ScottR

I did get another day of work in before I got distracted. I got the fretboard radiused and sanded to 230 and the side dots put in. They are almost perfectly straight.

I got out my handy dandy rasp that I made from and old quarter inch bandsaw blade and roughed in the neck shape.

I used a regular rasp to clean that up and then sanded with 60 and 100 grit so far. I also blended the neck shape into the headstock carve and cleaned up those curves.

This ought to be enough about the headstock.

SR

That's going to require a few of those spoon shaped things....unless you have a CNC in the back corner of your garage.

Looks like fun.

SR

Aww where's your sense of adventure? A sharp palm gouge will clean up those relief cut ridges in no time. I picked up a new 1/4" blade myself this weekend

Don't crowd my gig and I won't crowd yours

I have done some carving in my time...I have the scars to prove it. Those little spoon shaped things you use are friggin dangerous. However, I am seriously contemplating a Mr. Scary replica this year.

What's a Mr. Scary?

SR

How did you adhere the angled off-cut that you used to create a square surface for your scarf clamp up? Double sided tape? Camel spit?

SR

First cut is about .675" thick (yes I run a thicker headstock than most). I cut right up to the beginning of the volute. I still have the 3/8" blade in the band saw so it is not going to make a pretty curve so we just don't even try it.

Aww where's your sense of adventure? A sharp palm gouge will clean up those relief cut ridges in no time. I picked up a new 1/4" blade myself this weekend

Now take the Ryoba and cut the scrap free. If you push on the piece as you saw down it will snap right as you cut through. Stop sawing as soon as that happens and you won't gouge up the back of the headstock.

Nice tip. This is stuff one can use.

SR

I'm a big fan of Oregon Myrtle. Is it readily available in Switzerland?

SR

It looks more elegant now...if that is an appropiate word for this design. This should be an attention getter on stage.

SR

Excellent progress. I really like the detail and getting to see it progress!

Ecstatic those pups were found... there was a lot of PE 42awg on those bobbins.

Thanks--I've got one set of shots to post from this weekend's work...I watched some football game instead of posting.

The really hard thing to take about the mail fiasco was that mailbox is 20 steps from my front door-right across the street. It was mocking me everyday. Plus the package was small enough that it should never have gone in there in the first place. I shall appreciate them all the more for the experience though. They've already got some blues in them.

SR

Thanks guys.

You make wood removal a beautiful thing!

Well that's what we do isn't it Mike....keep removing wood until the only thing left is a guitar.

SR

Fail.

No way.

Save it or turn it into something else.

Sr

Not a thing wrong with that!

SR

Here it is pretty much roughed in.

.

Next is a matter of sanding with various types of blocks and a Dremel, with judicious use of a scraper to get the ledges flat and calipers to make sure the thickness is correct and uniform.

That's as far as I got today. More shaping to come tomorrow which will hopefully carry over to the rest of the neck.

SR

So, carving the headstock.

I went ahead and drilled for the tuning machines so I could mark them and see how much clearance I need.

I marked them and sketched in where I want to carve.

I marked the thickness on the side.Then I make the first cuts along the lines.

Cutting along the lines.

SR

Back in my first post I mentioned that the pickups for this were going to be a set of P-90s made by RestorationAD. I got them today.

They were delivered two weeks ago....but I got them today.

In my neighborhood we have these mailbox clusters. If a package comes that is too big for the boxes they put it in one of those large boxes on the side and put a key in your box. Two weeks ago Monday I got a key in my box. It would not fit in the top box...and it did fit in the bottom box but would not turn the lock. No matter what I tried. I put the key in an envelope and wrote a message to the letter carrier explaining the issue. I went out of town the next morning for the balance of the week. My P-90s were due to arrive on Wednesday. When I got back Friday night my wife told me the key never returned and I had not gotten any packages. I emailed Brett and told him I had not received the pups that I knew of. He traced them and found that USPS said they delivered them that past Monday. I told him I suspected that was the case and described the useless key encounter. I told him I would get with the post office on Monday and see what I could get done about the box the key wouldn't open. He said no worries- it was insured if it came to that. Monday I went to two different post offices and made a phone call. Then I made a phone call every day of the week. They did get the key back and figured they needed to make a maintenance request to get the lock fixed... They sent a "key person" over on Wednesday who discovered a package in the top box and laid it on my doorstep. I ordered that from Amazon a week after the useless key appeared in my box. Brett went ahead and filed an insurance claim and was preparing to start over on the pups.

Today I was able to work with the garage door open and laid in wait for the mailman. he didn't want to do it and didn't even think he had a key...but eventually he got the bottom box open and low and behold the pups were there. Ironically the package was small enough it would have fit in my regular box...it shouldn't have gone in the big box in the first place.

In a few months (I expect), I'll be able to tell how good they sound.

The whole point of this story is to point out how professionally Brett handled this situation. The insurance claim was chancy and likely to be a PITA because they had a status of delivered on the order. Yet he was fully prepared to make a new set. He doesn't know me from any other way than from what I've written on this forum over the last couple of years and our emails concerning this transaction. I paid for the pups but he took it on faith that I was not trying to get another set for free. It may have crossed his mind...in my business we have customers claiming they were missing part of their decals all the time and we are pretty sure they just messed them up trying to install them. We always take their word for it (which chaps my a.. after a while), but it makes us the company that's easy to deal with and that's worth more than the damaged decal was. Brett never gave me the least impression that he had doubts about my story or wasn't going to make the order good. Not to mention the warranty he puts on these things is the best I've ever heard of.

John and several others have stated how good his pick-ups sound and I expect to join that group when this guitar is finished. But before I get that chance, I want to go on record to say that he is one class act to do business with.

SR

Over a 24 fret distance on the bass in question, that I'm designing, this translates to a little over 1/32" (.034" to be exact) difference in the distance from the fretboard's centerline to it's edge for the bass and treble side.

I'm not a bass guy....but that sounds like your centerline is no longer in the center and therefore not technically the centerline any more. If you have equal distances from the string edge to each edge of the fret board and if you have equal distances between the strings - edge to edge as opposed to center to center, then the third string would be nearer the true centerline than the second string, but the fret board would not need to be asymetrical...unless your goal is for an asymetrical fret board.

SR

Just for the sake of an alternative, I have glued wood and metal together half a dozen time in the making of filet knives out anold bandsaw blade. I scuffed the surfaces to be mated with 60 grit and used medium CA. I clamped them up with good pressure just like a wood joint. The one time I had to take one apart, I had to use a chisel and there was a ton of wood left adhered to the metal when it came apart.

However....

John did ask for the best method and I'd still consider that to be epoxy. It needs to be able to flex a little without cracking.

SR

Sounds like you are going to need a new shop to build in when you get all that done.

Or go back to the garage like the rest of us.

SR

When I first looked at this I was convinced it was resprayed over the blue and then cleared with nitro. But when we took some paint scrapings and looked at them under 30X magnification, all we see is blue paint and yellowed lacquer--no layer of green paint. The odd thing is the yellowed clear doesn't look yellow enough to change the blue that much.

And we have over 40 years experience of color mixing between us. Based on what's under the pickguard and the heel plate, I'm just as convinced that the nitro has aged and yellowed....and picked up a lot of smoke and grime to reach that shade of green.

Hence the original question, has anyone seen this much change in color before?

SR

It's pretty cool to see a little slice of Brazil through your window. You must be working on the second floor.

SR

The first one is pretty much a scorp, and would be useful I think. That power cutter thing though....I think a right angle sander would be more useful in the long run.

SR

Does that headstock have a backstrap on it or are those orange stripes just a great feature of the grain? I no longer remember .

SR

are you guys talking about the allparts double action truss rod? I recently had trouble with hot rod rods and was actually looking for an alternative myself... Sorry for the partial hijack!

Yes, that's the one they are using instead of hotrods.

SR

Dude, you must have a buttload of clamps to have all these glue-ups going on at the same time!

SR

Get a crank for the blade tensioner and switch blades. One of these times that 1/2" blade is going to get you.

Yeah. I thought I had a quarter inch blade hanging on the wall, but no....it was another half inch blade and an eighth incher. I wanted the half inch for the long cuts on the neck, but I didn't want to go to one eighth...at all really. My next cuts are on the body, so I'll be picking up another quarter inch blade. Even though Drak does body cuts with his scroll saw, I don't think that's for me.

SR

My current 14" bandsaw can't run a 1/2" blade (it cups on big re-saws). I do all my re-sawing with a 3/8" blade. The 1/4" blade works wonders on bodies and small curves ( I use timberwolf blades). Funny enough I used my scroll saw to cut bodies for years (until I got my bandsaw).

Also when properly tuned I can resaw with a 1/4" without any issues (so no problem using it for cutting the necks).

My 1/4" blade was the workhorse too. I used it for everything, including cutting mesquite logs into smaller pieces for the smoker. I finally hung it up on one of those and kinked it, so I loaded up the 1/2" to see how it performed, and it's pretty good actually. The old 1/4" got turned into a rasp.

SR

This is seriously cool scott. The grain from the fretboard just running on into the headstock is sooo fookin trick !!

Thanks Paulie. I got away with one here. That slice of coco came right off the top of the piece used for the fretboard--you can see where. I had to add a piece to the left edge to cover that ear and the grain happened to match up nicely.

SR