising...

SR

Thinking in pictures...

Dude, you've got way too much wood to play with. It must be driving you crazy.

SR

I like the ziricote board with that top. What are your plans for the worm holes?

SR

New single coil?

Any characteristics you'd like care to share? You going after a specific neck tone here?

SR

Right now, that combo is really really busy. It probably would look less so if you took the neck out of the middle of the top woods.....

Once they darken up, you are probably correct in that they should be fine. I've got a bocote fingerboard that started out just like that-minus the sapwood- over a brown flame maple top and it's fine, the bocote might as well be Indian rosewood now.

On the other hand it's going to be pretty busy for the better part of a year till it ages enough to settle down. And on yet another hand guitars have been getting busy paintjobs forever, so there's nothing wrong with busy if that's what you're going for.

SR

I have a Greg Bennet guitar with emg pickups that require a 9v battery power and i have Jay Turser mock SG with passive pickups. Is it possible to swap the emg's onto the Jay Turser ?

Sure.

SR

You guys with your arched top hollow bodies and that acoustic are really impressing me with the amount of work that goes into those.

This is quite good so far, do carry on.

SR

So what happens when I listen to Economic history lectures?

Your guitar turns into a sitar.

SR

While the fretboard was in clamps, I went back to cleaning up the body outlines. I decided the bass horn needed some modification.

So I did.

Man! It feels real good to get some carving tools in my hands again. I can't believe how much I missed doing this.

Long tenon neck with a 3 degree angle and a 15 degree headstock with a step down.

SR

Fret board glue up.

I think the clamp police will let me slide on this one.

Out of the clamps and cut to shape. The neck is finally liking more like a neck than a floor joist.

I know I posted earlier that a drum sander would be real nice to have.....it still would. But there is something very satisfying about squaring up and shaping wood by hand.

SR

When I took the fretboard out of the clamps it had gone back about halfway to flat. I marked the back and sanded it the rest of the way flat.

next I lined it up to the neck blank and drilled register holes in the waste area. I set paneling nails and clipped the tops off.

I spotted some silicon in the trussrod channel and laid the rod in. Before doing that I lubed the treads with Vaseline and added a thin coat to the top of the rod. This is a double action rod from Allied Luthiery btw. I covered the rod and channel and access port with a thin clear tape which I trimmed to 1/16th" of the channel.

I coated the live area liberally with T-88 epoxy. The lube keeps the tape from sticking to the rod. The tape keeps the epoxy off the rod. The epoxy will fill any gaps-- however minor they may be, and act like the fillet that Allied recommends. The T-88 is great for exotics. It has a very long working time and doesn't care how oily the wood is.

You should always start training your guitars early. Just like you should play music for your kids beginning while they are in the womb (mine got massive doses of Led Zeppelin and ZZ Top--now he is my favorite companion to go see live music with)you should get your guitar used to the music it is being made for during its formative stages. This is the blues machine that is priming my lumber for its new life.

SR

I'll be damned, I had no idea he was in poor health. I just saw him play a few months ago. Massive skills and talent.

RIP indeed.

SR