komodo

More. Instead of two templates, I had a wide router bit with an undersized bearing that was great for cavity cover ledges but I can’t find it. Otherwise it’s moving right along. Had to take a break and give some attention to my lovely girlfriend.

Do you mean the lack of shank in the collet? That's my starter bit to get the first few routes in with the bearing on the template. I've got a longer one in the other router (not seen) that I finish up with. I had the short bit extended it out a LITTLE farther with my pup template to get just a tad deeper til I could transition the the longer bit. One of the last trem routes on the backside - at the back of the block, gets down to almost 1-9/16 (40mm!).

Router day. Tip if you don’t know it: Make your neck pocket template, and then line it with a strip or two of tape (binding tape here). The router bearing rides on it and makes your neck pocket very tight indeed. I probably should have only used one strip here as the tape is a bit thicker. As much as I love my big Bosch plunge router, this little $10 garage sale Skil is a real trooper and real easy to handle. I’m going to wait a day to finish the German carve, so I can consider where it stops and starts.

Dunno if this is the greatest plan, but I have this sweet string retainer and thought I could fab up a steel block and mount it on top. Sort of customized RS trem. This is the raw, just after welding and rough grinding. Prob is the strings are wider, so will have to be offset from the spring/bolts. I’ll try to get a better picture of what I mean.

I usually make templates, but for the trem routes I decided to grab the Stewmac offerings. Everything is measured, and ready for routing. Also have the curved neckplate which needs relicing. Or I could do inset bezels? What say you folks?

I'm also planning my first brew in long time, as I'm getting to the bottom of the 50+ gallons I brewed a ways back. Another Belgian golden is in order, and then we will literally "pour over".

I'm working on that. According to my modus operandi, I needed another project to sidestep the project getting in the way of my main project. So, I started building the RS trem from scratch while I fix the mandolin as I build the tele. Boom.

Metal bits done, on to the woody bits. Template traced to glued up blank of white limba. Also roughed out the german carve that I’ll do with the 1/2” cove bit if a test piece looks good. I’m still planning on using the Carvin neck, but am seriously debating making another rosewood neck. Then it will be 100% scratch build. Last is a sweet little clamp I built for the mandolin repair. It pulls a cleat up on the inside of the body. You make the cleat, drill a hole in it and string a thin guitar string through it and up through a tiny hole. Glue and tighten. I didn’t invent this.

A little more heavy relicing. The shiny new Gotoh is sufficiently crustified. I’ve drilled out a vintage oxblood Daka-ware Tele knob, glued in a threaded brass insert to use on a 3-way switch. The two row nickel pup cover looks like it was dug up from a barn. No guesses on the bridge pup this will fit over? Lastly, the homely mandolin that followed me home for a neck reset and full overhaul. As if I needed something else in my way. Cameo by the lovely Mrs Komodo.

I've got several pieces of mammoth tusk I've been saving for nuts. We were at some museum somewhere and there was a small marketplace with all kinds of OldStuff(tm) for sale. I dug through every piece just to find a few big enough for nuts. (well, for my big nuts )

That had to have been almost meditation. How did you manage to hang on to the flowers as they were cut? What a gorgeous instrument you've made there.

Ya know what's funny? This is my hamfisted attempt at NOT using figured woods, trying to make something simple. It's hard, especially sitting here looking at stacks of nice woods, and even then i just tip to the other side of the scale and make it all crusty. It's all good. The korina is very resonant and screams like a banshee, it reminds me of a cross between swamp ash and mahogany.

Amazing things happen outside the box. Welcome!

I think more in the playability. Stripped down, streamlined no nonsense. For real aesthetic influence, I've been looking at a lot of builders on Instagram. Echopark, Vik, Dantzig, Knaggs. Really cool stuff,

Raw parts, some scuff sanding, dents and nicks. Then into a muratic acid fuming station, and we get trashed parts. Relicing is funny because you can sort of decide "how old" to make it. You can go for forgery level accuracy, which is a subtle relic. What I did was far more extreme, what I'm calling a "barncaster" look, like it was dug up from a barn after 50 years. It's easier to get different parts to match and has more of a fantasy patina than anything a real guitar would look like with age. I used raw nickel covers which take the fuming really hard and give a consistent look. The chrome parts are FAR more difficult as you have to break the top layer of the chrome, and different parts have different quality and depth of chroming. The Gotoh tremolo bar worked beautifully, the saddles and bottom plate were good but slightly different, I''' get pics up when I reassemble that. The pickup cover with the double row holes for the mystery pickup was the hardest, and came out very scratchy and patchy(tm). I'm thinking I might drill a new row of holes in the extra raw nickel cover I have and they will match better. I hope I can get those drilled even! I know this is downright blasphemous for some, I'm having FUN with it. It's very free and liberating compared to some of the fusswork in a pristine build. Don't forget the end goal here is a monster of a player. My bar is Suhr level of action and playability.

Thank you, I just found and watched a bunch of his vids. He's really good at it.

Somebody had routed a shelf for a locking nut on the Carving neck. But they did it on the wrong side of the nut? IU cleaned the whole mess off, added a piece of ebony and tried to make it as hidden as possible but the filler (ebony dust and CA) didn't cooperate. I had to make the joint into a slot that was larger to fill and sand. Because it's perpendicular and reflects differently from the FB it sticks out way more than an inlay gap would. Still, I did it OK and made the neck usable. It's really thin and fast, feels a lot like a Wizard neck. Cut a new nut slot and have a Graphtech rough placed for now. Pup covers and rings are raw nickel, which will make them really fun to relic. The rest of the hardware is in different states of relic, I'm not going for a forgery type level, just make stuff match-ish. This build has one soul purpose, and that's to be built for speed. A real hellcat of a player. Something to learn the first four VH albums on, then turn around and do 4 hours of effects laden psychedelic blues. Or country I guess. Neck pup is a Duncan APH-2n, Slash version of the Alnico II Pro. People said it sounded a touch better than the original. Bridge pickup is a vintage original, see if anyone can guess what it is. I'd had it for YEARS and never really used it. It's hot. Gotoh looks amazing, I'm not sure if I have the cojones to relic it. Chrome doesn't relic well. Maybe if I take the shine off and give it some rough edges, it will be enough. They aren't insanely expensive, so I'm not worried. Same for the Klusons. They are satiny. but need some grit. Also ignore the stud posts, they won't be used anymore.

This project has died and has been reborn as this:

I've been awful about finishing planned builds, mostly because I see so many possibilities with other woods, hardware, etc I have and get sidetracked. This build WAS going to be a relic korina LP Jr with P90s, a real fast and rude thing. But I realized that I was building another guitar that I functionally already have. After a good long think, and a heavy dose of GAS for an LP, some unruly PAFs, a blasphemous Tele, and a tremolo - here we are. I'm salvaging everything from the LP Jr build, except I found a homely Carvin neck for $50 that I repaired and will use that. I'm also making it a bolt on so I'll be able to change that out if it doesn't make muster. -Korina body (I've also got some LIGHT swamp ash as a candidate) -Tonepro Kluson tuners -some rude humbuckers -Gotoh 510T (after hearing John Suhr wax on about these, I was sold) -LP-like 3-way switching -lots of relicing

Oh of course, that makes perfect sense. Thank you gentlemen!

@Prostheta +1 I'll be updating my LP Jr build thread soon - because it turned into a tele.

Love that you are using local woods. Love that they are not insanely ornamental (aka sausage quilted maple). Love that natural character the wood has on the front. It already has MOJO! Also - even after you've smashed that guitar on stage, you will still have your bandsaw.

@Prostheta I'm having a hard time visualizing what you are saying here, which is nobody's fault but my late afternoon dull mind. One trick I picked up was to put a strip or two of tape on the inside of the router pattern so that your route ends up JUST a hair smaller than the tenon. Then you can get it tight enough to be held by friction alone, and with a couple light passes of sandpaper you can make room for glue.

IMO you went from too shallow to just perfect. 11-13 seems to be the sweet spot.

Another thing is that when you do this exercise, you will be able to visualize the geometry of the guitar better. Doing topdown drawings, or even 3D CAD stuff only gets you so far. Nothing beats the real world experience of the ACTUAL angles on paper, or in the case of the body size and shaping, a full sized mockup to hold in your lap and see how it feels. Hell, even a flat cutout of cardboard is better than nothing for that.