henrim

I love the craftsmanship in this build all the way to incredible finishing. The build is also very well documented, with sound clips too (I'll provide them in my thread too, promise! ).

Brian, pickups will be mounted after the top is glued in and i'm using standard humbuckers. The only difference to usual mount is I'll machine a custom mount piece. The mount piece has height adjustment. Pretty simple piece actually but I'll post a pic later that clarifies the principle.

It is going to be carved to follow the body shape so there is still quite a bit extra material on the cover.

Thanks for the replies! Scott, the plan is to shave the back fairly round as opposed to the top that will be almost straight. Top wood is only 10mm thick right now, so there would not be much to carve but it will likely be shaped a bit (e.g. 10mm at the center and 5mm at the edge). Charlie, thanks for the nice words. Current plan is to paint the back of the guitar white but that might still change because I really like that ash as is. Also an other reason not to paint it would be that I have always preferred to play with an unfinished neck. We'll see Today I glued the fingerboard and even remembered to put in the truss rod I drilled small holes (0,5mm) in couple of fret slots and put thin nails in to them to help keep the fingerboard in place while gluing. Had a thought about making pot knobs of padouk and aluminum tube. I had a length of aluminum tube lying around that is otherwise a good fit but has too thick walls (2mm) to my taste. I'll turn the thickness to 1mm and install a piece of padouk inside it. I made some discs of left overs with a hole saw and glued them together. I don't have a wood lathe so I'll turn them to right thickness in a metal lathe. Waiting for to be spun.

Quick update. One thing has changed from the original spec. I decided not use a 5-way rotary switch for controlling the output because the switch I have cannot be fit in to this body as the back of the body will be carved quite heavily. Or actually I will use the same switch but modified to a 3-way switch. So no coil splitting, just: Neck / Both / Bridge. Pickup holes and control cavity routed. Peg holes drilled and headstock roughly cut to shape. EDIT: Added a pic with the padauk top.

Thank you Scott, resourcefulness sounds like a good word to me. Something to live for. I've seen your single cut thread, beautifully crafted instrument and incredible polish! Cheers, Henri

Few more picks I took today. On the previous build I bent fret wire by hand. Lesson learned. I built a bender for the job. Also built a jig to route a sanding block to sand the FB. Another thing I built was a plane to plane thin strips of wood. It's based on a Stanley RB 5 (an awful tool nobody should use as block plane). Anyhow with this mod it became a decent tool for thicknessing thin stock. What I did today was I tried out an idea for mounting the pups. Edit: one more pic. Here we are today. With the most important tool in the pic. Mosquito repellent I'm located on the northern hemisphere, namely south of Finland. It's beginning of the june and we have like millions of those little suckers buzzing around here. Even inside in my shop!

Body and top rough cut. Sandwitched with a template. Routed with a template bit. The rest of the back of the body will be carved so no need to clean it more. Made a jig for neck angle and routed the neck pocket. (clamps holding the jig down were already removed before I took the pic) Planing the neck tenon to be flush with the body.

So, here we go. Headstock veneer cut (covered with tools somewhere in the top left corner of the pic). Also the FB is cut to shape and fret slots are cut into it. Gluing thin strips of padauk on both sides of the FB. Detail of the FB. Gluing headstock scarf joint. Body template cut, checking with hardware. Thicknessing the body blank. The blank was meant to be used on an other body and it was too thick for this build. Cheapskate like me what can you do. But hey, that off cut can be used to make a top for an other guitar... Cleaning up the cut.

Hi, My first post although I've been reading this forum quite a bit and even registered some time ago. I'm building my second guitar and thought publishing a few pics of the process. Or technically this is the fourth as I built two guitars 20 years ago when I was in my teens. Anyhow I did not build necks for those so I start the count from the previous build that is still waiting for a clear coat. Which will be applied once I'm done building the paint booth... So, the second build is a single cut with: - Swamp ash body with padauk top. - Set neck with scarf jointed headstock. Neck is maple and head plate is padauk. - Padauk fingerboard, 22 frets, 24,750 scale, 12" radius. Jumbo frets. - Two passive humbuckers, coils spitted with a 5-way switch and volume and tone pots. Pickups will be fixed without mounting frames, either with custom covers or "naked" (model TBD, likely NOT the EMGs shown in one of the pictures). - Tuners 3/3. I have Schaller M6 2000 and Schertler tuners in shelf. Will need to decide which ones goes in to this build. - One piece Bridge/tail piece (likely the schaller 455 as pictured) Finishing - The Back of the body and the neck will be painted off-white (actual colour TBD). - The padouk top and the head plate should match the FB somehow, so i need to do some testing whether all of them will be oiled or if I clear coat the top and the head plate and oil the FB. Clear coat, if used, will be water borne KTM-9. Right now on mobile, so pictures will follow once I'm connected to a proper network. Cheers, Henri