Mattia

I apply one-sided, never had an issue. Epoxy is the one I'll ocassionally do two-sided, however, as per manufacturer's instructions (West Systems, anyway). I have never, ever had a starved glue joint, always apply glue to fresh surfaces immediately, and then 'rub' the pieces to get an even coat, and clamp. My sign I've used enough is even (minimal) squeezeout throughout.

Use thin scotch tape if you must leave it in place; if you use epoxy the thickness is entirely negligible. Re: dual rods, adjust symmetrically, and/or adjust one more than the other if you need more relief on one side.

Practice on scarp, and use a high quality epoxy (West Systems, System 3, something like that) that's formulated for easy application and/or suitable for finishing purposes. The cheap hardware store type will tend to stay rubbery and be a pain to sand, while sanding a good epoxy (when cured) is very easy.

Get an inlay bushing set. It'll be cheaper than futzing around with epoxy and the like all the time, and give you a much, much better fit.

Sniff around for a used Rivera. My TBR rackmount 60 watt all tube amp (early 80's vintage) didn't cost me all that much, and it does pretty much anything you want it to. One channel's 'fenderish', the other one's 'marshallesque'.

Contact Larry Davis at Gallery Hardwoods.

I'll be offering custom sizes in about 6 months, once I get the CNC machine up and running.

I'd have backed the top with something like woven carbon fibre. That strip will break one day.

The Strandberg got my vote; superb, sleek, well thought out design, aesthetics are toned down but spot-on, and the whole thing just 'works'. It's perhaps not my favourite of this line of models, but it's a fantastic guitar in its own right.

Fixed bridge is simple, and for locking, just look at the various systems out there. I'd think a patent search for Kahler and Floyd Rose will go a long way, and there are plenty of discussions out in the wild, wild web on the benefits of knife edge vs. ball bearing systems. It mostly boils down to a system that's stable enough to maintain tuning, strong enough to resist undue wear, and low friction enough to allow free movement.

You have 'conversion' HVLP guns that run on standard air compressor (ie SATA, IWATA, DeVilbiss, etc.) and standalone systems with 3-stage turbines and dedicated guns that don't require a seperate compressor, like the Fuji Q3, Q4 and Mini Mite (the most affordable of the lot). If I was starting out today, I'd probably get a MiniMite. Since I already had the compressor, etc. I'll likely stick with my SATA setup.

The mahogany's probably one of the Africa varieties unless it was either old, or sold to you as a Swetenia. True mahogany's not easy to find, while Khaya, Sipo and Sapele are all relatively common.

Titebond is simply reliable, easy enough to find (online if need be), cheap, easy to clean, easy to use, good compromise in terms of stability, resistance to creep, strength and repairability. Like Wes (and many others) I glue my fretboards with epoxy to minimize additional moisture. Contrary to popular belief, epoxy is easy to release; just add heat and use a spatula of some form. Works a charm.

I've done electrics like that (and various other semi-hollow configurations) before. You don't need wood under the bridge pickup, neck pickup only 'needs' it to make sure you have a good neck joint. Carving inside and out's not that hard, shoot for 5-6mm finished thickness is my recommendation for a standard-sized electric in maple. That hunk of mahogany was about 45mm thick, if I'm not gravely mistaken, and the back has both a carve (about 8mm high or so, gentle, no recurve) and a belly relief cut so rim thickness is about 45mm including the top/binding.

GIMP is like Photoshop; download InkScape and start fiddling around. There are tutorials scattered about the web, but like any piece of software (or anything else, really) there's a learning curve for this sort of thing. What might be easier for you is to start by drawing your logo, by hand, importing it into InkScape or similar, and then 'tracing' it using various curve tools, etc. This should help you get a feel for the drawing tools; it's how I 'digitized' my original acoustic guitar body outlines - take a perspective corrected photo of the full-sized outline, import it into InkScape as a bitmap, scale it appropriately, and start tracing. The bezier curves and control points help smooth out areas that don't quite look right when drawn by hand. Headstock shapes I simply placed on a scanner and imported that for further processing.

Depends, it can be done both ways. If you do the maple back, IMO you should carve both top and back. I do this anyway with pretty much all my builds, but I'm weird that way. Easiest way to do this is simply hollow out the mahogany block, leaving about 6mm at the back and a block in place under the bridge, and if you want a belly cut do that first and carve carefully. If you're crazy like me, you get something that looks like this, roughly: That guitar had a tailpiece and a braced top, for standard electrics I leave a block under the bridge, and I'd leave the block under the neck pickup to assure there's enough meat to the joint. Also remember to leave enough wood to screw the straps in place and such. You can also decide whether or not to carve the top from the inside or not.

A lot of big factories, even those that don't use compensated nuts or Buzz Feiten's full system, trim a little off the nut end of the fingerboard, to the tune of about half a mm or so. You kind of do this automatically when slotting a fingerboard, as the 'middle' of the slot - fret position - is a little further back than the edge of the 'slot' used for your nut.

If you have gaps, use epoxy. I use West Systems, slower setting stuff, and Z-Poxy 30 minute for the things I want to work on sooner. Both are better quality (harder set, easier to sand after the fact) than home depot dual-tube syringe type jobbies. The foamed up stuff filling the gaps doesn't provide any strength. I do use polyurethane glues for certain parts of guitarmaking, but use it where it's appropriate. Poly glues foam up, so you need to clamp well to minimize the odds of a glue line. They work best in the presence of a bit of water, so a moist sponge run along the gluing surface helps as well. Where do I use it? Joints that are tight, and that I never, ever want to allow to delaminate. Examples include laminating headblocks and tailblocks for acoustics, laminating headstock veneers (front and back), and it can work well for 'difficult' woods, for example gluing up plates in oily rosewoods. It also works reasonably well for gluing carbon fiber to other wood - I've used it for laminating braces, although I'll be using epoxy for that in future, now that I'm more comfortable working with it - epoxy has a learning curve. Having said that, often as not I use Titebond original for most of these applications, without reservations. Easy to clean up, no mixing required, and for almost everything 30 minutes of clamp time and 24 hours of 'don't stress the joint' is more than good enough.

It really won't be a concern, even for the end-grain on a neck. Acoustic guitars have thin plates that are only finished on one side, and they hold up fine. Pretty much every single acoustic bolt-on neck joint area (all joining surfaces, mostly end-grain) are left unfinished, and they work out fine. Besides, most finishes don't really block moisture all that well, including nitro and most varnishes (ie tru oil).

If the blank's 2" thick (or even a little under) and 37" long, and you have a decent bandsaw, you can get two necks out of there if you scarf joint the headstock. Chris (Verhoeven) made a video of this not too long ago.

Weirdo Seriously, if I had to choose, the limba and mahogany would stay - natural finished - and the quilt maples could get lost. Thankfully, however, I don't need to choose.

I think Star Trek is way, way too iconic to blend well with 50's pulp SF iconography. A trek themed guitar, sure. But don't mix trek with 50's pulp. Gene Rodenberry drew most of his inspiration from Westerns, not SF per se, although the set design is clearly a follow-through from the 50s stuff.

- Accurate body shaping/beveling - Solid neck joint (careful about removing too much wood in the neck pickup area) Other than that, it's just an electric guitar. Nothing crazy-specifically complex about it.

It's a whole series of bad, bad pulp SF with snarky commentary from robots made of vacuum cleaners - Mystery Science Theater 3000, aka MST3K

...because it shouldn't be necessary with a properly designed body and/or sutiable hardware selection (lightweight tuners)