jmrentis

Thats basically how it works everywhere. Not many places sell little offcuts as it would be pointless for them to do so as not many people have use for such a small piece of wood and if they do have small pieces you'll possibly pay more as they'll charge a set price over a board foot price. I have an exotics place that sells offcuts that could be used as fretboards and I have another place that will chop a plank for you, if there is at least 5 feet left on the plank afterwards, which is unusual for a place to do. Just how it is at many and maybe most lumber yards, just so you know, which is what motivated me to buy a bandsaw because I felt so limited on woods. Anyhow, if you can it is much cheaper to buy those planks, if you can accurately cut them and make good use of the wood. I know I was a little bummed last time I went out for some nice curly myrtle, the boards were longer than I had expected maybe 10-14 feet long,8/4 and about 7-8" wide, at least the ones with a decent cut and good figure and I didn't have quite enough money at the time, at least not enough to buy the wood and buy gas for the ride home. Anyway, the fretboard is just a small piece of wood on your guitar, doesn't mean you'll find little pieces often and if you do, its not always going to be suited for a guitar.

It fades as its UV sensitive. You can help preserve it by using some UV protective finish, though I don't know that will stop it or just greatly slow it down. I've seen a counter top of some 15-20 years old purpleheart I believe and it has faded pretty good under some indoor lights. I still believe there was some purple in it as it was like a burgandy brown almost, but darker. Tough to describe, but it looked far from what you normally see. Aside from finishing without UV, you could always tint your finish so that it looked more red or just darker or something. I dunno, I think it looks great with purpleheart, I wonder if the metal forums called him a wuss because of the purple, lol, jk matt. It looks good and hope to see it finished. Its reminded me to pull out my chunk of purpleheart and start dulling my blades with it, I got a cool idea in my head for it and I'm gonna name it the pheart guitar. I wrote that abbreviation a long while back without even knowing how funny it was until someone pointed it out. J

Some people also get or make templates on their computers using the specfic distances, which can be used precisely. Then you would just print it out as a template for cutting. If you check out the stewmac fret calculator you can see why being precise is important, it gives an example that shows that even being off 10 thousands and improperly scribing the lines you can end up with your last few frets up to an 1/8th inch off, which is a big deal. Much of that error though is speaking of marking from fret to fret, which is the wrong way, its best to mark from the nut to the fret for each one, may be more of a pain, but it is more accurate. StewMac Calculator Best of luck and glad to hear you are grabbing some books, it will help and I am willing to lay some money down that like someone above suggested, you won't only be making one instrument. Once you get all the concepts down you will realize how many cool ideas and woods you weren't able to use on the one build and will end up making a bunch. Again good luck. J To get that number I posted earlier and the note about accuracy, just calculate something in the stewmac calculator. I had done the example with 27 frets and a 25.5 scale in inches on an electric guitar. Those inputs will give that number I posted. Along side of the output you'll see the little *note* about accuracy. Best of luck.

Ehh, don't worry about it. I have days like that all the time, so just return the favor when I blank out on something, which will no doubt be soon. J

He is speaking about angling the bass side down an 1/8". It enables you to get the intonation right and still have plenty of room for adjustment. Thats why you will see many bridges that look crooked, thats the angle I believe Maiden is speaking of. J

I'm not quite sure what you were speaking about with the bridge and pick up distances. If in that picture it is in the proper spot, I think it looks great. How did you want it exactly? It doesn't seem like you could place it that much closer to the fretboard and moving it down just puts it up against the bridge. I think its fairly well centered between the two in the pic you posted, but like I said, I probably am not understanding what you were going for. Anyhow, I think it looks great. What you can do is finish it without any UV protection and let it get plenty of light, in no time flat that purple will fade out to a darker brown ; ) Well best of luck matt, whether you finish or not, it was a sick project. J

+1 to what Rick said and G. There really should be quite a bit of research done before even thinking about buying the wood. Trust me, you will want to know these things before starting otherwise you'll probably end throwing away time, money and probably some nice wood as well. You should definitely get that book and spend some time searching this forum for some answers, the search function will help you with that. BTW-In guitar building terms rounding or estimating out to .5" will cause you major problems, most measurements will need to be very precise. For example when doing your fretting, the position of your fret slots will need to be measured out to thousandths. Like the distance between the 26th and 27th fret on a 25.5" scale would be .319" and this needs to be accurate. Even your overall scale length needs to be much more precise than estimating within a half inch. All this can be found in a book and researching forums and such. Just be patient and start researching, there's more to it than you would imagine. Everything from the condition of the wood to setting neck angles and scale lengths. Best of luck and enjoy the forum. There is a ton of info all throughout the site and a book will get you on your way. J

I think that is the best question in building guitars and one that has no real answer that I have found, only preferences really. Some of the order is set in stone, but much of it depends on many different things and what one prefers and what is possible with the tools you have. I spent more time planning the order of the steps, I swear and I ended up having to change things as I went when I realized that I couldn't do this with the top on or I had to do the binding before this, but after that and so on, lol. How did you mark out the pup routes and neck route and bridge posts, it seems they are all apart of the same center line your neck should be on, should be fairly easy to line up. The way to keep it easy and precise is templates and center lines. Your best bet for the bridge and stop will be a drill press. Best of luck. J

Thats definitely a good point on wood prices, however, I think this topic is mainly in regard to certain sellers obviously overcharging when you can find the same wood at numerous other places at a reasonable price. Nice wood isn't cheap and restrictions and disasters will bring it up, but there are still people out there that will still overcharge as they know they can dupe the newbs. J

Like Dean, I have found a few places that I trust and funny enough none of them have any "instrument wood" sections, out of my local wood shops, though I can't always find exactly what I want at those. I think these rip offs happen in other aspects of luthier products as well as I quite often find the same products elsewhere for much cheaper. I don't mind paying extra for tools, if they are 100% solely developed or at least improved for luthier use as these are specialized and this goes for wood as well. However, its highly irritating to find the same product down the street sold as a normal item and for a 1/3 or less of the price. I am really looking forward to starting some acoustics soon and as pointed out, I will need to spend a lot of time understanding wood quality and grading(more for sound boards). I know general stuff and am seeing runout and such now, however, the exact difference in grading is still slightly blurry and this I expect comes with experience, meaning seeing plenty of it graded properly. I will however most likely be buying from some companies and/or people I completey trust. I truly enjoy buying within the small community of luthiers and will do so when I have the chance, I've been able to buy all types of different things from book matched maple tops to bone and buffalo horn nuts which I just got from Woodenspoke which were great. Hopefully, this becomes more common. Its sad though, that these people pull this kind of crap. I have no problems paying for high figure stuff priced accordingly. However taking some "run of the mill" (how did that saying come to be) wood and labeling it instrument grade because its a clear or slightly curly is frustrating. I've said this numerous times, but I wish that before starting building I would have had some experience in woodworking as many of these issues are more easily avoided. I know I still could easily get ripped off on wood, though in general I have a ballpark on wood, so I would know between complete crap lumber and instrument woods, but I'm still learning to see grading better. I have seen the price differences mentioned quite often and know now to look around and I have general info on wood prices a BF down pretty well. In local terms I went out and got lists on the prices per board foot for each species, I have something like 5 or more wood shops within an hour of my house. Then I compared them, checked out online stores, not ebay, and watched for what others paid and what their wood looked like and got some general ideas. I started looking at wood right when I started researching guitars and I log onto to numerous wood sites every week to satisfy my wood fetish and with all that I know I still need plenty more experience, though I can easily dinstiguish between lumber and instrument grade, but accurate grading will still take more time. In other words I can see why they view luthiers as an easy target as there are no doubt 100x more newbies than experienced builders and they won't be able to see the difference or won't think a price is too high. Anyhow, thanks for the headsup and experience, I think this will be very valuable to numerous people here. J

I know I have seen another thread going over some similar question, but I have no idea if you could find it by searching. I believe a few people from that particular thread mentioned the preference of superglue for holding the nuts in. All suggested just a tiny amount, so in the future if you need to remove it, all it requires is a quick tap. Some people mentioned using one small drop and others liked two tiny drops one at each end. I believe in Dan Erlewines book he mentions using a water-soluable glue like titebond, but he thins it to 3 parts water to one part glue so its not so strong, you don't want to ruin your neck when trying to remove the thing in the future. I think thats why many people like just a tiny amount of CA because you can just bust it loose with a quick hit, I would imagine more cleanly than you could with titebond. I haven't tried testing the difference yet, so I don't have a personal opinion, though I go with just a tiny amount of CA(superglue). As for shaping there are a few places to look, I know stewmac has a page on this which is of help and so does this sites(PG) main page. Stewmac Nut info. That'll get you started, though getting a book is very helpful and will give you a lot of great info on stuff like this. Also, something that you should remember is that the slot shouldn't be deep at all, certain people have suggested different stuff, many like half the string to be sitting above the nut when you are done and others like about 1/3 of the string above the nut when your done. Just make sure your strings are sitting in a deep slot, you'll have many problems. Best of luck.

You could also just use some shellac, same difference essentially. I bought of the zinnser sanding sealer and it is just a 2lb cut of shellac. The special thing about that stuff is that it is a 2lb cut of shellac that has a shelf life of close to 3 years, which is what separates it from regular shellac, I don't know how they do it, but I've heard rumors they are working with the keebler elves on that. One caution, don't buy any cans or premade shellac aside from that "sanding sealer" by zinnser. I've been told by a few people that canned shellac is miserable stuff, even zinnsers stuff. The sanding sealer seems fine though, I've tried it on a few things and have had no issues as of yet and should work just fine as a sealer. So, try and get that or just find someplace where you can buy some shellac flakes and make your own shellac, which is recommended over even the zinnser sanding sealer. Best of luck, hope you can find something. J

Cool little headstock route. I like how it is as well, but I'd imagine you could put something in there to make it look even better. Something with a lot of contrast might look cool like a nice chunk of ebony, which I would personally pick, I think that would look great. Another idea might be using some mirror, only problem is how deep the route is, might be too deep to simply place some mirror in, but I don't know exactly what is used normally. Cool looking route though, keep updates coming on that. J

As for the pencil problem, like Setch said keep them very sharp for marking out precise distances, but another idea which I prefer for this precise of measurement is using a mechanical pencil. I believe the average size of the lead is 0.5mm and you'll almost never be using that whole thickness, so your lines and marks should be well smaller than that. I actually prefer to use the thicker 0.7 or 0.9 leads and just slightly sharpen them up which takes all of two seconds. Besides being slightly more precise and easier to control you're also likely to use less force which makes cleaning up marks or erasing easier/less work. Someone here at PG mentioned this once and I thought it was a great idea. Try it out, seriously, its nice. Just have one on hand for your precise lines. In almost all my pics you'll see one in the background somewhere. J

I like the cool figure 8 in the dead center of the headstock. This guitars name should be Eight, as in the Eighth Deadly Sin, because that guitar is so sick it should be a sin. Nice work! I've really liked all your builds, just great clean work that is near flawless everytime. Jason

Does anyone have a Humidifier? I swear my area hasn't hit above 20% in a week and should actually go down a little more this coming week as the Santa Ana's pick up again. If you want just ship your stuff out here, I'll open the box for about 20 minutes and then ship it back, you should be good to go then and have a week before it regains its moisture, haha, plus the weight to ship back will be like a tenth of what it would to ship here. I swear I could dry a Redwood trunk in a week out here. Anyhow, cool map and good point I always avoid doing almost anything on those humid days just to avoid any complications that may occur, especially since those days are out of the ordinary around here. J

Groove w/ lid on, Groove w/ lid off That is how I did mine and I will say that I like it a lot. It looks bigger than it actually is in that picture because I have a thin epoxy layer on it. I did that so when doing some of my final sanding I don't dip into that groove and change it's shape or scuff it because it was perfect and finished. It's just a very thin layer and will actually match later on when I epoxy grainfill the whole back. I actually really like that 2nd pic because it gave me an idea of what my maple will look like with some finish, its really nicely figured. The zebra should look really nice when done as well, I was surprised at the how much different it looks when cleared, Zebra. Anyhow J.pierce, I understood what you meant about leaving one corner without support to pop the cover out, but I did not quite understand the other idea(recessing more). I haven't slept in two days so that could be why. The corner popping idea may work, but I would be worried about bending or warping or even messing up the finish somehow. Those magnets are strong, I think the popping method would be fine if you used 2 magnets and left one corner without one(the corner that pushes in). Since you wouldn't be taking the cover off much, it would probably work just fine. Personally, I wouldn't want to do that because I would somehow end up dropping the cover and damaging it when trying to take it off, I do stupid stuff like that. Anyhow, its all about personal preference really, I'd bet you could come up with numerous ways to get those things off. I personally like the method I copied, which is same as Russ did his. I think you should try out the popping out design on your next build and see how you like it and how well it works, I'd bet most people would prefer it over a notch and it sounds like it should work. J

I'm not sure what the common reason is for magnets on the cover, but I just did it because I think it looks cool without any screws. I think without any screws and matching grain it looks pretty cool. I'd imagine a number of people here would like the magnet cover because they love to tinker, adjust, switch, and mess with electronics and sounds. Anyhow, I just did it for the looks really. J BTW:Xanthus- I actually left the top off until I had sanded in that groove to get the lid off because as you would expect there would have been no way to get it off otherwise, haha, seriously. With the top off I just pushed through the topside of the body to get the lid off. I don't know if I will go down to 3 or 4 magnets for the next cover. I know 3 is enough, heck I bet two is plenty, but I don't want it to be uneven or have gaps, so I will at least do 3. I think my next design will have one magnet at the middle angle area and then one towards each corner of the flat edge.

Yeah, I hadn't bought the magnets yet when I designed the layout of the cavity ledge and amount of tabs. I could of sworn I'd had those types of magnets before(for something else), but as soon as I tried to pull them apart I just started laughing and realized I didn't need that many. I was shocked at how tough they were. I actually do have a nice little groove to pull the cover off, I personally think they look kinda neat. I haven't seen many, but recently Russ posted a pic of his and I really liked how it looked. I had always planned on having the little groove as I had no idea of any other way to get the cover off. I wanted to do the groove with my smallest drumsander on a drill, but I practiced on scrap and it came out too uneven, so I just took that drum and sanded it in by hand, worked perfectly. The cover was a bit tough to get off at first, but I put a little epoxy over the inside of the cover to make it look nice and the magnet strength is now perfect. Shaving off a sliver of the body would be nice and easy, if you have that big of resaw or if you do it before joining a two piece body. There is also another way to do it with certain bits and such, but I don't know that you method fully and wasn't sure if you could get away with magnets by going that route? There might be another thread from a couple months ago where a lot about cavity covers was discussed, I might search for it later, but I know there is something that would help. J

I know there is a few ways to do this, however, I did mine probably the most difficult way as I needed to thin the wood anyway and it was the safest way. So my body wood needed to be thinned by about 3/8", I marked out the area where my cavity would be and using the router sled jig, I routed off the 3/8" in thickness except for where the cavity would be. Then I took a Japanese saw and cut this 3/8" platform off the body. By cutting the wood right where the cover would go I had matching grain. I lost a little thickness from cutting and sanding it flat and also felt that it might warp on its own, so I laminated the zebra cover with some Jatoba in the middle and some scrap figured maple on the back, which somewhat matched the inside of the cavity where you could see the back side of my maple top. All in all it was a process, one that can be done much easier, though considering I needed take some thickness off the body anyway and I wanted to use magnets to hold the cover on, my method worked alright. Ghetto Method Cover Laminates Matching Grain Cover Epoxy Grainfilled, magnets installed Inside cover As I said there are other ways that are better, easier, but since I was lacking tools and needed to take some thickness, this method worked just fine for me. In the future I might try new ways, though honestly I really like the look of binding the covers or the cavity route, so I may try this in the future, with or without matching grain. Best of luck to you. Jason

I'd also bet those same people are giving their tuning machines bad reviews as well!

Not certain but maybe, Off Topic? Meaning that cool little trick isn't directly related to the question at hand. I swear everytime I feel like I have a grip on all the different hip internet words someone posts a bunch more that I have never seen. So, to all those people QUWGHFUOQHE. J

Wow, that stuff turned out better than I expected it might. While buying some different finishing stuff to test out, I actually picked up a can of that exact stuff to test out, it just looked and seemed like something that would be well suited for guitar finishing. I have yet to run the test, but it looks as though it would definitely do the job. I don't really know why I grabbed it, all I need is a gun and I can spray as I already have a compressor. I'm sure I'll use up that can on smaller projects though, either way glad to see it turned out so well, I've seen that stuff at every hardware store I've been to lately. I guess no one has an excuse now for poor finish jobs, lol. Nice finish SP. J

Just so you know, I really dig the mistake on the back, its almost like your signature mark or something. Honestly if possible I would so something like that for each one you make. I don't know that I have ever seen anything like that and think it is very cool, just my opinion. Anyhow, its looking great and keep the progress pics coming. I can see you have good taste, PRS guitars and New Castle! While I was still drinking if I didn't feel like it was a Guinness night, I brought out the New Castle, lol, good stuff. J

im with you! they may not be 'knots'; but that disruption in the grain is not 'prefered' in your fingerboard;but part of building your own is to stray from 'standards' i prefer straight grained anything in fb; but even ive gone way beyond that for the sake of looks! I won't argue with that, I know from a friend I was to get some flatsawn coco fingerboards from, just how bad they want to warp and cup. Another person I know has said the exact same thing, flatsawn coco and the like is a gamble. I definitely see the point behind using some nice straight grained material, however, I do like flatsawn material as well, it's just a risk to use it. Some flatwsawn bubinga fingerboards I had gotten from Jon has behaved fine so far, no major problems to speak of. I just don't think those "knots" are a problem in the normal sense, "knots" or not I'd imagine you run the risk either way when not using straight grained coco. Sucks too because I love the look of it. J