pauliemc

Jumped ahead & forgot piks. but what the hell.

The back is on & the neck is being tested for fit & alignment with the bridge. then the bridge can be assessed for height. then the neck & bridge can be glued into place.

The final pieces of binding & the remainder of the neck heel will go on later this week, then finish sand & clear coat it.

In case anyone is interested the timbers are -

Zebrano back & sides.

Bearclaw spruce top.

Hard ash binding.

Wenge / Flamed maple bridge.

Ebony fret board,

Birds eye maple / Wenge / Ash 5 piece multi lam neck.

Abalone dot inlays.

Mahogany neck & tail block.

Mahogany Kerfing.

Walnut side braces.

Cedar soundboard bracing.

Last year I had an order for a crap load of hollow boxes (acoustics) At the end of it I decided to leav the anti Tesla briagde out of it for a while. So - to start this years builds off guess what I have a nice rush order for. 2 Hollow boxes

Anyway excuse the iffy photo quality. this is one under way.

There was still a lot to do in these. The edges needed to be cleaned up and then the kerfing went on & everything had to be levelled. The side braces had to be trimmed & the neck block trimmed back.

The dragon rasps are as good as their hype. I have 2 pairs myself & would not be without them.

Just make yourself a good handle & you will never regret buying them.

Although if you are a little clumsy / accident prone like I am, I would suggest puting a heavy pommel/top on the handle. If you drop one off a bench it tends to go point first - into your foot.

Nice porn collection man

just for shits-n-giggles, i think ill GOTM mine for February - if its done on time

Cool man, glad you like it.

The guy that baught the other two had a cool idea for one of his. A hardtail bridge like the one above - but with piezos. no other pickups. so all thats on the front of the guitar is a bridge & a vol knob. I taught I was cool runnin with just one humbucker, but he says

"F*@K THAT - I want no pickups visable at all !!"

I am soooooo stealing that idea from him once his are done.

realy cool design. love the body shape

That neck is far too nice to leave the back of the headstock like that. Put a thin veneer on the back to hide the end of the skunk stripe on the headstock. other than that your guitar is killer.

Last pik. Neck sitting in place with bridge plate.

So to sum up. My King Mojo's specs are as follows

It will have a genuine Fender hardtail with pressed steel saddels (part of the Mojo). removed from the prototype Black Lotus before it was sold a few years back (ptototype mojo)

What I call a Guinness neck - Wenge & ash. I rekon Wenge is kinda like a black ash. It kinda looks similar, blunts blades & sands similarly - its just dark. So Black ash with a white ash top = a Guinness neck, Also both are made in Dublin Ireland (Gaelic Mojo) I worked on the refit of James gate years back & Im building this guitar (more Mojo) & the last drink I had, about 2 years ago was a Guinness (Guinness mojo)

The last of my abalone dots for the fret markers. I had 5000 of these @ 10 dots a guitar = 500th abalone dot neck mojo

Also - the fret board is made from the only remaining piece of the Ash from building the wifes wedding strat - so thats cool - More mojo, In fact - one for the ladies - Romance Mojo Baby !!

This is the one I have decided to spare the fire. This will be mine, but the others are to be sold on to whom ever wants them.

With 7 on the go, One for me & 2 sold to a customer - that leavs 4 to go to Evilbay & the guitar stores

Body with clear on the face, neck pocket made up, edges slightly rounded for an almost faux binding look.

The nice big gouge out of where the fore arm bevel should do on a strat

The big mangly hole & cracks in the bottom horn.

This is the back of my Mojo. you can see the big evil scar along the entire lenght of the body at the top of the guitar. from just above the location of the hook its hanging from. It took a lot of effort to snap this, so I repaired it & will keep this one for myself. Personally I think it looks funky as hell

I love these knots & cracks.

Before the clear is put onto these, all of the cracks are flooded with water thin CA. Same treatment for the knots. But this is only done AFTER the testing of the blank to see it it will fail.

Bit of a closer look at the cracked & knotted face. as you can see from the edges, these are realy only superficial & dont go very deep.

the back of this one. similar treatment to the cracks & knots as the front. Except that this is planed to thickness first. Then CA is added & the whole lot is sanded to 320 grit.

it still works !.

the finish just peeld away from most of it when it dried, Looks like it was too viscous to get into anything vital & it must not have been in the goop for very long. Cool

Anyway, I have 3 king Mojos under way.

A King Mojo is one of my tele models. I dont make many & hardly ever to order as I only do them when I am rebuilding / recycling a bench. I am replacing the bench at the end of the workshop where I work on my bikes. Its seen a lot of abuse, Oil, Paint, Petrol, degreaser, rust remover, electrical contact cleaner, gearbox fluid, you name it - its been spilled on this bench over the past 4-5 years. before that the timbers were part of a scaffold around an old church bell tower that was being restored. Up there in the rain snow & ice from 2001 till about 2009. So battered to hell is a nice description for the timbers here.

I stripped out the bench & am building / botching a new one from some scaffold board I have been using as part of the shop floor this past two years or so. (those are being replaced with some poplar & pine I got this week) Kinda why its so cramped in the shop just now & why I keep bumping into things - like the camera.

So over the past few days I have been going thru all of the blanks I made up from the church - bike pine. Or as I call them the "Gods Harley boards". Faced & glued a few up & then tested them to see if they would hold up to being a body. Drop them, stand on them. put them in a vice & try snap them in two, smack em with a mallet for good measure & if they survive they are good to go. If not - they heat the shop. I made 12, 6 failed the abuse test. But one of them was creaking & fighting so much that I decided to glue it along the rip & make it into a Mojo for myself. Duno why - but I just dont feel right about this one burning so Im saving it.

So. Piks.

This one wasnt glued when I took the pik.

This one was

This is a third blank after being rough cut on the band saw to the body profile.

All of these blanks are cleared on the front to keep the years of dirt & use intact, then glued together & tested as per description above. If they are to be used they are cut into rough shapes with the fronts left in this terrible shape. The backs & sides get cleaned up to a helf decent standard, but not the usual pristene finish you would expect. They still have to look "iffy" so they are left a little rough.

na, its totaly screwed, doesnt do anything. But the card might b ok I suppose. Ill know monday, getting a new camera so I can check if the piks on the card are OK or gone.

I was dipping a few bodies today, a way I sometimes apply clear if Im doing a few flat bodies like strats or teles or the like. Everything was going groovy.

01) big tub nice & clean for dipping bodies - Check !

02) 10 litres of clear good to go - Check !

03) Bodies lined up, clean, hooks installed for hanging - Check !

04) Previously dipped bodies from this morning moved to drying rack - Check !

05) Camera laying in tub of clear - Check ! Wait, What ??

everything WAS going groovey. I didnt even realise Id knocked it off the bench, no idea how long it was in the paint, but im fairly sure its completly screwed.

I built a hot box for a friend that makes violins so he could put finishes on in winter even in his old dingy shop way up in the hills.

I used plywood for the bulk of it, with insulation board (sheet rock / Rockwool board) on the outside. An infrared heat lamp at one end & a few small holes drilled into the opposite wall (10 holes about 6mm diameter)

I used a habistat thermostat unit from one of my old snake vivarium's to control the heat. It monitors the temp & turns on or off the lamp as it is needed. I also sprayed the entire inside with high temp silicon paint to prevent any problems with scorching lamps right next to well dried out timbers.

Works very well, but traps fumes like a demon. he uses it for a day or two, then transfers the instrument into the main house.

Scotty, your kikin me ass on GOTM - Wait untill I tell your mother your being mean to me

that decal method sounds realy cool. never tried anything like that before. I must look it up & give it a shot. could save me a tone of cash

When you start a build with me you get a full set of plans that i go over with you a few times to ensure you are happy. So small changes occur a lot. But big game changing total rebuilds are rare. Especialy as changes like this incure a cost of %75 of the commission value of that guitar.

1000 commission on a alpha means 750 euro fee for this body change this late. But scrapping the neck pushes it to double that.

Obviously i only charge the one fee of 750 in these cases. But this is a problem build as it is the second guitar he has done it on. He is a friend of the family going on 30 years. And i just took the hit on the last one. But this build needs replacement

body

neck

bridge

pickups

pots

switch

taking the mick i rekon. So despite the fact that its gona mean the loss of a comission. The loss of a friend. Tiking off my dad (its his friend more so than mine) & having a guitar just sitting here untill it goes to a store. He received an invoice of 1500 euro on top of the 1100 for the original guitar.

The next few days are gona suck

3 days ago a customer decided on 2x humbuckers, 1x vol, 1x tone & a 3 way toggle, with 22 frets on a 25.5 inch scale. nice.

Today, (about 4.30 in the evening) He rang to say he had a change of heart. he wants 3 singles, 1x vol, 2x tone, a 5 way blade selector & 2 micro switches. with 24 frets on a 25 inch scale.

Below is his body as it sat yesterday evening. Lets see if anyone can spot the problem

Anybody want to hazard a guess as to how far along the neck is ?

Nice to see you guys really fighting for this one.

Oh yea its fierce !!

But there is no real love lost, he is my love child after all.

which is all the more impressive considering he is a little older than me,

Nice plan. I have a couple of guitar bodies for the fire, old manky pine teles I call King Mojo's.

made up 12 of them then tested the bodies to destruction. you know - put them in a vice & smack them with a mallet, Jump on them, use them as part of the floor for a few months. The timber they are made from is so weathered you have to do this stuff to be sure they are still structurally sound. 4 died, 3 are under way to becoming absolute-piece-of-crapocasters. or at least they will look like total junk.

Anyway - Im burning the remains of the rest, offcuts & dead bodies, gotta clear out the scrap pile.

Nice.

I have 2 beater teles on the bench at the moment aswell, but I dont think they will look as well done as these.

Are you gona leav the maple fretboard raw/oil or put a clear over it ?

+1 here too.

Was just thinkin its a very clean & subtle carve, looks very good. Frett access must be laughibly easy near the body

Hey Scott. So when you hand my ass to me on a plate after this months GOTM, can you put a little garnish & some BBQ sauce on there aswell please

Man im a grumpy fooker today