jmrentis

Transparent white sounds great and different. What figure are you going for? I'd assume it'll be maple top? One cool thought that came to mind when you mentioned the white finish is doing some nice black accent lines as with your other ones and going even further to line pickup routes or cavities in ebony, maybe even bind it in ebony. I think that contrast would be pretty cool, but then again, I'm not buyin yet so, just day dreamin. Any more acoustics on the horizon? I really liked what you did with that last one. Very curious on the pickup thing also, keep us posted. Thanks for the info on the covers, I was curious as I have yet to cut the notch, but felt that I would need to recess below the lid to be able to get the cover out. I wasn't sure how many magnets to use and I designed the cavity prior to buying the magnets, so I made spots for 5 magnets and now I get worried I'll get a finger broken while putting the lid on, lol, those things are tough magnets. Again, thanks for the info, I might try that idea I had thought of while writing the last post, but we'll see. J

Yeah, sorry to say I had to do it also, obviously considering he has all the votes so far. I dunno, for some reason I had the urge to buy some board shorts, as that top just made me want to jump in and go swimming. Just amazing how the look of that guitar is so attractive. It's hard to take your eyes of that top, but once you do you find even more, like Daniel I'm a Limba Lover, especially black limba and that body is just primo blimba. I gotta say though, it was another crazy month. I can't tell if PG has a bunch more talented builders or if everyone finished around the same time. The last two months have had so many more than I remember any month having, makes it better I think. Seriously, every single guitar this month had something I just loved, but Marcovis' guitar just had everything I loved. Superb work guys and keep cranking out the string sticks as they are always inspirational. J

Very nice looking inlays and very nice on the inlay job. I've been planning on the same side dots, seen quite a bit of that round here and I just love how it looks. I don't know that I've seen the actula inlays like that and I must say I really like them. AT first I though it might be even better with a thicker aluminum ring, but the inlays are already perfect size and using smaller abalone might take away from the look, so I think your choices were excellent. Well, it's really looking great, congrats. What did you use to inlay, glue wise? Came out really nice, especially considering its maple, which shows flaws more easily. J

Holy wow! That turned out much better than I expected from the progress pics. The theme really came together well I think. Inlays look great as do the pickups. Hey, I even learned what some of the notes on a fretboard are between the numbered and lettered one! Well great stuff Russ, it looks amazing. What was the build time on that sucker? PS: On the notches for the cavity plates, do you actually make it recess below the inside of the lid or just enough to pry it open,leaving the cavity completely enclosed? Just curious as those magnets are way stronger than I anticipated and I'm wondering if I will be able to even open the cover without recessing below the lid. I'd rather not have any opening though. Hmmm. Just thought of an idea, I might notch the side of the lid where the recess is, so I can get a fingernail in there to pop it open, which enables me to avoid the opening. Anyhow, great work Russ. What next on the agenda? Any concepts in the works? Acoustic or electric?

There are actually a few glue threads, where they are all discussed quite heavily and intensely and with the same outcome as stated above, Titebond over GG. Do you know of the Rockler in Clairemont Mesa(Clairemont Mesa Blvd.). I go there often to just look around for new toys and they actually offer a lot of stuff that is helpful in guitar building. Anyhow, just an FYI for you, the guys there know a lot about woodworking in general as well and can be of some help, none that I have met has built a guitar though. I also know of some decent wood places, including a new one that has some good prices and selection.

Throw some mahogany outside and tell the bees to make some cool figure in it. Heck if they're gonna hang around, you might as well put them to work. Never know maybe you'll get some honey comb figure mahogany. The look of that ambrosia maple is very nice, I've seen it numerous times, but that stuff looks extra nice for whatever reason. Very nice creamy maple with very crisp discolored sections, it's like the contrast is greater than stuff I've seen before. I dunno, for some reason it looks really nice, maybe I just haven't seen any in a bit. Cool stuff Mike.

Very nice, classy looking guitar! I've actually looked a lot at the polycrylic and decided not to for now, until I knew and heard more about it. Honestly, it looks very nice, but I'm glad you mentioned your thoughts on it and plastic look. It looks great regardless and I'm also glad to see how well the color turned out using some trans tint as this is probably what I'll grab, though as with you I'll probably play around with the color. I also must say that your use of that one-piece mahogany grain is simply genius. I love how it fits the body shape. Great stuff Mike. J

Wheeew! That looks amazing!! I love zircote especially as a fretboard or acoustic back and sides. It's such a great looking wood and I agree that the flecking looks very cool, makes it stand out among zircote. I also like your inlays and it follows my code on using minimal inlays on beautiful woods like zircote, coco, anything flatsawn. To me it's so much better than using some blocks that will cover half the board, tough thing is blocks are one of my favs, but I will stick to the little code I made up for myself: little inlays on amazing looking stuff and whatever I want on normal quartered woods and ebony. Anyhow, it's looking great and I can't wait to see how this turns out. Best of luck. J

Dang man, that damn near looks like an overlay perry!!! Excellent inlay. I like how well your name fits your headstocks too, works very well. And just now I noticed what your headstock shape is! It's a mean ass great white shark about to chomp down. I think thats quite fitting considering the continent you live on ; ) Seriously, take a look at your headstock, its the front half of a great white fins and all. Best headstock of all time, now that I see a shark ; ) You or craig should make a crazy inlay design on one just for the hell of it. Good stuff perry. J

As Greg said and almost every member here and at most places will tell you, avoid anything he writes, it's garbage. Also, rejecting what crackpot Ed Roman says is much different than rejecting what the top luthiers around the world say. If you had 10 or more widely known luthiers that agreed with what you and he said, then you could make a reasonable argument for your case, otherwise it doesn't work. You said yourself that you are just starting and your only reference is Ed Roman, that's not a great place to start nor a stable ground for making an argument. Ed Roman is good though, at getting people to believe his stuff. Lastly, I did not understand your last statement and I'm not quite sure the word "sympathy" is what you are looking for. I do not know what you were trying to say there, but I don't think that was the word you were looking for. J

Wow, good call on getting opinions, I've been staring at it for a while now and still can't come to a solid answer. I think it does look wicked as is, but as rick said it might look with that stain/burst you suggested, I'm just trying to envision that stain/burst with the natural edge binding and if that would work. It would likely make the binding(faux) stand out a bit more, it probably wouldn't hurt the look though. Mostly pointless, but what are the knobbies and pickup rings going to be? The only reason I can think of that I would not like the burst would be the horn area. With the guitar being such a nice light color, to me the tea burst will likely look too dark around the horns due to the steepness of the carve. Just my own little mind glitch though, others may like this. Of course you could always shoot it lighter and thinner around the horns, but often I just find the horn curves on this type of shape/carve look darker, like the absorb more of the stain or something(Which I highly doubt, but thats how it looks to me). EIther way these are very meaningless things, meaning that it will look completely wicked either way. Best of lucky perry and keep the excellent work going. J

+1 Somehow, his ridiculous information is thick on the internet. I know when needing to do my first repair, I found dozens of pages from him and with little knowledge of luthiery at the time, I found his stuff to be mostly bogus and luckily in my search I found this site. This site not only has some good information, but some amazing builders whose stuff would be extremely tough to beat in looks and in structural quality. As stated, do not look to Ed Roman for any type of luthiery information, he tends to make stuff up that makes no sense, in order to sell his products. I just want to make clear in your post, you say you are just now starting to work on guitars meaning you haven't built a guitar yet or just a few? But you have worked on woods and done joints for many years. I was just curious how you've come to the conclusion that epoxy and glues like titebond, are tone robbing adhesives, when you've only just started building guitars. Thats a pretty bold claim, especially when you look to luthiers around the world and what they prefer. It just seems unlikely that someone who has just started to build guitars has a better understanding and idea than the people that have been doing it all their lives and have individually compared each and every type of glue joint themselves within actual guitars. By all means, woodworking experience is something that is a huge benefit, I only wish that I had more wood experience, but making claims that go against what is done by the most experienced and qualified luthiers seems ridiculous to me and I have such little experience compared to half the people that have responded to your post. J

Hmm, I think the 13 string bass should be added, what do you guys think?

Whadda bout ol' senior spokeshave? Any fans??

It's such a tough scenerio really, as an artist the last thing you want to do is compromise your art to sell. I don't believe that part of being an artist is necessarily needing to be commercial. In many cases yes you'll need to be, but thats not the true definition of being artist, thats more an entrepreneur, at least to me. Many, maybe most, true artists aren't concerned with selling their stuff, but rather they worry about producing beautiful art that is not compromised by selling or opinions. Often selling their art would be considered selling out as many people in the music industry coined the term. However, there are also people that want to make and sell their art and others that just want to sell and just design things to be sold. The last person will be the most successful by a long stretch. For the others that enjoy making art and trying to sell I believe it will be very hit and miss, mostly miss. In my mind when making your own art, you are making something different from everything else;unique and personal, so it's very hard to make something that generally appeals to people, your sense of art and taste could be completely unique, in that no one else will like it, which makes it tough to sell without compromise. I agree that your stuff is great Jehle. I truly wish you the best in selling your stuff and I bet there is a niche out there for you, but it's not an easy or dependable or profitable one in my opinion. If I were you, I might start trying new avenues like what Russ does, showing his stuff in art exhibits and such. Try to get your work established and known as art before trying to sell it as such. While your guitars might play like a dream I don't see too many people looking for a recording or gig axe wanting to buy your style of guitar, it may come across more like a gimmick to them, instead of a playable axe, which is why I would search for more artistic types of people. Just a thought. I do agree with the mindless drones/brainwashing point and this points floods every aspect of life. As stated before I would continue your work and just search for new avenues and communities to find one that your work appeals to. Don't compromise your work, well don't compromise your art, if you want to sell generic bodies, or full on customs, then do so, but don't compromise your art to do so. If anything sell bodies and customs to establish a name and rep, then introduce your art line for connoisseurs of music and art. I really wish the best and hope you can find a medium in your life bewteen selling and creating art. I feel lucky that I have no desire to sell anything, which enables me to lay back and enjoy the process of building and the outcome. Well, good luck Jehle, I hope things change for you. One idea I had for you: Maybe start doing semi-custom cigar box guitars, it'd be like expanding your CB guitars to custom CB guitar, which might help get the concept and desire for them out there. Make a site that says you will make a semi-custom guitar with whatever cigarbox the customer sends in. That way they can send the one they want to you and you can work your magic. Obviously, at the bottom say, "upon approval, requires photograph of cigarbox. See how many if any calls you get in a year or two and go from there, adjusting strategies, advertising, and ideas. J

Mate, i bought two DVD quality cameras, and two tripods last year, with the intention of doing some videos. If i wasnt always in a mad rush to finish off each guitar for a special gig/tour/show, id be able to do the videos i planned Well, instead of enjoying your B-Day today, why not get to work and start making us those entertaining videos. jk Happy B-Day mate

Cool stuff Muzz and it looks nice. Once you showed a pic of the small section you wanted to route a similar idea came to me(like yours). No need to make a system for the whole headstock. It may seem at the time so pointless to take the time to setup that jig as you did, but once that router tips real bad and leaves a big dip and you have to take a bunch off the headstock, you tend to feel different and wish you'd spent the 5 extra minutes. Good stuff and best of luck on the rest. J

I saw that too, solid mahog top, doesn't really make any sense. I agree with the group, that the finish looks decent and actually I quite like it. Nice transparent blue with cool grain, very nice. I'd leave it as well till you really mash it up, which should be a while. I've taken an acoustic overseas and they walked it on the plane by hand and walked it off as well. They have a special section for awkward shaped or valuable items I believe and they will walk them on and off the plane if asked. I believe you will need to fill out a little paper saying how much it's worth. You shouldn't have many problems. I took mine in a hardcase which saves it almost perfectly. Best of luck and congrats on the guitar. J

Wow really cool Padauk for certain! Padauk had actually crossed my mind since I know you've cut up plenty of that stuff, but I just couldn't get past how light it was and how interesting. Just as purpleheart I knew there were different shades, but that stuff just looks amazing all around and different than any I've seen. J

Holy Wow Jon, those are some wicked boards. After my experiences with Zebra, I really like the wood, not working with it so much, but the look especially with certain finishes on it. Shellac looks nice, even just an epoxy grainfill makes it look beautiful. I still am looking forward to using some wenge, I have a very strange wood combo concept that I might try using Wenge as a fretboard. This is sad, usually I can figure woods out, but what is that last one? There are so many woods running through my head. I don't think that it is, but it almost looks like some very clean canary wood, which would be really cool. I can't really tell at all what it is, but it is beautiful. Very nice stuff as usual Jon. I'm glad to hear you'll be back to work soon and am glad things went well. Have a great week Jon, I'll get some pics out to you soon, they are mostly all uploaded finally. J

Yeah, I saw a few for $30-$40 the other day. Last week when doing some templates my old passed down jigsaw finally bit the dust and started spraying plastic pieces everywhere and smoking. Anyway, I must say that I was shocked at the prices I found when looking for a new one. The first few I looked at went well upward of a c-note. I found a few cheaper ones, but even those were running closer to 40-60, with just a couple lower. Considering what I could do with the passed down jigsaw from the 70's, I'd imagine those $30 jobbies would work just fine. Something that just came to mind, when cutting a body or whatever, first make a couple holes with a forstner bit in the sharp curve areas, this way when you get to them you can just openly rotate without having to cut a curve because as russ said this can cause problems like angled cuts. I do this on my cavity type templates.

I just recently had to get some opinions on this myself. It seemed that many people carve last and prefer it that way, but a number also prefer to carve early which is what I decided was the best route for me. Mattia answered the CF/carve order question before I had even had a chance to ask. He said to epoxy in the CF rods before doing any carving. Then mostly carve the neck, lets it sit for a little bit, then do the fretboard installation. I believe thats what the process was. I recently did my CF rods with epoxy which worked fine,even though I used some crummy epoxy that made the process miserable. I've since switched epoxies to west systems which is much thinner, slower, and am very pleased with it. I also plan on using epoxy for fretboard installation upon the suggestion of several people whose advice I trust. Epoxy will avoid adding any excess water to the neck at that point, whereas woodglues will add a little bit of water. So, epoxy in the CF rods and then carve. At least thats what I've decided on for the process. Also, always do all your routing for CF rods and truss rods before any tapering, cutting or carving. If you taper before you route, it can be a real pain in the arse to route channels. Mattia will have some better info, but thats whats I've collected as the process I want to use. J

I might be tempted to rig yourself up a table real quick for that thing. I've had a couple wobbles in attempting to route on super skinny things and a table would have solved everything, I'm sure you could come up with a table design without too much problems. The other idea is to take a nice sized piece of 1/2 or 3/4 inch MDF for a template and just cut a channel around the headstock design so the router still have wood on both sides. Hmm, I can't explain this well. Maybe I'll make a crummy picture. The headstock came out nice and clean. I've seen endless restorations on this and on other sites and all of a sudden while reading this thread I realised how fun it would be to do one, and this restore had only just begun. I have no idea why now or why your thread triggered the idea in me, but I would now be happy to run across some beat up axe to play with, weird, well thanks I guess, lol. Best of luck. J EDIT:Here is another masterpiece from my 1st grade painting skills. Anyhow, you basically just cut a channel around the shape instead of cutting the template all the way out. It would take a few more minutes to make and as long as your router can reach the otherside you are fine, though the tighter the better as it could bend, but with 3/4 MDF it should be fine and prevent any wobble. I really don't like any freehand routing. I always prefer a template. I still think a router table would be best though.

I use my old cruddy camera out in the shop and never get the quality I want, but thats ok. Last night when getting a few pics of the finished cavity and cavoty cover I did, I turned off the main lighting, leaving only a faint light behind me, enough for the camera to focus on the guitar and I actually got some better shots as the flash really brought the picture to life, without washing it out or glaring too badly. Jon's tip was good too using a solid background helps that way there is only one or two distances for the camera to play with. That tele looks freakin amazing! I can't believe it actually looks better than the pic shows. I mean I believe it because that always seems to be the case, but it already looks so good I can't imagine it being better than that. The finish reminds me almost of abalone in color. Really cool stuff. I can't get enough of that picture, I keep going back to look at it, its amazing. J

I'll need to verify this, but I believe what you want to use to clean up epoxy is acetone, before it has fully cured. Again, I'll need to check, but I am fairly sure. I've heard people mention alcohol, but I tend to use that for shellac only. If you do decide to use epoxy for other parts of the build try west systems, use the resin(105) with the slow hardener(206) and get the pump set for it. The 206 will give you a good 20-25 minutes to work and it is nice and thin, you'll be surprised how thin. It is also crystal clear. I tried a few other types and they were all miserable. Keep that in mind if you like epoxy, oh yeah the pump set is designed so you use one pump from each can to get a perfect 5:1 ratio everytime. Very nice and easy. Great stuff. Best of luck. J EDIT: You can use diluted ammonia and water or other detergents to clean it up off your skin or alcohol (denatured alcohol). I read soap and water works somewhere but that hasn't worked for me either. I believe there are products specifically made to clean up resin off your skin, but I don't know any off hand. I knew I had read acetone works well for epoxy as someone here mentioned using it to thin epoxy and for other reasons. I've used it for cleaning up little drips/runs of epoxy and it works fine. Acetone isn't a good idea for skin obviously, try the detergent type stuff including ammonia and water, if not working well for you, go to the denatured alcohol. That should take care of it. Hope that helps. J