komodo

WOW! How's the space between the two headstocks for tuning? I've seen double necks that are parallel, and some that are angled out a little maybe for headstock access or balance?

Those are all great questions, and thanks for the compliment. The first thing I would recommend is to get the book The Art of Inlay by Larry Robinson. He has a couple videos too. He's a great teacher, very calm and methodical, with tons of experience. Radius: There is no set way to do it. Some people do it while the board is flat, some on finished guitars, It would depend a little on just how much radius you plan to end up with, as the sides get lowered potentially deeper than the inlay. The depth of your inlay material also matters. For myself, I've used sheets of pearl that are around .050" which is pretty typical. I like to do at least a half radius, meaning start the radius job and stop around 16". Then you have a chunk of it off, but it's not so curved that it's harder to work on. Really, even a 12" board shouldn't be that hard to follow. Just know that when you are done, you will finish the radiusing and be sanding both the fretboard and the inlay material. So, you won't be using a scraper or plane or whatever. Tool: Router of choice is either a Dremel with a base, or a Fordom flexshaft tool, also with a base. Those get expensive. I use a Dremel and made my own base from Plexi and bolts. I'll try to take a good pic of it today. The tip of a Dremel screws off and then you screw the base on. Once you set the depth, you probably won't touch it unless you switch to a different material. Depth: Ideally you want it flush. Then. whatever sanding you do is minimal. But, you have to watch out for places where maybe you got one area too deep, then you don't want to be sanding it all down to the deepest part. There is a trick around this though. If you inlay slightly proud it would leave a little room for error and for further radiusing but I like flush. Detail: The detail of the routing is really interesting. You could theoretically just route a big circle and drop in your inlay and fill in the gaps. The way you fill gaps is to use saved ebony powder (from the radiusing sanding), then flood it with thin CA. If you search around on the web, you can see where people have routed very wide around the inlay. You can see the fill pretty strongly, and you can do better than that. Using the smallest Dremel bit, used dental bits or my favorite, end mils. The Dremel bits are serviceable, though they tend to charge a lot for them. Dental bits can be found at any dentist, just ask them to save some for you and you should get a million. They are VERY small. You could probably find those on Ebay too. Carbide end mills come in tons of sizes, cut very nicely and you can get those on Ebay too. You might have to spend a little but they are worth it. Ebony seems like wood, but it's VERY hard! Route your area relatively close to the scribed line, but don't worry about the tiny details, Just go as small as you are comfortable with, and depending on what bits you have. If you accidentally cut an area too deep (I had a bot come loose and dive into the board once), then just fill the area with ebony dust and CA. You can create a small flat bed of dust to adjust the depth then flood with CA. Once it's all place you will pack in the edges, in all the details and flood it all. After sanding, you can see it pretty much wipes away all traces of the route and it blends in, It's like magic! Just yesterday I was radiusing a madagascar ebony fretboard. The dust gets into the fret slots and it looks like the wood grain blends together and the slots disappear, It's really insane. Try doing a small inlay, it's pretty satisfying. must have tools would be Dremel and bits, small jeweler's saw with REALLY thin blades, Freecut lube for that (critical), some kind of thing to cut the pearl on, and a scribe to trace around the inlay. A couple of good sites: http://dukeofpearl.com http://lmii.com http://www.inlay.com/inlay/pearl/pearl-1.html

you should look through some build threads here to see others building semi hollows. Personally I would do the chambered center and cap it front and back. A2K is right also about watching out for "plinky" the wood considerations apply to that as well. Plywood with all of it's adhesive could very well be dull and plinky, but you never know . . . .I had a prototype body I made from glued up construction grade 2x4's, and slapped a neck and pups on it and it sounded amazing. Pine is extremely resonant and rings like a bell. But it sucks to work with for any fine detail. You may consider Maple (bright), Mahogany (warm middy), even walnut (darker) would be interesting. If you chose a wood like that you could do a simple oil finish vs a far more complex painting schedule. In Austin I bet you have a large variety of woods available.

I'm not sure if I had more than what I posted, but this winter I'm planning to do the large Cthulhu inlay. I will for sure document that, and that would be ideal for this. It might take me some time. I'm also building another neck right now for a body I had and I hadn't considered an inlay. Maybe I could cough one up for that.

Love the idea, one thing jumps out right away. The thought of not wasting nice wood shouldn't really come into play until you are doing high grade or one of a kind figuring. Even the most basic build takes time and should have a decent wood invested. This doesn't need to be expensive, just something worth the time and honestly even basic grade mahogany, alder or poplar is way more "workable" than plywoods or construction grade materials. That said, if you want to do it, go for it!

The Dragon This build was one I did for myself, with every detail being what I would pick on my uber guitar (which is what the build thread was titled). The initial build was mothballed after I had too many builds going at once. When I picked it back up again, I went full steam for three months, doing several new techniques that was a big learning opportunity. Specs Neck 25" scale length Gaboon ebony fretboard with dragon inlay using white and gold mother of pearl rosewood neck of unknown variety-best educated guess is Panama (Yucatan) rosewood ebony faceplate Sperzel open back tuners Body swamp ash capped with 5A quilted maple front and back full cream binding Hardware/Electronics Seymour Duncan custom shop - Bridge: SH-5 custom 8 (Alnico 8), Neck: Seymour Duncan Jazz simple one volume, one tone with a .022 Sprague orange drop cap for the tone three way switch B/BN/N

Thanks! Well, basically I did a bunch of small slices with an Xacto blade until I pierced one spot. Then, I slide one of my smallest pearl cutting blades which is normally used with a frame saw, through the slot. Holding both ends taught, I slowly made my way around the line, making the smallest kerf possible. In the end, after all the sanding and finishing it still ended up being a little wider than I thought but the figure match is so good I don't care.

Pretty much done. Still setting it up, but I did pound on it for 1/2 hour and it's awesome. Lots of usable sounds, the SD jazz neck pup is a stunner. The Sprague orange drop .022 makes an excellent tone cap, just right. The neck profile is in the baseball bat range, I'll take that down later when I have some energy after the holidays. The neck was specifically finished with shellac only for a super thin and satiny feel with the rosewood., so it'll be easy to finish up. I'll try to get some better pics in the next couple days.

Hosco makes a set of 10 nut files. Not sure if they are intended for metals, but it should work. They're good quality Japanese tools.

Hmm yeah, that is certainly a consideration. I also have several bars of beeswax and some Procut (lube for pearl saw blades) that would work. One semi-related thing that bummed me out - I used a polish I got from LMII for the final buff which was supposed to be "body shop OK". Mirror Glaze from Miguires that is supposed to be free of silicones and waxes. Well, I found out that it ISN'T, so any future touchups or coats will be problematic unless I put it in the dishwasher first.

We have a two-car . . . shop. My wife is a saint for that, so I built her a shed that matches the house to at least replace garage space for gardening tools, lawn chairs, mowers, etc. It's now stuffed and you have to pull stuff out to get in, Also, the curse of the shop is that it also gets used as a pseudo-garage and I find things shoved in there that shouldn't be. You all know that non-shop users see the "mess" and don't realize everything is actually exactly where we put it for a reason!

I'm so glad this isn't just me. I havent't seen my chopsaw table in three years.

If all goes well, she should be wired and I can finally hear her voice tomorrow! wOOt! I planned that Gotoh 510 bridge early on, but I'm not a huge fan of wraparounds. I considered what this might be like with a ToM, but after I had drilled the bushings, which are wider that ToM. BUT, Ibanez just happened to make a Gibralter III bridge that is a nice ToM variant that uses the wider bushing spacing. I've managed to secure a new gold one just in case though I doubt I will. But who knows, I love changing my mind a lot.

My shop screw soap. Anytime I'm going into oak or maple, esp. with small screws, the threads get rubbed on the screw soap.

Thanks Matt!

Next stop some fretwork and electronics. Pitstop with my triple six tripel. Lots of little flaws (characters) all over this thing. It's definitely a handmade guitar, but I learned tons and am happy with where she is.

What? Buffing til my arms bleed? No one will tell me when to stop, so I'll just go til I can read books in the reflection.

Ha! I'm not fooling myself. The only reason I say this is since I sprayed SO much lacquer on there, it's hard to say if I may get some extra shrinkage. But hell, my Charvel from 1984 that had a polyester finish shrank over time and I could see the glue line. Didn't stop me from playing it. I found some liquid polish I had from LMI that I may try today and see what happens.

Wet sanding, wet sanding, wet sanding. No pics now, I'll add some later. I've come to the conclusion that if you spend $4k on a custom guitar, your basically paying someone $4k to intimately sand it one million times - the rest of the build is easy. My right arm is larger than my left. Every time I think I should switch arms to even them out, I find out how crappy my left arm sands and I go back to giving myself cramps in my right again. I block sanded starting at 1200, and even though the nitro was pretty level already, it was not efficient at all. So, I switched to 600 and a very light touch and things went way better. Then straight to 1200 and it looks excellent. One technique I've forced myself to use is to sand all the way through a grit, and then leave it for the night. Come back the next day with the same grit and you look with a more critical eye, more patience, and finish that last 10% you may have understandably missed. One last thing, as the surface is sanded you can actually see the depth of the finish - from wood to surface. In my finishing book Erlewine said spraying something like 4 heavy coats in one day was about max. I most certainly blew past that as I seem to have laid down a LOT of nitro in a very short time. My first several coats were flashing off very fast and were pretty thin as I got used to the gun. As the day progressed, my hand got steadier, the coats got thicker, and I probably got the most you could realistically shoot in one day. After three weeks in a heated shop it seems quite hard and is leveling nicely. My plan is to finish it up, then check it come spring to see just how much more shrinkage there may have been. I won't hesitate to strip off the hardware and give her a couple flow coats to touch it up.

Your necks all look quartersawn and laminated. Are you putting carbon bars in there as well?

I agree. I think it's a genius move, and really well done.

NIce! We're blood brothers then, cause that's what's in the dragon guitar too. I have a Stewmac Hot Rod sitting here that I have never brought myself to use since I had several of those Allied rods and liked them so much. I'm throwing another guitar together from parts right now, and just decided it;s easier for me to build a neck than buy one and need to decide again between the two.

You're gonna end up beating me across the finish line! That thing is really sweet. Remind us again what pups are going in there? Also, what truss rod did you use? It almost looks like the ones I have from Allied Lutherie.