guitar2005

x-acto knife along the fret, then, fret polishing/dressing gets rid of the finish on the metal.

Could be two things: Nut not low enough or a hump where the neck/body joins.

You just finish with the frets on, unmasked, then clean off the frets.

FUGLY

I'm looking at ways to improve my productivity. I have 5 necks on the go and I'm sure that I could improve on my techniques to get these things done faster. What I do now is this: 1) Mark the neck thickness @ the 1st and 12th fret and draw a line between the two points, spanning the entire length on the neck 2) Mark the neck heel and the profile that will remain flat around it. 3) With the Ridgid Oscillating belt sander, sand down the neck thickness @ 80grit, to just above the final thickness line. 4) With a rough wood rasp, start chewing away at the wood until I have what resembles a neck profile. 5) Switch over to a round wood rasp and continue shaping the profile. Get as close as possible to the fretboard without actually taking too much off of it. 6) Work on the heel & headstock transitions, making sure that they are nice and smooth. 7) See if the neck feels nice in your hands & make sure that he profile has no dips or bumps on it. 8) Sand down to 100 grit. 9) Make small adjustments is needed 10) Sand down to 180, 220, 330, 400 grit. If I'm doing ebony board with a maple neck, I tape over the ebony when sanding the maple so that the fine ebony dust doesn't get into the maple's pores. What do you think? I think that maybe 3) could be done on the bandsaw.

I use a bandsaw but used to use a chopsaw with a jig to get the 13deg angle. Either way, it won't come out clean enough for glue up. You'll have to make it nice and even. I rough cut and use my router on a special jig I built - a 13 deg angle router sled. In terms of clamps used on your neck - that's looks like enough to me.

Just cut the slots in the bridge to have the same radius as the fretboard.

I just bought mine. I kept putting it off, but really, I think its a good investment.

Very nice.

Definitely agree on this. When I get some requests for parts or complete guitars, I price my work reasonably, based on the amount of experience I have and what is available out there but for me, 1K is pretty much on the low end for a nice body, neck with figured wood, maybe an ebony board, nice hwardware. The last thinline build with unique specs was actually a little over 1K. My problem right now is is having to refuse commissions because of the lack of time.

My understand is that I could commission a build after having been to his shop or spoken to him, see the quality of his work and pay $750 for a hand made guitar. eBay is prob one of the worst way to sell a custom, handmade guitar. You're right though, buying an unknown guitar is a bit of a risk.

Just saw your website.... very nice... but do you really sell a completely finished, ready to play handmade instrument for $750.00?

Agreed - I still have to redo the finish on my 2nd build. #3 and #4 were pretty good but still, could be better in some aspects. By the time you build 5 guitars or more, the quality should be more consistent, with less mistakes.

ash is pretty cheap, isn't it. I can get 3-4 guitars with 45.00 worth of Ash.

+1 You'll get nowhere build anything that can be readily available by any manufacturer. Build something unique. I only accept truly custom guitars. Even if the shape is something like a Tele, there has to be something about the design that you can't get anywhere else and I'm talking about more than the type of wood used. The last custom build, I backed out. I refunded the deposit because the guy kept changing his mind on level of completeness, parts procurement, kept wanting to change certain things (i.e. trem, no trem, finish, color etc), kept wanting to drive the price down and wanted the guitar quickly. It takes a LOT of time when you have to constantly reprice stuff and change things around. from now on, the spec sheet is not modifiable after work has started. It only takes one semi-bad experience to learn this. One word of advice - do the best work you can and never work for nothing. If someone lowballs you, tell them to look elsewhere. in terms of selling, the approach I'm taking for the next couple of builds is consignment at a good local retailer but the best way in my opinion is to have someone commission a guitar. Consignment can create interest in your guitars but you won't get as much money this way.

they're actually pretty easy once you have the technique down. I have an angled router sled that I use to do this. Off the router, I just sand a little to get rid of the tool marks. Glueing is the hardest part. You need to use pins (staples) to hold the pieces together, then clamp up always checking that the pieces don't move and stay aligned. I've changed my method of building these since I built this one. I now use a 3/4" piece to glue on to the scarf and I bandsaw/sand down to 1/2" from the rear after. This allows the scarf to show up before the nut on the neck. It makes for a smoother transition. With my new method, I don't need the backstrap to hide the transition on the back of the headstock. In terms of how thin they are, mine are more like the original Jem from 1987. A little thicker than the newer Wizard necks with a slightly rounder profile on the back. Much nicer that way IMO. I use a truss rod that needs a 3/8" deep channel and never had any issues. This is what my scarf joints look like now (no shaping done yet):

That's what I figured.

Use water thin CA glue. Get it from a hobby store... Most Super Glue style glues from the big box stores is either a Medium or Thick consistency... hard to wet down a gap with that stuff... The Thin stuff is what you want when you are doing a fill with sawdust as it will penetrate and flood the area. Don't use accelerator or it'll turn white with most CAs. (there are exceptions) This is what I use: http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.aspx?p=20022&cat=1,110,42966 Maybe too much saw dust, air bubbles? IDK. I'll try to make sure it goes in with a needle or something like that

do tighten up the rod a little so that its not completely loose. Having it completely loose can cause rod rattle.

You want to patent that? Really?

Made some progress on the guitar lately between 3 tele thinline builds and 5 neck builds.... I grain filled with sanding sealer. This took a while as Lacewood has varying densities. Very hard to get a consistent finish. I sanded through a couple of times. I also glued on the fretboard, trimmed it on the router and radiused it. Here's a closeup of the fretboard: One of the things I always struggle with is the inlays and filling the gaps around them (see fret #9 marker). This time, I tried CA glue. I build it up withsaw dust, sand down but it seems as though it never really penetrates. I always have a couple of spots where empty gaps remain. Is there a trick to consistenly fill the gaps and not have them show up again after sanding the filler flush?

This is what I do:

You don't need to paint a fretboard to get it glossy and painting rosewood seems like a bad idea to me. If you want a black fingerboard, apply some black dye on the rosewood. To get it to a glossy finish, all you need to do is final sand down to about 400grit. Then, put it under a buffing wheel, with the final buff being a diamond bar (white). You can add some tung oil and polish some more if you want more sheen. That should give you a very slick fretboard.

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