jmrentis

Wow, thats really coming out well Rich. That inlay just blows me away, aside from being an amazing design of shell, the practically flawless inlay job is amazing. The partial overlapping of the design into the sound hole is awesome and to really seal the deal, that zircote is beautiful, I love the flecking at the bottom side edges, gives a cool effect. What are the plans for the binding? Are you adding any more shell to the top in the purfling? I'm excited to see this thing all finished and I bet moms is too. Keep us posted on the progress and best of luck, its really looking amazing. J

Rich, Did you ever try the bandsaw rasp idea out?? Sounds like a good idea for worn out or old blades. Also, do you remember where you saw it, I was just curious on how it was done. I had never heard of seen of this, but it just sounds like a cool idea. PLus it never hurts to have another rasp. As for shaping the heel, I went with a flat scraper and half round rasp as well. I took off much of the bulk of the entire neck with a spokeshave and fine tuned the ends with the scraper and rasp, which worked wonders. I really enjoyed using the spokeshave the most, it worked wonderfully and made quick work of the neck blank. My blank was very thick made of maple and jatoba and the spokeshave got it close enough to start shaping with the rasp in 5-10 minutes and thats with continually checking all my progress.

As for the kite tags being the same size, I don't really think that is all that uncommon. From a well know inlay and shell place here in the US, I have bought a number of pieces of shell and precut inlays recently. The inlays that I bought were precut and while they were all around the same size they were all unique. Even though they were all different you could hardly tell once installed, you'd have to really look closely. One thing though is that I had to label each one because as you said, each slot is different, so I hade to individually scribe and route each inlay. So, no biggie and it looks great, very cool idea and its turning out well. As Wez said, some silver would be awesome, I have actually seen that done I believe a couple times and it worked great. If I find a pic or a thread of someone who did that, I'll link it. Best of luck and keep the progress pics coming. J

Yeah, as per usual I was completely torn this month, all great builds and all were quite unique from each other. I really could have picked anyone of them and felt good about it as they all are worthy of GOTM. From the dau it was posted, I loved SwedishLuthiers guitar and its a style that is completely opposite of what I like, but it was just put together so well that it appealed, a lot. I loved the inlays and funny enough I had actually planned the exact same concept on a future project. Mine was more of a Poker style rather than Vegas, but it had most of the same inlays, so like I said that build really was cool in my eyes. Awilcox got my vote. So far all of his guitars have the features that I would use like white binding everywhere, cool truss covers, excellent wood choices and staining/finishing, etc. They all seem to come out flawless and if there is even a minor glitch or error, its stripped and redone and I highly respect that. Its so tough to make the choice to do it all again when you are finished. It makes all the difference in the world though and is worth it. Wez guitar was one of the guitars that made my decision the toughest. Absolutely wicked rig!! I love the top on that thing and the finish is great. The whole theme was extremely well done and is just great. Its just a super cool guitar. While it is a familiar shape, it is completely unique in all other aspects. Not much else to say other than awesome guitar. Argytar is another very cool and unique build. I really liked all the carving done on this thing and the color. I can't even imagine how tough doing all those carves were. The inlay is amazing as well, bet that took a good while to do, really adds a lot to guitar, very well done. Overall excellent guitar, not mention very cool, love the fholes. Digthemlows was the other guitar that made this month tough. The three that I could choose from were this one, wezs, and awilcoxs. They were all great, but these three were just the bees knees for me. The wood choices and finish on this bass were just superb, not to mention this is now my all time favorite shape for a bass. I would love to have a bass like that, it looks amazing and that top is wow! I like the whole design and seeing his son rocking on it, even goes to show its amazing playability, it just looks nice to play. Great bass, probably my fav overall of alltime. Nice work. All great guitars again this month, GOTM is great fun. Being able to see everyones ideas and how they bring them to life is enjoyable. Great work guys and best wishes. J

Thanks Mike, and hope you and everyone has a great holiday. Best wishes. J

Yeah, I have been thinking about building one and I know I could make a better one for cheaper, but at the same time I am so slow in building that it may not be worth it for me. I haven't decided or even shopped for any yet, I see them all the time and say yeah I need one, but never act on it. What sparked my recent thoughts was the one on the top row in the middle on this MLCS page. I bought a bunch of router bits from them a while back and was very happy with my purchase. They were decently priced and they have a great variety of them. They also have plenty of other stuff, I am always forced to look through everything they send me because often times they have great deals. I really never hear anyone mention that place and it somewhat baffles me as I haven't found any issues with them. For $139 that seemed like a decent little table, again, I haven't shopped for tables yet, so I don't have the features vs. price relationship for tables yet. But at first glance it seemed like a decent buy. They also have some decent buys on router bits if you check through the pages. Anyhow, thanks for the info Rick, I'll definitely see how the numbers figure and if it is worth it for me to build a table. If I didn't want to work on guitars so much, I would love to build a router table, lol, sucks that building guitars is so fun. J

A few months back I had my router blow out on me and at the time I was very broke with no funds in sight, so I had to find something cheap. On craigslist I found a once used Ryobi 2hp plunge router with a few extra bits for $40 and found that Home Depot sold the straight edge guide. As Hydro mentioned it is actually a very nice router. I don't know if its the same one hydro has or what the original price was, but this thing has many different speeds, 6 of them A-F I believe, plunges smoothly, has plenty of juice, and seems very tight and precise. Nothing yet that I can find wrong with it. I wanted and planned on going for a highend router because of the use it will get with guitar building, plus it is one of the tools that needs to leave a very precise edge so quality is very important. Anyhow, I had no choice when I got that Ryobi, but I will say it is a great router and I have enjoyed using it. I will still more than likely buy a nice higher end router, plus I want a nice table to go with it, I'm tired of setting up jigs and clamps, I would love a table! Just very recently like early this month I blew out my super old B&D jigsaw when making a body template and needed a new one. I figured I'd only spend $35-$50 max as I have my bandsaw and don't need it to do much(plus I hadn't priced jigsaws in a long time and was way off in what I expected price wise). However, after checking out the saws I couldn't leave with anything less than the Hitachi, which is what I got and am extremely happy with it. I haven't even had the chance to use all the features, but so far that thing is a champ, I would recommend it for sure. I love tool shopping, I could spend all day checking out tools. J

To go with everything David just said, I found one thing to be very helpful and that is: practice with your new tools on scrap. Before I started what I am working on, I had no prior wood working experience, so every part of the build is completely new to me. For each tool I have to save up a while to buy, then I spend just as much time becoming acquainted with them. I research tips on different tools as well. This idea has saved me so much time and money. I think the tools that require the most time and pratice are hand tools. It will take a bit before you can adjust, sharpen, and use many of the hand tools, so try it on scrap first, get comfortable and then go to your wood, when you know how to use the product. Anyhow, that is just an idea that has helped me out quite a bit and I hope it will help you out, even just a little. Best of luck. J

Very cool my friend! I still have plenty to do before I get a strap for my current project, but I really am digging what you have to offer. As for the ones that come in any color, is there any chance you have a picture of a white one that you could post on your page. I have seen only two white leather straps and I liked them, so I wanted to see how that one would look. If you don't have one already done in white, don't worry about it, I don't really need a picture as I have a good idea of how it would look. Also, if I got white, could the leather rings and smaller pieces be black? Would that be possible to combo like that, or would you prefer just single colors? Welcome to the forum and best of luck with your products, I really like what you have and what you can do, I hope you are able to do well! Best wishes. J

When thinking about what I would use, I thought first of a forstner bit like Oz said. I'd be slightly worried of some kind of deflection with the spade bit. Given the angle on the end of the bit and the angle you need the body, its seems possible to get an uneven hole. Like oz said I would try it out on some scrap and figure out the angle you want and make sure the spade bit doesn't get deflected at all. Let us know how it comes out. Best of luck. J

Do you have a photobucket account or something similar that can host your pics? If not I believe photobucket is free and easy to sign up, then you upload all your pictures into your account and then you can finally link it here through use of one of the buttons, I think the one with a little plus sign. You can post one actual picture in each post and you must put links to the rest. Hope this helps some, best of luck. J

You know I was really wondering how you did such a wonderful job staining that maple top that nice orange color. My answers were all solved when I saw the half empty jar of cheesy poofs, they have that wonderful absolutely permanent orange stain. The best thing about using cheesy poofs as a stain is they oil the wood at the same time, so its a one step finish plus you get lunch, win, win, win situation. I truly am now holding some resentment towards you zyon because now I'll end spending the rest of this day searching for a place that sells cheesy poofs. Some carry the puffy noodle type puffs, but not the actual cheesy poofs, sooo thank you zyon for making me go shopping when I have better things to do. As for the build, I love it. Honestly, the padauk and limba alone just wouldn't do it for me, but throw in a couple rosewood stringers and that bocote fretboard and wow, turned out amazing really! Excellent work and very well executed. Have you thought about trying some rosewood pup rings to really accentuate those stringers, I think that might look really cool. May even be able to use walnut, if you couldn't find any or didn't have enough wood for them. Anyhow, once again excellent build and wood combination, its so hard to combine such vibrant woods. L

Very cool! I couldn't imagine having that much clean, flat work area, ahh that would be nice, lol. The L style should really be handy as well. Not bad price wise considering what you'd get charged for a bench like that. I may have to get into the bench idea myself, but that'll be well down the line, especially considering, I really couldn't do any increasing in size, only just a better bench which would be very nice. For now, I'll stay ghetto and keep a big piece of MDF over the surface of scruffy bench top, lol. Definitely, post pics of the second one when you get to it. Best of luck Rick. J As for the nice big wood vises (I think they have an actual name?), once I saw someone planing a scarf joint perfectly flat with a hand plane I was sold on the concept and since that point I have seen many other uses for it, all of which are great. Being how they attach on the end of the bench and flush, makes them like an extra pair of hands, really handy in my opinion and something I would like to have in the future.

Tell me you'll put one of those wicked wood vises I see sometimes. I think those things are the bees knees seriously. Although honestly, I don't see how you could add one. That is without cutting the top back to the main frame, where you would mount the vice. Sorry, don't know why I brought that up, I guess I just like those vises. Very nice bench, I bet you'll want to spend more time building now! Cool stuff Rick, it turned out great and best of luck with your new table.

WOW! That thing turned out simply amazing!!! I must say that of all the bass designs I've seen here this has to be my absolute favorite. I don't know what it is, but it comes across simple, as in not too busy, yet it looks really hip and cool. I really like it and the wood choices. I plan on making a bass so I can learn to play it well and I just may have to go with something similar, just too cool to pass up. Anyhow, great stuff, it came out excellent. It was vey cool to watch this one come together and see the happy customer ready to jam out. I wish I would have had something like that at 12, I ended up with $20 SG from a garage sale that was beat, lol. Well, any future plans, next build yes, no ? maybe so? Best wishes and thanks for sharing that build with us. J

Yeahh, I actually just glued on my fingerboard with epoxy and it worked just fine. As for this situation, I think its just too thick and wouldn't work well or at best be a major hassle/mess. Though it depends on the level of separation, generally epoxy doesn't work well for gluing tight spaces like cracks and such. It was actually the first thing that came to my mind as I actually like working with that stuff, but then I realized it may not be the best choice here. J

Just for fun, do exactly what you did with the test for sound right after you are done with the finish!! I'm curious of how much that will affect your sound on that build. I know it will affect it, but I just wonder if it will be noticeable, so if you have the time, try that little test. Knowing my ears, I wouldn't hear any difference, but I would bet on certain builds you could hear the difference. I believe one of the reasons good finishers are always trying to get their clear ultra thin is to prevent any loss in sound or at least less loss in sound. I'll likely try the same idea, though I'll probably end up doing it with some crappy stock pups I have laying around because I won't have enough money for pups after I buy all my finishing equipment. Anyhow, the builds looking great. I'm having a tough time now because I told myself that I would do some type of LP, PRS single cut design for my next build, but that is looking so good I may have to make something similar. Please keep the progress pics coming, I'm glad you got the bridge all hookup nice. Can't wait to see this one all finish my friend, keep up the great work. J

Ah, told you my brain was fried, I just read that right before posting and it didn't even click. Is this going to be natural finish or paint? I went back and looked at your latest build which says some santos mahogany, which can be finished beautifully either way, so I was curious. If you have no other options and you must move one of the routes, could you move the neck pickup down a bit? I'm just curious because if you find no options, it would be much nicer to move the pickup route instead of the trem route, ya know. If it is painted you could hide the whole movement, plus the neck pickup ring and the end of the fretboard will cover much of the fill, if you had to do this, which hopefully you won't. So, in other words, I have no advice or ideas, sorry! I guess you went through all the ideas I had, already. My only final suggestion would be to wait and build another mahogany body for this neck and then use that body for another neck. I know this may not be possible, but at least with another body you avoid having to do any nasty fills. Best of luck and I hope you find some solution to the problem. There are a lot of smart luthiers here, hopefully someone can come up with something. J

AT first I assumed bolt on and realized it probably wasn't hence the question. However, seeing as you haven't glued it in yet, you may still have some options, though I am unsure exactly. My initial though when I was thinking bolt on was to cut the neck pocket 1/2 inch longer. You could just realign the template, but move it down a half inch, so the bottom of the neck pocket get routed 1/2 inch more, this will in turn move your nut 1/2 closer to the floyd and give you the room for proper intonation/saddle adjustment. Its just a thought though, I'd assume you could take a 1/2 inch off the heel as well, either way I'd imagine it would solve the problem, though you need to watch neck angle when changing anything here. Depending on where you are at and what you have done, this seems as though it would work, but I cannot be certain unless I had it in front of me, especially since I'm in the middle of my finals and my brain hurts. A 1/2 inch isn't too drastic to change, but I would wait and see if there are better ideas, personally, if I could do it I would rather lengthen the neck pocket than fill the trem route, and reroute it. Again, it depends on certain things, but I figured I'd mention it and see what you think. I hope you can figure it out without too much serious problems. Let me know what you think, best of luck. J

So, you placed the top most screws of the floyd at 25" or did you line up the spot where the strings meet the saddles at 25"? If you lined up the saddles at 25" you should be perfectly fine, but it sounds like this isn't the case, which would leave you the 1/2 inch short. Is this a set neck or bolt on? I'll go check your other thread, but it would help if others knew which type of neck it was. Best of luck. J

Is that the new style "gut cut" for acoustic playing Sumo wrestlers? Wicked idea!

I think what Jon was saying is that if you load some Titebond into the gaps, you would be trying to glue two surfaces of old dry glue and not two clean wood surfaces. Titebond is an excellent wood glue, but probably wouldn't work well at all gluing two old dry glue surfaces. If it was a crack in the wood or something, it would be better as they would be two clean surfaces, but a separation isn't the same and I don't see titebond holding well here. So, if titebond was to be used, the fretboard would need to come off completely and the surfaces cleaned. J

Looking good! I like the design and how well you planned out the build, I find that to be vital. In the project I am working on, if I had not planned it all out ahead of time, I would have been screwed on using tom style bridge as the stud would have been too close to the electronics cavity and actually to fix this flaw I didn't move the cavity(I couldn't), instead I moved one of the little ears inside the cavity to the spot where the stud would be that way there was enough wood there. You're right in that without a bandsaw, that will be a bit tricky. I recently needed a new jigsaw and bought a Hitachi, I never intended to spend what I did for a jigsaw considering I can do plenty with my bandsaw, but I was glad I did, that little thing is pretty great. I forget the exact cutting width it can take, but I know its upwards of maybe 3 inches. You could easily find even better jigsaws than that and should be able to cut your body well enough and router it after. For the neck blank you could table saw off the extra on the back. I never thought a jigsaw could ever do such a thick cut until recently, may not be a super vertical clean cut, but should be good enough to then take a router to and in the shaper curves of the body just make a couple holes with a drill press, so you can avoid overloading the jigsaw. Anyhow, those are just some thoughts on your predicatment as I had ran into this issue quite a bit until I got my bandsaw, which I now love. If you haven't figured it all out anyway, I hope that helps. Best of luck to you. J

Very cool stuff Mike! I really like how the blog is done and how often you take pics in the process. I try to do the same thing taking pictures at every step regardless of importance or difference, I just like to see them and it shows how much work goes into a build. The wood looks beautiful and is going make an excellent looking guitar, can't wait to see it all together. As for your blog, when you said that you missed the bookmatch by 1/4", would this mean if you looked at the bottom where the sides meet one side would look further up. Hmm tough to explain what I mean, say there was a knot at the bottom of the bookmatched sides, when comparing them would the knot be 1/4" off (either up or down) on one of the sides. I'm not very familar with acoustic builds, though I've read and looked through a number. When you mentioned the bookmatch was off, what I said above is what came to mind and I also though that you would almost never notice that difference, especially with just a 1/4". Anyhow, great stuff and keep the progress pics coming, its very enjoyable and interesting to watch the process. Best of luck. J

What Rick said is a good idea, find your best pic and make it an imagine instead of link, this will often create/spark interest. Like Rick, I actually meant to respond, like I mean to do many times and just forget. I will say at first when looking at the pics I was trippin out at the outline and I couldn't tell right away what was going on. All in all, they will be some great guitars, make sure you post the progress on them as they get finished. I definitely liked the Koa one, its one I would love to listen to because a piece of chambered poplar sandwiched between two pieces of Koa just sounds like a wicked combo. If you get a chance before you send it off finished try and let us know how it sounds. Another great thing is how you mentioned its light weight, I can definitely believe that and that is a great thing. Nice stuff, can't wait to see how they get personalized. J