Jalien21

i'm all about 13 degree neck angles. for no reason at all. i think i saw a whole bunch of guitars on this site all at once that were being built with a 13 degree angle, so now, whenever i see something different, it strikes me as being weeiirrrd. not that i can tell from looking at it or anything. but when people list 11 or 12, i get weirded out. or you could be hardcore and be a true luthier with a full 90.

yeah. i placed my back holes in slightly the wrong place on my first guitar. i did just that, i routed out the area and inlaid a 1/8 inch piece of wood. i don;t have a picture. but it came out looking pretty cool. especially if you've used another wood on the guitar that you can repeat. you don't need a complicated inlay to do it. a lightning bolt could be tough. i just routed out a straight line around the holes, and put in a bar with the corners rounded off. worked well. good luck!

semi-hollow guitars look way cooler. anything with an f-hole

hey! ipe fretboard! i did that! i'm not the only one!

heh. well, the finish isn't actually... finished. i was brushing it on, and it went on well, pretty easy to get an even coat of it. i don't have any polishing compounds or fine grit sandpapers yet, though, so i haven't done any of that yet... i just sort of left it on there as it was. seems pretty nice. i've been playing it since it got hard enough to touch without leaving a mark (overnight) and it's been curing for about a week now. seems to be getting harder. i can't leave a mark with my fingernail or anything. i guess none of that is really professional or anything, but i just couldn't help but start playing it.

i finished!!!! (about a week ago) i was just in maine for last week. tried it out a bit. it's sweeeet. i'll post audio once i get good at guitar in general. but it plays like a dream. short scale makes for a very easily played instrument. sounds sweet too. bigger! full shot body top down

keep the big pics! i just got a computer with a nice resolution screen (1680x1050) and i'm loving seeing all these pig pics on the screen at once!

alright! getting done! sorry the picture is ugly. my dad took his new camera on a trip with him, so i just took that with the camera on my computer. i've routed the edges, and i just put on my first coat of ktm-9. i'm just brishing the stuff on with a foam brush. i guess i'll add another coat once this one is dry enough to touch. i'm really excited, though. i actually had a dream last night where i had finished my guitar and i was playing outside with my brother. it was a good dream. heh. but yeah, now it's really looking like a guitar and the end is in sight. any final suggestions? the wiring should be pretty easy, i think. single coil, humbucker with a coil tap and three way switcher, one tone, one volume. i think i misplaced my control cover, though.... i'll have to find that so it can get the finish too. if not, i can always just make a plastic one for now, i guess. but i'm a slob. peace!

wait. i do a lot of sanding. i've never worn a mask or anything when i do it. i don't sand pressure-treated wood or anything. am i screwing myself? should i really be wearing a respirator whenever i sand anything?

i actually haven't made a template. cut the body with a bandsaw, then i shaped the edges to where i wanted them with a drum sander on a drill press, and then i just now used a roundover bit with one of the bearing guide things on the end to radius the edges.

i'm 18... heh. anyway, i cut it today. did what i could on the table, everything else just freehand. it wasn't bad at all. the blade was band-new and sharp and everything, so it cut really smoothly. im really pleased with the result. i'll post pictures later on. but yeah. nothing flew into my eyes/body. i didn;t meet any resitance while routing. i probably went slower than i needed to, but whatever. everything worked out. thanks a lot for all of the input.

heh. i've thought the same thing. sustain seems to be talked about way too much to me, but whatever. on my current project, i chose to use one of the schaller tailpieces. cosmetically, it's not ugly, but the reason i chose it was because it was one of the only tailpieces that didn't require the strings to make a 90 degree bend somewhere. every time i've ever had a string break, it's been at that point on the bridge where the strings have to bend 90 degrees. which, when you think about it, makes sense. especially with a trem or when you're bending strings a lot. there, you're shifting the string back and forth over an edge. it weakens it. so, for me, it was about the least-stressful solution for the strings.

hey, wow, guys, thanks so much for all of this. i actually have a router table, and i use it with a fence for whatever i can (for truss rod routes and straight things like that). i feel much more comfortable that way. how, exactly do you use a table for things like the edges of the body? i feel like trying to work on something like that requires that i see what i'm doing. but then again, i haven't really tried it. i do practice on scraps and i guess i'll give that a shot with the table and see how it feels. how far would you go with each cut? a side/curve? couple of inches? (sorry... i haven't done this one before, and it has me all excited). i assume the bit is good, it's brand new, the "expensive" option at home depot (i know, i know...). don't know how good the router is, it's my dad's. i'd go look it up, but i'm really, really tired at the moment. i feel strangely comfortable around table saws. i've been using them for ages while routers are still new to me. maybe my confidence is a bad idea, but i feel pretty safe around them. i've never experienced kick-back (sharp blades and cut slowly), and i always set up all sorts of neat fences and guides to keep it all straight and keep my fingers away from it all.

okay. well, the time has come for me to rout the edges of my guitar don't worry, it's all glued on and the sides are square and everything) and i am always very fearful about this sort of thing. i'll admit it- routers scare me. i have trouble controlling them and i find that i have a decent rate of failure. but i don't even care about tear-outs or anything like that. what really worries me is the bit breaking off or falling out or something. for my edges, i'm using a porter-cable 1/2" radius roundover bit. it's a pretty big piece of metal. and it's gonna be spinning at 20+k rpms. right in front of my body. i'm not gonna figure the physics of that out, but if something that size breaks off spinning that fast less than a foot away from my body, it's not going to look good. are my fears founded? or am i just being silly, and should just join the project guitar router-loving community? if someone could comfort my fears, i would appreciate that. or even confirm. i want to know i'm not crazy. thanks

hey, wow, man. i like that a lot. i can't wait to see more. the heel is neat, you put some sort of other-type wood in there? i like it

OOooohhhhh... hey, yeah. actually, that seems like a good idea..

i'd try to cut that hole with a smaller drill bit, then use a jewlers saw or something to square up opposite sides of it. but i don't really know what i'm doing.

okay. i'm updating finally. i've done quite a bit of work recently on it. thinned the wood around the f-hole, added blocks to mount the tailpiece, glued the skeleton of the body on, added side dots, and i've made knobs, humbucker rings, and a truss rod cover. pics! bigger! headstock back of headstock body back of body (dad got a new camera, so i was playing with that this morning) gonna go glue on the tops and backs of the body now!! give me suggestions for the rest of what i need to do before i mess them up!

oh, dude. i'm sure i could give you a thosand worse ideas. like removing all the springs or eating pop rocks while you drink soda.

depends on how much you like the guy and the work. i'm sure you could go higher if you wanted, though. man, back in the day, my tuners were breaking, so i went to the local music shop to see if they could help me out. they had some decent ones for 30 bucks that they sold to me and i had them put in (before i started really playing with guitars. i was afraid of changing things myself..). i come back a couple days later to pick it up, and there's a 40-dollar labor charge attached. the holes were the same diameter and the new tuners had the same pokey-things on the bottom as the old ones, so no holes had to be filled or drilled. they charged me forty bucks to pull off six nuts and screw six new ones on. didn't even re-string it for me. buttheads. you're doing a lot more than that, so you could probably charge a decent fee. but you know, whatever works

seems likethat's the way to do it. i'm a 'half-round rasp the heel and spokeshave the rest' sort of guy, myself.

woah. so les pauls' headstocks are not straight up wood with paint over it with inlays? they have some sort of thing glued on? wow. whoda thunk it?

i got a cheap fender showmaster for 300ish dollars. it's a nice guitar, sounds pretty okay most of the time. it's comfortable and well-made. i would recommend it. i really think you have to go down to the store to feel stuff out, though.

i can't say i know a whole lot about the difference between those guitars. but i played an S series at the local music store. such a nice guitar. it was a S470DXQM. man. that guitar. if you can get your hands on one-a dems... it blew me away. and that bridge is off the wall... if you get one, i call any parts you don't use!

man, i'm with the "feelies" on this one. i find that sandpaper will sort of change what grit it acts like the more you use it. a 120 will get duller and start working like a 220 fir a while. so i keep most of my sandpaper around until i gets destroyed. i just sort of feel for a piece that has about the right scratchiness to it for what i want to do. that dosen't really work too well above like 400 because up there it all feels the same to me, but i just tend toward whatever feels like it would work right