jessejames

That looks like pomelle or "bee's wing" sapele.

Nice looking stuff, out of my range though.

I do have the ground from the bridge going to the volume pot. then I have it going to the input jack. Or I am not getting exactly what you mean.

I have everything wired up just as so.

I have hum coming from the input jack, it goes away when I touch it, so obviously it is a ground issue, but I can't figure out where the issue is coming from.

Hey,

Everyone starts from somewhere. My first ever guitar build was horrendous, way worse than the modding you have done. To answer the question you posted, no, sanding sealer wont will in those marks, you can either sand down, or use some bondo to fill them in. I assume you will be painting it anyway.

Next time you strip a body, take your time, use stripper, and a scraper, not a chisel. Dont be afraid to save up some money and buy a hand sander to get a lot of the old paint off too.

Stick around and search the threads on template making and bearing bits, next time you can pre-make a template around the shape you want and get a much better result than freehand routing it

But finish this one out, you'll learn a lot!

Well, 6 coats of tru-oil and some partial final assembly later, here we are!

Finally got it fretted, beveled, leveled, crowned and polished, carved the neck, adjusted the neck, shaped and slotted the nut and got the height I wanted, checked the action height, and am now just waiting on the tru-oil before I break it all down and finish it out. Didn't tighten the tuners all the way down because I'm just going to take them right off anyway.

If anyone was wondering about the franklin hide glue, it held the string tension without a hitch, but my bottle was pretty fresh, I have read after it's a year old it isn't worth using anymore.

Conical fashion? I'm not sure what you mean.

I did learn a VALUABLE lesson, never fret a guitar with the neck on the body again.

I bought my fret crowning file from ebay, it's two sided and cost me 43$ total shipping and all. But of course I live stateside.

Oh, I can do pics haha. I know the nut looks high and crooked, that's because it is, I just slightly radiused and slotted it, I was waiting to get my frets in and strings on to do the final shaping/slotting so I can get the action just the way I want it. You can see I am going to be spending some time leveling these frets, but I got the highest crown height stew mac offered in a medium wire for just this purpose, I knew I wasn't going to get it even close to perfect my first try.

Here it is in natural light, much better than my first attempts. Glad to have all the help from this forum!

Well, looks like I finally got the trick, no raised edges, and I put a few drops of CA glue on the sides, all perfectly flat, but the frets are going to need a ton of dressing.

After sanding the fretboard, and consulting with verho, I decided just to try it again, with the right tools this time, and a deeper tang on the fret. Anyone have any advice on how to get superglue out of a slot? Should I scrape it or japanese fretsaw it?

When I type in arbor fret press stewmac is the only one that comes up. I was thinking of getting the caul that goes into your drill press.

Well that makes good sense. I think my problem was I didn't radius the frets enough, I could get a good seat in the middle, and typically on one edge, just one of the other edges wouldn't seat.

So next time I know better, bevel the edges, radius the frets and check them better, and I will probably buy an arbor press from stewmac to make it easy.

I do have a desire to learn, but using the wrong tools and lack of knowledge got me into a pickle. I kinda thought someone on here with a little more experience than I could get me out of a jam and make some money in the meantime.

I didn't use a fretsaw, I bought a pre-slotted fretboard from stewmac. But it does measure out to .023, I tried to keep the radius above the 12" radius just slightly, and I hammered them in on one side, then hammered in the other, then hammered the middle. I did not relieve the fret slot edge, and you are right, I knew nothing about relieving the fret slot edge. I still know nothing about relieving the fret slot edge.

I messed up, plain and simple. I can freely admit it, and yes, I asked on another forum, but since everyone here doesn't frequent the same forums as me, I like to get a wide variety of answers. Just like you telling me about relieving a fret slot edge, no one else said anything like that, so asking in two different forums generated two different sets of advice/answers for me. Thanks for your answer though, I now have something else to google!

I just can't get it, will pay you to do it and all shipping of course. I tried to do it for the first time and I didn't have the right tools. Now it needs a little work on about the first 7 frets and the rest are still virgin.

Okay, so, I tried to fret the telecaster today. Didn't do so well. I used my fret bender, tapped them in just like I was supposed to, but the edges of the fret wont stay down, I tried super glue, but the tang just isn't catching, I did notice that the fret slots seemed too deep for the tang, usually I see the fret tang flush against the bottom of the fret. I used a stewmac radiused board with stewmac fretwire, but it was a disaster all the way down the line, so I just took all the frets out, got the usual little tearout places, so I got the radius block out and sanded the fretboard back down.

Anyone have any advice? Or should I just send this to someone and pay them to fret it for me?

I am going to be trying my firs tru-oil finish. I dont want to fill the grain on this project, I want an open pore look. I was wondering if I needed to use sanding sealer before the tru-oil? There are a few blemishes I would like semi-filled before I apply the finish, so I was wondering what was the best route?

Will be made out of this top

And made out of one of these neck blanks. CuuuUUUuUUUrRly walnut

I like it, new design, very different. If I were a bass player I would want one.

That is pretty close! Great minds think alike?

You mean this one?

It's a nice design, but very close to this Manson guitar (Matt Bellamy from Muse).

That is close, but eh, what are you gonna do? I think mine is a lot more sleek!

Well, I got bored before the super bowl and designed a guitar, I have been meaning to design this around my custom scale length anyway. Feel free to comment however you want to, I can take criticism!

I did a **** ton of finish sanding today, then went out and wiped it down with naptha to clean out all the pores, got a couple of good pics of what it will look like when I get some finish on it. Will tru-oil give me a super glossy finish?

I do have a couple of spots I just cant get to come out, any suggestions? Or will some pore filler cover this up?

That's cool! I'm pretty sure everyone is reiterating for reference to anyone else who may be reading. That's what i do anyway.

The only problem i can see with routing first (and this is a problem that I've had) is if you need to make any corrections to your neck pocket rout because the pocket is too small or too big or whatever, then all of your other routs and mounts will be off. I think it's a safe bet to route for the neck pocket and make sure the neck fits first.

I know proper measurements are key and everything to making sure mistakes like that dont happen, but sometimes they do, and preparing for that kind of thing by routing for the easiest thing to fix first will save you a lot of trouble in the future and give you more room for error if the unfortunate should happen.

Yeah I routed the neck pocket and made sure it was snug and on center before I routed for the pickup or placed the bridge. I think people are under the impression that I routed my pickup cavity and placed my bridge before the neck was set. Which didn't happen.

Here I am mocking it up before I routed

And here it is after I routed (notice no pickup or bridge route

And when I did mock it up, the original bridge and pickup locations were off, so I was able to adjust them and get them right, THEN route the pickup, and I only finally placed my bridge after I got two strings on and made sure they were equal distance from the outside of the fretboard.