pauliemc

Gloss black finish on the back. Still a little grimey from the polishing compound but looking good so far. This should come up realy well with a dry buffing pad & some polish. Happy enough with it so far.

OK. Time to get this one finished up. took off all the hardware & finished the paint / poly.

Will be assembling & wiring it this week.

Front, black around the edges finished, poly finished & buffed up.

I dont know to be honest, I can do it but because we are the UK dealer.

in truth, its a very hard job, the frets are made from a very hard alloy and of course, your stewmac fret file wont recrown them

I know the crowning process is so labour intensive that only 1 or 2 necks can be completed per day by one guy working alone.

for that reason, I dont do it, TT make a great job of the levelling and recrowning process so I send a bare neck and get a fretted one back in the post

I kinda figured as much. They look like a real killer to crown, probly need some modified de-burring tool to do it. Regular crowning file would be absolutly useless.

Piks. we need to see this to be able to figure out whats happening.

Did you build it ? Or is it factory made ?

Played a jem with these fitted, Have to say I was surprised at how good they were. Didnt feel weird & could do anythin a normal neck could with no problems. Only took a few minits to totally ignore them

But as for bending your own ? hmmmm. I could route the board to take them no problem, But the frets are a totally different thing. You would need to make a die & maby heat the frets to make them plyable enough to bend about like spagetti. You would spend more time & money than would be viable, Id just buy a neck ready to go (untill i figured it all out)

Ya i figured ide have to heat them to do anything i would totally buy a neck if they werent so much $

What about just buying the frets. Is that possible ?

Jaden ? is it possible to just get the frets & install yerself ?

Based on Spoke's comment a few posts ago, do you guys think that I'm removing too much of the filler?

Very possibly. I note that your piks earlier show the filler pasted on good & thick, but the wiped pik (immediatly after) looks like you realy went to town cleaning up the excess. I use the same stuff & have not had any problems with it. The temp in my shop when applying a finish is usually kept around 28-30 degrees C. might have something to do with that, might be too cold where you are working.

The stewie mac guys rekon it might be old stock ? Id dump it in that case. start over.

Man that sucks. I hate when crap like that happins. its not like a swirl can be just redone, never comes out even close to similar. Id have gone ape **** & ripped into the manufacturer or supplier.

Iv had to refinish 2 guitars this year for a similar reason. fookin clear just wouldent harden enough to take a polish. Stayed all rubbery. So after a series of severe bollikins the supplier ended up buyin both guitars.

Fortunatly the customer was OK about it & waited for 2 new guitars, with oil finishes ha ha ha

If you look around you can find them. Iv seen a few new - unused necks from Ibanez on evilbay. But these are always blems, not good enough to go on a guitar issued from the factory. sometimes its a nick or a dent, other times its the wrong decal went on. Costs too much to put it back into the system to fix it so it gets scraped. most of them are well worth a look.

Question can't you use compressed air can upsidedown to produce the checks? Seems like a safer solution than heating a neck... just thinking out loud

I like the break dust

I have some teles to relic ... I am going to leave them on the porch for a few days...play them... maybe take them hunting and kayaking...play them... spill some beer on them...play them... then I thought about a long car trip strapped to the front fender. Since I like the break dust idea and I quit smoking years ago... maybe I will use them to hold the car up next time I change the break pads... seems like a good use for a tele.

I find the compressed air thing doesent have the right look. It only does a small area at a time.

Getting the neck up to 30 degrees C is fine. Its a half decent summer temperature in most places. Actually cool summer for a lot of places. So letting a guitar or neck sit in that heat for a while is nothing. Dumping it into a box freezer for a few minits will chek the nitro in a more natural pattern than the cannister method.

Best relic i ever did on a tele was for a joke. A friend wanted to bash his thinline up. So we put the body in a cement mixer with 2 bags of gravel, a smashed up paving slab & a few broken beer bottles (number of bottles rose as the time passed ha ha ha) Damned thing came out fookin brilliant !!!!

thanks pauliemc, I hadn't heard that method before, I especially like the brake dust thing, doesn't smell as bad as the cigarette and coffee i've used. good alternative.

I use cigatettes & coffee gunk for some things. Great for mucking up white finishes. But hey - muck is muck. Try it all

Played a jem with these fitted, Have to say I was surprised at how good they were. Didnt feel weird & could do anythin a normal neck could with no problems. Only took a few minits to totally ignore them

But as for bending your own ? hmmmm. I could route the board to take them no problem, But the frets are a totally different thing. You would need to make a die & maby heat the frets to make them plyable enough to bend about like spagetti. You would spend more time & money than would be viable, Id just buy a neck ready to go (untill i figured it all out)

Like they said above... if you do the taper from the end of the body to just behind the bridge... don't worry about the angling the bridge... just drill perpendicular to that surface lol It's already angled If you were talking about the angle for INTONATION, then that's easy, put the bass side 1/8" further back. Done.

Don't worry about the action. Draw the diagram so that everything lines up so the tops of the frets are co-planar with the top of your bridge. The bridge will raise enough to give you your action.

Yes there is an easier way to do that angling too. Make a sled that holds the body at your desired angle (sled could be as easy as a shim under the body) and send it through your thickness sander, lowing it until the angle reaches past the bridge.

Those are some EXPENSIVE materials (especially the neck) so be careful!

Chris

Spot on. as usual verhoevenc.

I think you may be over thinking this one Steve. In reality its no more complicated than the last top you did, Just with a bit of a tilt on it. If you look at the guitar you are replicating you will see the bridge - pups - neck are all on a level plane.

Remember the Les paul details I sent you ? those will be a good reference to help you figure out what your doing here (as you have no plans to work to for the PRS). Most of the body dimensions are fairly similar.

Different scale lenght & body planes, but apart from that the differences are very very minor. Can you get a look at a real one ? or just find a **** load of piks online. Study the lot before you go any further.

Will it be all Maple?

Everything exept fretboard.

Hmmmm. interesting. Iv played some all maple guitars that sounded absolute shite, But I have an all maple Les paul type thing that sounds savage. Built an all flamed maple thinline tele for a guy that was brilliant aswell. what typ of maple are you using ? All hard ? or soft for the body ?

honestly, I think a mix of wood dust & glue will look crap. the glue & sawdust thing is realy only for small areas of tear out or chips that need a quick fix & dont have to look good.

Id make the channel a little deeper & use abalone or mother of pearl. use a decent inlay material to make a realy nice pin stripe around the walnut.

Maby even some pearloid or foe-turtle shell. Both of those will bend (unlike the shells) if you get them warm & are fairly cheap (maby $5 worth to sort this out id say)

How about the back? I've never seen the backside of the black strat neck.

the FB is looking good. once it get a bit of finger grime it will have some sweet mojo.

Yea. rekon so. get the whole neck up to about 30-32 degrees C for a day or 2. then very quickly throw it into a freezer for a few minits. the nitro cheks up like a S.O.B. then mix up some black & reddish mahogany aniline dye with warm water or alcohol & wash it on realy thin. Wipe it away from the exposed wood with a dry rag immediatly. Then get a damp cloth & mash some dirt into the exposed timber (I wipe the brake dust & grime from the wheels on my bikes with a warm damp cloth & scrub it in) When its all dry just give it a light buff with an old rag to clean up all the rough crap.

go to a tech with it. You will regret going at this with abrashives. Fret levelling & dressing is best left to someone who knows what they are up too.

YARRRR ! dis be so awsome i actually died of the fright when i sawd it !! yarrrr !!!!!!

I personally would have cut it the other way around and had the animals on the front. Then again I love weird **** like that.

+1 to that. Id have done the same thing.

Maby Our souls isint as messed in the head as we all think he is ?

DUDE !! YOUR NOT GETTING ALL UN-WEIRD-AFIED ON US ARE YOU

I've always wanted to do one of these! They look like so much fun! There's got to be some way to do it without using contact cement though? For some reason I just couldn't bring myself to use it on a guitar (don't ask why, just internal prejudice since I used it in pre-school lol). I'd love to find a way to do it with epoxy or something, but so that it doesn't leak through the paper... so I could do it on a carved top in my vacuum system or something!

Chris

For what you are talking about I use vinyl. Get your graphic printed on some thin vinyl & use a heat gun to get it to form over the carve (keep the gun on real low & hold it well back from the graphic, or use a hair dryer) I use srslditr 2 part epoxy with an open time of about 30 mins for it, spread out realy fine.

It works well & doesent required the addition of any sealer prior to application of the poly clear coat.

I only use CA if asked. Typically I use fish glue. I dip the ends in the glue & then hammer the fret in place, then quickly wipe it clean with a damp cloth. Holds them in place very well & doesent wreck finishes with mad solvents if you make a mess (which of course I never do )

This thing should look realy good when its done. You gonna mirror the headstock aswell ?

your wood combination with some overwound singles will scream like a fookin banshee, so this should sound realy good aswell

Good luck tomorrow man. Ill be keepin an eye on this thread for updates in the near future

Im afraid that the needs to up that budget by a factor of at least 5 for that many guitars. Or else give it a go himself. I mean just the hours involved in colour sanding , polishing & buffing 7 guitars properly will go past the 1K.

I love walnut on strats, Looks great & sounds great