demonx

I must admit that timber combo for the neck is looking pretty tasty.

I don't know enough about Zebrawood to know how it is for necks (although wrapped around that center chunk I see no issue at all), but I do know that it smells like you've stepped in dog poo when you are working it!

I like the maple with black inlays! What material did you use for the inlays?

I made my own by cold casting resin and black pigment.

Now filled:

Moving onto sanding:

1pc Mahogany Radius top with floyd route hot off the press:

It's twin with a Hipshot:

Rosewood with Brass inlays:

One for the twin, in Maple this time with black inlays still to come:

Thank you, demonx! I live in Arizona in the US so postage might cost a little more than normal, but I definitely may take you up on that offer. As for the specificity to would need, do you mean a clear description of scale, fretboard length, radii, width of fret slots, width of fretboard at nut/bridge-end, etc; or would you need a CAD file to help with the CNC? I am inexperienced with CAD, but a friend recently gave me his copy of AutoCAD 2012 when he upgraded to the most recent version. Thanks to the generous tutorials from Prostheta (and a copy of The AutoCAD 2012 Bible) I hope to rectify my aforementioned inexperience.

Don't bother drawing a CAD, as when it gets exported/imported to my software it gets compromised and I have to draw from scratch anyway. For example a nice curved surface from autocad gets converted to triangles and the autocad arcs convert to lines. So it's best if I do the cad.

What I meant by measurements is how thick do you want the board, nut end width, body end width, scale length. Which radius at each end.

I don't slot frets on the CNC as I have a seperate setup for that which uses a stewmac blade and slotting templates, so the fret slot width will be generic.

It'd be best if you PM me via my facebook page, www.facebook.com/searlsguitars or if you don't have facebook my email can be found on my website.

I can CNC a compound radius and slot for you.

That is not a problem, however you would need to be very specific on the measurements etc.

There will be international postage on top of the timber and CNC time.

I trust Michael is happy? I can't imagine otherwise. Great timbers and I love the way the neck grain appears to twist along the length. And I like the way the timbers you selected allow the artwork on the fretboard to be the center of attention....at least until it is plugged in!

What is that shiny trem cavity cover?

SR

Yeah, he's stoked. The trem cover is just an off the shelf plastic one. Due to the 40mm body thickness I can only do a recessed timber cover if the trem block is upgraded to a shorter version and this guitar was done on a tight budget so there were limited upgrades. Some of the upgrades I did for free just to experiment and the customer let me have that freedom.

A few assembled pics of my latest build - "Michael's "Runes/Mjölnir" SS6"

I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a soft spot for this one. Built from some of my all time favorite timbers and the simplicity of it is right up my alley. At first I was a bit skeptical about Michael's choice of Chrome and White hardware, but in the end it turned out pretty nice!

Victorian Blackwood top and elec cavity cover.
Queensland Maple neck and body
Queens Ebony fingerboard
Tiger Myrtle binding

Top looks great, how long did it take to carve on the CNC?

That CNC top program ran for an hour and ten minutes, that is profile,cavities and top carve, then I flipped it and the rear program ran for about twenty or thirty minutes, I can remember.

However after that you need to add time for hand sanding out all the router but marks and so forth. Also the top carve I had to finish by hand as I don't quite have the CAD skill to program it exactly how I want, but I've got it as close as I can and then I take it from there the old fashioned way.

Also because my profiling bit has a couple chunks nicked out of the side of it the profile takes a fair bit to clean up by hand.

It's a $140.00 router bit that I damaged by running it into a metal bracket the first week I had it, but I'm going to keep using it for now as I don't want to buy another one just to wreck it too until I get all my mounting sorted out.

You must always be friendly to us old men, You're going to be one yourself someday.

Well apparently I'm already going grey. As a product of the 1970's I guess it was going to happen some time soon.

So what are those timbers? I love the fretboard....the wood the design of the inlays/markers all of it.

Thanks! Black Walnut body with lots of knots and a Goncalo Alves fingerboard.

I've been accused in the past of only building "metal" guitars - well, whats wrong with that?

Here is something that will turn out a bit more "old man" friendly, but still with my fingerprints all over it.

Finally got around to taking a few snap shots of the "Space Scene" guitar. I hope you guys like it!

The Specs:

The fingerboard inlay on this one consist of:

Rosewood, Cocobolo, Bocote, Black Limba, Paua shell, Black Mother of Pearl, Gold mother of Pearl, Abalone, White Mother of Pearl, Malachite.

Guitar specs:

SS6
Flat top body: African Walnut top, Flamed Maple center over African Mahogany with Rosewood stringers and a full width USA Ash back.
Maple neck with Cameroon Ebony fingerboard

Oil finish

Floyd Rose Special with Fatblock upgrade, Grover tuners & Straplock system
Bareknuckle Pickups - Aftermath calibrated set

16" radius
24 frets using dunlop 6150 fretwire
26.125" scale

Stainless steel truss rod
2x Carbon fiber neck rods

How thick are these?

Just over 4mm. I can't see them warping any time soon. They've been sitting around the workshop for about a month without any sign of movement.

Maybe the timber you used wasn't quite dry enough? What moisture content did it test at?

How thick are these?

Just over 4mm. I can't see them warping any time soon. They've been sitting around the workshop for about a month without any sign of movement.

Maybe the timber you used wasn't quite dry enough? What moisture content did it test at?

So the oil stage is done and we get to the polish and assembly!

I took this pic and then realised I'd wired them wrong!

Here is a pic I snapped yesterday of the new cavity I'm using. This is Kade's space guitar.

It's the same circuit as my old one, but I've allowed a bit more space in cavity as the old one was lacking in that area.

Another new design feature, which also looks cosmetically cool is I've added a sweep in the output jack area. One thing on my older builds that happened a few times was I'd accidentally drill the tone and output holes too close together and then when the lead was plugged into the guitar it would short out on the tone pot! I've added space so this can never happen again!

The thick copper plate is dual purpose, it is a cavity shield, however it also acts as a group earth to keep the guitar silent. It's more work than a normal wire and shield job, but I like this method.

The volume pots is a 550k CTS (even though it's stamped 500k), the tone is a Bournes 500k pull/push which coil splits the neck humbucker.

The 3 way selector is switchcraft as is the output jack. The capacitor is a NOS Russian paper dipped in oil (PIO) .022uf.

You may notice the new recessed cover plates are now timber and feature an engraving. This is held in by three hex bolts screwed into copper inserts.

You may also notice that I leave the pickup cables with a bit of extra length on them. It is extremely annoying when you repurpose pickups and someone has cut the wires right back, it serves no real purpose other than cosmetic, so I leave a bit of length there for your future convenience.

So there you have it. The cavity explained. I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Question: What oil do you use to finish your guitars with, and do you let a film build or do you let it soak for a half hour or so and then wipe the excess back off?

SR

I've been using Danish oil, only because I can buy it locally.

First coat I put on thick and I stand there wiping until it is thoroughly soaked. Let it cute until I cannot smell it, scuff/sand the guitar and then repeat but with much thinner coats.

I've been tinkering with the acoustic a little bit more. Had a shot at the heel joint:

Also more coats of oil on these, light sanding in between coats:

Also starting another build!

Black Limba body, Indian Rosewood neck and a New Guinea Ebony fingerboard (Cameroon Ebony in first pic):

Dry fit of the Paua Abalone inlays, the shell is handcut, the pockets are CNC cut:

I own the expensive stewmac fretpress and a series of radiused cauls. It's very, very dusty.

My fretting hammer has no dust.

Will the neck come out without disturbing the pickup?

SR

No, however since I'm very much used to neckthru's, that isn't really a concern!

Interesting Timber combo. Interested to see how it looks all together.

Also curious to see what carving you're mind is plotting as we all know you have mad skills in that department!

Yea this heel design is really something special. I was thinking that going in this direction without redesigning the heel I'd be left with just 2 screws in the end .. I have to look into this more as I actually prefer the idea of having the neck detachable so I mostly build bolt-ons

As long as it doesn't look like mine then it's no skin off my nose!

It's not like flush joints is a new concept, it just doesnt get used much in bolt on guitar heels as everyone is so used to looking at the chunky 1950's style fender heels. A lot has changed over the last 65 years, except maybe fender.

Huh. I never even noticed it was a bolt on. The vast majority of his stuff is neck through, and this one is disguised as one as well from the front. Goes to show you see what you expect to see.

SR

When I started the CNC process I decided to take the opportunity to overhaul a lot of my design features. My cavities were long overdue. It was time for some new top carves, it was time for tighter pickup cavities, it was time I finally sorted my headstock out, I went from top to bottom and rethought everything and as part of this I've never been happy with my bolt on's, so I figured it was time to really put the time into making a bolt on that is "mine".

I looked at pics of every all access heel I could see but didn't like any of them for me, I liked how my neck thru carve looked and felt, so I started there and worked out how I could merge the two. I had no choice but to use the set neck style tang so I could delete pretty much the entire heel and still have something to bolt to. It was tricky working out the right balance to keep enough meat in the right spots and I'm pretty sure I've done it. The ones I mocked up felt solid and these two also feel solid, but as with anything time will tell. There's more meat there than a lot of big name set necks out there so I don't foresee any issues.

The cavity of the runes inlay was cut completely by cnc, the cavity of the space scene was partially cut by cnc, but only a couple of the inlay pieces themselves were cnc, only three of the planets (there's about 160 planets on that board) were cnc cut and the visor for the astronaut was cnc cut. That is it.

Moving on with the Space guitar, here are a few more progress shots and closer pics of the inlay features.

This is a pic I snapped just after I finished sanding:

Here it is with the first coat of oil:

Man, you've got a lot going on in that fretboard. How much time you reckon you got in that? Even with the CNC that had to take some time fitting and filling all those inlays.

Impressive.

SR

One thing about CNC is, it takes so long to program everything, that unless you plan on doing multiples of said thing you are better off doing it by hand. Nearly all of that inlay was done by hand. To be honest i don't know how long it took as I did it in bits and pieces, I should've paid more attention.

Another note on the CNC, I'm still doing most things by hand, I'm using it to rough radius, but then I finish the radius by hand. I'm using it to rough carve the neck, but I'm finishing the carve by hand. I'm using it to rough the heel etc on the back, but, you guessed it, I'm finishing it by hand. So for these tasks it's really only removing the bulk and I'm still doing the work by hand the same way I would as if I didn't have the CNC.

I am using to cut the bridge, pickup and neck pockets to completion. The underarm and belly carves to completion, but they still need rough sanding to get the router bit lines out of them. I am using it to drill the tuner holes and a few other little jobs, but things like the guitar profile etc I still have to finish with the bandsaw and rasp as I'm not cutting it all the way through to help with the flip program.

So yes, having a CNC is cool, but unless you know how to do everything by hand in the first place its no good to you. In fact it's harder to build by CNC than it is by hand only. It's also probably slower in many cases as well. It's also only as accurate as the program and mounting and that is easier to say than do.

For example, I ran a flip program and the rear cut was out by 6mm. That makes the item useless. There's a LOT of things that can make this happen. I started by checking all the mechanical things to see if it was loosing steps. I then went and rechecked the 3D models. No answers. What had happened was when I modified the flip program (drills guide holes) for some reason it moved my centerline 3mm, I didn't move it, the software did while I was editing something else and I didn't notice. To glance at it, it looks correct. That 3mm when you flip it upside down becomes 6mm. Yet it took me several days to find the problem. Things are slow on CNC and problems grow big. It's a dream that turns into your worst nightmare very quickly.