I Like Turtles

Hello all!!! Back from the dead!!! It has been six and a half years since I have done any work on this guitar, and about 11 years since I started it. At this pace I plan to be done by the time I am 70. Anyways, I finally have some better woodworking skills and enough money to buy necessities. Plus, I am not a total moron anymore, just a partial one. I decided to sort of reset this project because there were a lot of issues: 1. The fretboard was way too thin -- I was warned by many on here about that one 2. The frets were not seated in all the way 3. I hate hardtail style bridges 4. Everything was just... ugly and rough and quite poorly done. All that being said, I took off the fretboard using a clothes iron and some putty knives and the back of a thin flush cut saw. I then sharpened my handplane and got to work making things flat that were supposed to be flat. Particularly the top, neck-fretboard joint, and the back. Didn't have to take off much material, so it wasn't too bad. I am going to swap the hardtail bridge out for a recessed tune-o-matic. So to deal with the existing holes, I got some plug cutting bits from good old harbor freight and cut a few for the string ferrule holes in the back, and the bridge holes in the front. I bought some cool macassar ebony veneer that I plan on laminating to the top and back faces (excluding the carved edges). Starting to think that I may as well just fill the front holes with some epoxy instead of having to drill them out and plug them, since they will be covered up anyways. I don't see how that would be an issue according to my googling. I also roughed up the neck a little when I was removing the fretboard, and I'll probably fill that spot up with epoxy and wood dust as well. Here's a veneer shot. Looks like it matches the general color scheme here. Not sure yet if I'm going to bookmatch it or just tilt one sheet to fit the whole face. If I tilt it, it would either have a cool effect, or look like total crap. I'll mock it up before I do it. Also, have you guys seen this technique for laminating a veneer? Looks really easy. https://youtu.be/dysWUDX6PdE So anyways, I ordered a bunch of parts, a new pre-slotted fretboard from LMII (no zero fret this time because I'm a big boy), and a fret press attachment for my drill press so these new frets actually get seated. Hopefully I'm not breaking any forum rules with this hyperbump! This time I mean business. Thanks for reading.

Long time no post. I have been working lately but not on my guitar. Did a few things today with it and over the past month. Now I'm just down to side dots, final sanding and shaping, finishing, and then a final setup. I have basically a week left before school soooo... Headstock veneer is on. I am making a truss rod cover right now that should be cool. The nut (really a string guide) is finished but I have no picture of that apparently. Rear route is basically done. I just need to chisel it a bit. Also drilled the output jack at an angle. Tricky stuff.

I am using templates that I've made. I should have made an inner template though instead of trying to freehand it. Lesson learned. And I didn't even consider that about the dowels. Hopefully they don't move too much. Thanks for the tips. I love learning about this stuff. The back of the headstock is glued and cleaned up. I made a little volute with it.

Thanks for the tips guys. I did the re-drill with a forstner and I'll be picking up a brad point when I redrill the holes. I'm glad I finally got a drill press. I ended up just ordering some macassar ebony veneer which should arrive next week. So the past few days I've been making templates and marking out where my control cavity and humbucker routes are gonna be. Humbucker route is finished. Ended up being 3/16" too deep because 10/16" + 13/16" does not equal 26/16". Small mistake aside, I am very happy with my second ever template route. Needs just a little cleaning up. My first ever template route was a little worse, but all in all not too bad. It's not at full depth yet and I can still fix it easily. The headstock is now sanded flush and is awaiting veneer for the new tuner holes. Another possibility is countersinking the tuners correctly this time and staining the countersinks so dark that the oak is invisible. But I will wait on the veneer to decide. I think I am getting better at this stuff . I'm also planning on building a 7-string v right after this is finished.

Happy Father's Day everybody. Hope everybody enjoys it. Summer break is on and I'm back to work fixing my f-ups. Firstly, the headstock was too thick. I could have simply sanded down the headstock, but I figured it would be cool to countersink the tuners instead. STUPID! I didn't research much. I made the recesses too small in diameter. Plus half of them got screwed up because I was using a hand drill. Then turns out I made them too close together anyways. So I decided to plug em and then veneer the headstock. I think that will hide my mistakes nicely. You can see what I was trying to do... BAD. Wow that looks horrible. I am glad I can fix that. I bought a drill press yesterday and got to work. Four are done. I'm gonna let these dry before I do the others. Does anybody have any tips for veneering? Specifically making veneer without a bandsaw. I'm not sure if I wanna make my own veneer from one of the woods I'm already using or if I ought to just buy some black veneer.

Tuner holes drilled! One is crooked. I may plug it and redrill it. But probably not haha. I installed my bridge! It turns out that the center line of the fretboard is not in line with the centerline of the body. So my bridge appears crooked according to the body. But it should be in line with the neck and that's what matters. I haven't strung it up yet, so I'm not sure if I'll need to recess the bridge or not yet. will find out soon. It is super close. I also put in the ferrules in the back, but no pictures of that. Those are not completely perfect, but they're not noticeably crooked and horrible. And they work!

Duke can be my favorite thing again if this guitar doesn't play great. A few days ago I fretted the neck! I used a plastic tipped hammer from lowe's. Things turned out pretty good considering it was my first time. A few frets I had to pull and redo. There were four that I ended up using some CA glue to keep them in because the slot was a little too wide. I also had to use CA to fix a few chips. But things turned out alright. I also glued on an ear to the headstock and cut out the shape. Simple but I like it. I also dressed the fret ends with a file and sandpaper. It is very rough right now. I also carved the neck transition into the headstock. No volute on this one. Maybe next time. I got all my parts in and hope to play it tomorrow! I am so damn proud of this neck heel. I have never owned a non-clunky-necked guitar before. So excited to play this thing. Updates will be slow for a while. I am back in school but after this semester I may start a new build!

I am loving the headless! Your work is so clean. So why do you hate zero frets?

Heel is carved. I used a belt sander, orbital sander, rasps, and hand sanding. EDIT: I have also carved the neck. Belt sander and orbital sander again.

Thanks Scott. I ended up going with 1 7/8". My fretboard is pretty thin. That's my biggest issue with this build. I have a hardtail bridge that's 5/16" tall. My fretboard is about 3/32". Factoring in fret height I am not yet sure if I'll need to recess the bridge yet or not. If I do, it'll only need to be a tiny bit. Ok so far today I've marked out the neck taper by drawing a straight line from the final width of the neck at the nut to the corner of my fretboard (which is already the width I need it to be). Then I used a sideways beltsander to take it down to the line. It took me about 15 minutes. I love this beltsander! I got so excited with the beltsander I did a rough carve of the neck. feels like a geetar!!!! Here's what I'm doing tonight! I'm hoping to finish the full neck tonight.

Thanks guys. She weighs 8.6 pounds right now. I'm guessing after the rest of carving and routing and hardware it'll be around 7. It's a bit neck heavy right now. But I got this shape so I could straddle it on my right leg while playing. feels good so far. To carve I used a rasp to get the rough shape and then I actually used an orbital sander with an 80 grit pad and a little hand sanding. So I'm in between a 1.75" nut width and 1 7/8". Has anyone used 1 7/8" before?

Thanks for the positive comments everybody. I planed both surfaces and sanded them flat. I think I probably just didn't do that job perfectly. Also maybe there wasn't enough clamping pressure, or it wasn't applied evenly. More clamps is always better. From the lumberyard the wood was very very rough and I did have it thicknessed, but the glue surfaces I did not. I only handplaned and sanded the gluing surfaces. So the past few days I finished most of the carving. The front face is done. The back has all the edges tapered, and now I just need to carve the neck joint. I probably won't do a belly cut. I also found out that my neck is not actually wide enough to fit the bridge I wanted, so I am going to drop back down to six strings. On the bright side, I will now be building a 7 string flying v this summer with a bolt on neck!!!!!!!!!! So this guitar will be getting a hipshot hardtail and locking tuners from dragonfire. Today I'm planning on sanding in the neck taper and carving the neck. I am going for a pretty wide string spacing at the nut. Wiped down with mineral spirits. There has been some fine-tuning since I took these pictures. The upper horn was a little weird in these pictures before I changed it.

So the past few days I've been sanding a lot. The final overall shape is finished, and now I'm in the process of carving. I also decided on a hipshot hardtail bridge and hipshot tuners. I also ordered an EMG 707 for the bridge. No neck pup on this one. Honestly I don't think I'll need it enough to spend $100+ on something I'll hardly use. Here's just some block and hand sanding down to the lines I've drawn. I actually had to carve in the curve by hand on a part of the guitar because I lost the line I drew (and my dog ate my template). It turned out good though. wiped with mineral spirits you can see the pretty stuff I keep talking about. The little bump at the end of the wing is where I had to freehand the curve. Big chip! But it fits! Glue it! Rough carve with an old rasp is taking shape. Duke, destroyer of important templates.

Here's another update! So I glued both wings onto the neck. It was a little difficult because over the years the lumber sat, it warped a little. The joints ended up pretty good though. I also recut the fret slots after radiusing the board. I am hoping the board will be fine. It's little thin at the edges. I then jigsawed the rough body shape and did some sanding of the front and back face. I don't have a drum sander, so getting the guitar into final shape will be done with a sideways beltsander, a rasp, and a lot of hand sanding. Almost looks like a guitar. Here's a somewhat bad closeup of the waterfall-y grain of the wings. I'm hoping it shows up nice after finishing. I'm planning on using the stewmac waterbase nitro with a matte finish.

Dry run on gluing the first wing. The joint looks seamless after some handplaning and some block sanding. It was pretty out of whack after sitting for three years. I'm getting some glue and clamps tomorrow!

Hey guys. So I've been out of the game for three years... My life is very different now. I'm three years older, I'm in college, I lost my virginity. Anyways, I'm on a break from school and work for a month or so, and I decided I wanted to finally finish this thing. I am going to try my best to get this done. I will be updating this thread regularly with my work. So I have yet to find my old drawings and whatnot. The majority of this build is going to be the same, however I am going to make this guitar a 7 stringer. I haven't decided on a hardtail bridge or a tune-o-matic. Probably a hardtail. So on to the progress... I drew on the body shape. Actually I just retraced it a bit darker. My dog ate the template a few years ago and all I have left is a piece of scrap, so I'll be redoing that soon... I also cut out a few bits so that the clamping of the wings will work a little better (more pressure on a smaller area = better join). Radiused my fretboard to 16 inches up to 400 grit. This ebony dust is nasty stuff. Smells like my friend's feet. So my thinking is that I need to pick a bridge and figure out if I need to recess that bridge or not. I am not having a neck angle on this one. I need to glue on my wings, buy some tuners, recut the fret slots, route my body shape, cut the headstock in the near future. I don't even remember what I ended up making the scale length . I think it's 27.5". I am really excited about this guitar!!!!!!!!

YES! I love the headstock (or the lack of one).

Alright thanks. I'll taper it all the way through then.

I was planning on doing pretty much what you're describing, but I'm confused. If the neck is tapered up to the 24th fret, then the sides of the neck aren't going to be perpendicular, and when I try to glue the wings on (around the 22nd fret), they won't have a parallel surface in that area to be glued to. Does that make sense?

The fretboard is on and I rough cut the profile. I don't have many updates, but I ran into a problem and I had a question. I glued on the fretboard untapered, thinking I'd cut the taper once it got glued on, but now I realize I should've tapered it first. Should I route just the fretboard to the right taper (leaving the rest of the neck untouched), or steam it off and make a new one, or something else? I'm afraid of a lot of tear out routing along a glue joint and a brittle wood, but I don't really know about wood enough to be sure. Help?

Hopefully my title interested a few people. I'm a senior in high school, and in one of my classes I have a yearlong project where I identify a problem and solve it, or just make improvements to something. With that in mind, I figured I'd do something guitar-related, particularly with resonance, tone, and sustain in electric guitars (and maybe acoustics if I have time). If I'm not mistaken, resonance is the guitar vibrating as you play it, tone is the "personality" of the guitar, and sustain is how long the notes ring out. I want to separate "plugged in" sustain (like effects pedals, sustainiacs, putting the guitar right in front of the speaker to reflect vibrations, etc...) from natural sustain, which is not necessarily unplugged, which could just be plugged in with no extra effects straight into an amp with no effects or add-ons. For this project, since I lack a lot of electrical knowledge (for now), I wanted to focus on organic sustain, resonance, and tone. I'd like to come up with a design to increase organic sustain (which I will just call sustain from now on), but also resonance and tone. I understand increasing tone sounds a little squirrelly; I'll have to come up with a more specific description. I have read in a few places on the internet that the more resonance you have, the less sustain you'll have because resonance is the body absorbing the strings' vibrations, thus shortening their time of vibration. Any thoughts on that idea? It's pretty common belief among many guitarists that more wood = more sustain and tone, though I'm not really sure if that's true. Wouldn't more wood increase the resonance and thus decrease the sustain? I understand that quality of woods and joints are very important to sustain and resonance, maybe even more than anything else according to a lot of luthiers. So right now my basic idea is to make a chair that is made of solid wood. That chair can be connected to a matching solid body electric guitar in such a way to increase resonance, tone, and sustain (hopefully). Of course I'd pick woods and hardware that would give good sustain and all that. I'd probably use bolts and shape the guitar in a certain way so that would work ergonomically and still be solid. Of course that'll take away the ability to position it however, but who knows. It's basically just a really big body that you can sit in. I think the experience would be very cool: a nice big chair that surrounded you with the resonance of your guitar. I had a similar idea for an acoustic, with some hollow sections that would project sound all around you from the guitar. Of course this is all a pretty complex plan that I'll need to think about and draw up a bunch, but right now I'm just testing the waters, seeing what some of the most experienced people with guitars think about my idea. And I will post lots of pictures if I go through with it.

The board is paduak, though i could see how you'd get it confused. The light part is the same color pretty much. Looks really nice. I love limba so much.

I never really thought about it being too thin. The piece is actually not the same thickness throughout. In most areas, it's 3/16", maybe a 1/64 short, and then there's an area on one of the edges that's about 1/8" plus 1/32" (I said 1/8 heavy. Should've been more specific). I was thinking because it's on the edge, I'll just end up fixing the difference while sanding the 16" radius in. I'm using just regular jumbo frets, so the tang is only .060" instead of .072", so the slots aren't as deep. I sketched it in CAD and I should have room if my measurements are correct, but it'll be close. I really appreciate you guys helping me catch my mistakes. I don't think I would've thought about this much and it could've messed me up big time if I didn't. I would think about gluing some contrast wood to the fretboard just in case, but it's already glued on and I'm kind of afraid of loosening the neck laminate joints that are all right there.

I'm finally back at it. I bought a bandsaw hoping to rip my ebony fretboard, but it didn't have the power, and it's old. I waited all summer, then took it to school to get it ripped. Today me and my dad got it all planed and now it's 1/8" thick heavy, which is good to me. We slotted it and glued on the fretboard. I don't wanna say now that progress is going to be picking up, but now that I'm past the fretboard, I can get down to business.

Sweet burl. Where do you source your limba? I can't seem to find any good pieces for decent prices on the internet, and my local place doesn't carry it.