3DogNate

Did the clearcoat on the body this weekend..

This is after the first coat.

Did another couple of coats on the neck too just to satisfy my need to be nit-picky.

I'll block sand the the body down tonight and hopefully it'll not need more clear and I can go straight to the buffer. I wish I had a proper paint booth for spraying these 2 pack auto finishes. But alas... I have to deal with a bit of fuzzies and gnats. I do have a paint booth in the basement for doing waterborne finishes, I get good results out of that but I wanted this one to have tough as nails paint job.

Today after work I taped off the binding and top and sprayed the back with a Black Cherry Candy base. I wanted to darken up the back but still have the grain show, but not do the usual dark brown or gibson red...

Here are some shots of that.

Since I used epoxy to pore fill... the last step of that is to take a bit of epoxy thinned with denatured alcohol and give the whole thing (minus the top) a wipe down... this does seal the binding edges. But I was pretty careful and didn't really get any on the binding anyway.

Now onto the red....

Got the top dyed tonight.

Here it is raw.

Here it is with the top dyed black to pop the grain.

Here I've sanded it back

What are you using to pore fill? Would you recommend it to others?

SR

Z-poxy brand epoxy. Yes I would recommend it, I have had very good luck with it... Plus it's just an excellent 5 minute epoxy to have on hand. I get it from hobby stores...

I think the neck is done, I buffed out the finish and finished up the fret work and fitted the tuning machines.

And here is the first pore filling on the body..

I clear coated the neck yesterday, I'm using a 2K clear coat...

So it was ready to handle a few hours after spraying.

I started pore filling the Mahogany body back last night. I'll do another session of that tonight. I'm still waiting of the bridge to show up... It's supposed to arrive Wed. The Hipshot Trem I originally ordred was on backorder so I switched to a Wilkinson VG-300 which should a little nicer bridge even...I would have went to the tried and true VG-100 but I wanted shiny gold instead of satin gold to match the rest of the hardware. I'll finally be able to drill the post holes for the bridge and get onto finishing the body.

I'll probably wet sand and buff the neck tonight and set it aside until final fret work and assembly.

Awesome stuff! Did you make that CNC?

Yes it is a home built CNC... I'm just like you guys. In fact this is the first electric I've built on commission. All the electrics I've built so far have been for myself.

I got the headstock all cleaned up and dyed red...

The head stock on this build is going to be dyed the same dark red as the body, so I decided to inlay my logo in MOP.

My last name is "Noel" for those that don't know already.

Here I am shaping the neck.

Got the frets installed today.

My first time using pearl side dots, I think I like em... they catch the light and are really easy to see.

Now here the board got glued to the neck and cleaned up.

And finally here the headstock got thicknessed.

Here I am with a freshly glued filler strip over the truss rod.

Flushed up.

I machine the neck and neck pocket to have an interference fit which forces me to sand and scrape to a perfect fit.

Check it... I holding the body up by the neck... you can't get a better fit than this.

Let's see if I can actually embed those vids...

Here's a little vid of cutting the fret slots

http://s488.photobucket.com/albums/rr249/renegade900/Guitars/DexTele/?action=view&current=VIDEO0009.mp4

Here's one of the pearl getting cut.

http://s488.photobucket.com/albums/rr249/renegade900/Guitars/DexTele/?action=view&current=VIDEO0010.mp4

Looking clean... keep it up.

And the Mother of Pearl glued in...

I'll flush up the inlay and sand out the machining marks in the fingerboard tomorrow. That's all for tonight.

Tonight I was working on the inlay and Fingerboard.

Here's a little vid of cutting the fret slots

Here's one of the pearl getting cut.

The guy I'm building this one for wanted "Faith" inlaid in gothic letters to match his tattoo.

I try to nest 1/4" and 3/32" dots for fret markers around the empty spaces in the pearl blanks.. I never run out of these.

Cool...but the monkey grip should be near the strap button,considering it is meant to carry the guitar at some sort of level angle

Definitely, picking it up where that grip is located now is looking at being very headstock heavy... needs to be near the strap button like Wes suggests...

I don't care for the alternating inlays either. (Was that just a means of being creative with precut inlays?) Headstock tip is a bit iffy design wise too, but not so bad. Bolt on? I'd go for a PRS style bolt on and lose the neck heel... or just do a set neck. I've owned a few bolt on explorers and the heeled ones are kinda yucky up high... I had a bolt on Hamer Standard though once that had the PRS style joint and it was just fine.

I did a test sample of the color I'm going to dye the top on this one.

I got a chance to clean up the shop a bit today. And I got neck profile and truss rod slot cut out.

I was able to get a few moments tonight to get the pickup routs and Neck pocket rout added.

I stand corrected. I thought I was looking at those horrendously massive Stewmac Hot Rods there.

Much better!

Yeah, I'm about done with hot rods too... they work well but just take too deep of a slot. I'm sticking with All Parts rods... and when I'm out of those I'm going to give the Allied rods a chance.

sdshirtman... those guitars are looking good!

I did the control covers last night. I added my logo and serialized the big plate. (I love having a cnc machine.) (the protective plastic is still on)