guitar2005

I've been working on this dead fish inlay for a couple of hours now. Its hand drawn. What do you guys think? Does it still need work or it is ok?

I've been staring at it for 2 hours now and its driving me crazy

That said, if I'm playing a gig where I need predictable results and unquestionable reliability, out come the store-bought units.

Wow! That's too bad. I play the guitars I build at gigs and have no worries about reliability. No more than with a production guitar. What's the point of building a guitar if it can't be played?

F.M.

Holy cow! That is absolutely amazing wood... and a really nice guitar too. Could we see the top... pleeeease?

I see you've gone down the route of moving around the item being routed as opposed to manipulating the Dremel. Not tried it that way myself.

Huh?

With a larger base, I can have more stability, I can put the dremel on two rails at either side of the fret board and I can manipulate the whole thing by the base. I might add two knobs on the base if moving it with fingers only isn't easy enough.

Edit - Oh... I get it now - You mean putting the fretboard OVER the bottom portion of the router base? No, that's not what I planned on doing but now that you mention it, when I start practicing my inlaying techniques, I'll try that method to see if its easier.

Inspired by Setch's router base, I decided to my make own - Thanks, Setch. I'll be doing my very first intricate inlays with this for an explorer project I'm working on.

Mine is made with clear Acrylic with a 6"x6" base and a 1-1/2" diameter opening in the base. The Dremel tool is held in place with a 3/4" nut.

The top acrylic portion is 1/8" thick and the base is 1/4" thick. The base in the pictures still hase the white plastic protective film on it.

http://pic18.picturetrail.com/VOL912/43163...4/198740492.jpg

My contact point is usually less than 1mm. I consider 0.5mm to be pretty good on a wide fret. If you're at more than 1mm, that's pretty wide and I'm sure that you could get it narrower.

I found that applying little pressure on the file works best. If I put too much pressure right from the start, I'll hit the sharpie marks right away and I will not have crowned anything at all.

I do like the way laminated necks look. I originally was going to laminate some wenge in there with it, or something, but I don't want to anymore. Just plain jane maple. My real concern is what gives the best stability for the price.

Thanks for the help,

CMA

I don't believe that lam vs 1 piece is cheaper. Its still the same amount of wood. Lam does involve more work upfront and you need glue.

I do believe that lam is stronger and in my opinion, looks better, especically with contrasting woods.

I see the bridge isn't recessed. Is that the way you wanted it? The recessed bridge is a really neat feature on the Godin LG/LGX.

Very nice work - I like the faux binding. For the ferrule holes chipping, as someone else mentioned, clamp the piece to another piece of wood, then drill. Its the same as for sawing. The backing piece holds the fibers so that they don't chip or tear out.

what exactly did you do to make the dremel attach to the base? set screw? threaded the wood? even a pic of the base with out the dremel would me nice. thanks

Same here - I'd really like to know how the Dremel attaches to the base.

Simple and neat design. I'm sure anyone could make one of these in 30min or less and save the $50.00 bucks Stew-Mac wants for their base.

I'm having trouble finding information on this site or any other regarding the route template for a Wilkinson trem. Can anyone help? I'm getting close to the point in my project where I'll be doing my routing and I'd like to buy or make a template.

Thanks.

Dave

Same route as for a fender trem with posts. The Stew-mac template works great.

I always "drill" a very small hole with my exacto knife before I drill. It makes the drill bit follow the hole and gives you perfectly spaced dots.

For precision work, always use brad point or forstner bits.

id use a press and a fence

I did use a fence and all other dots came out fine except this one

Now, I think I could fix this by drilling slightly bigger (2.5mm) holes over the existing dots (2mm) but the problem is, where am I going to find 2.5mm diameter plastic rods. Even if I do find them, am I just asking for more trouble doing that?

http://cgi.ebay.ca/100-Mother-of-Pearl-inl...1QQcmdZViewItem

Excellent quality pearl.

If you re-drill, drill very slow to ensure the drill bit doesn't wander and use a brad point bit.

Call me crazy, but I use my table saw to joint edges. Of course I use a nice expensive blade and it's required that the tool is set up right for it to work, but.. to each their own.

yup - Table saw works fine too but you need a fairly straight piece of wood to start with and it doesn't work well with larger height

I would GUT W.O.D. on the spot if he got within 100 yards of that one.

Gorgeous work!

I keep seeing this reference to W.O.D. - what is that?

I having a hard time finding a quality tune-o-matic with studs and bushings like this one, but in black.

Any ideas as to where I could find such a thing?

Has anyone tried these?

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt...A:IT&ih=012

Has everyone forgotten the merits of a good old hand plane? That's what I use to joint my acoustic tops, and my violin wedge.

A router and a straightedge is pretty fast and extremely accurate. I can joint an edge in 1min... and that includes installing the proper bit in the router.

I like it. Very classy. Did you apply the clear coat on yourself?

I leveled the frets on my project last night and it didn't go so well. I used a flat edge to see where the low spots were and they were low in the middle of the board. I marked all the frets with a red marker and I had a long flat piece of mahogany It was the total length of the fret board and about 1 1/2 inches wide that I put 120 grit paper on. It seemed to be going fine but the problem I've encountered is my 1-3 fret was pretty much filed all the way down way below being able to play! but their is still space between my middle frets say 5-11 and my frets at the end. I don't have a good camera to post pictures but does anyone have any Idea's at why this happened and any suggestions on how to go about it next time? I know I'll have to refret 1-3 thats the first step and am I maybe better off using the radiusing block I used on the fretboard before the frets with 120 grit paper rather than using the real long piece of mahogany because I'd be in more control over where pressure will lie on the frets? ANd if theres already a tuitorial on this I'm sorry I posted could someone just link me to it I searched but didn't find anything. Thanks alot

sounds to me like either

1) The neck/fretboard isn't flat to start with or

2) The neck isn't properly supported while you're filing away. The pressure from filing might be bending the neck as you work on it.

Which seller sold you this diamond file? I saw some ridiculously priced ones on Ebay going for $16. I'm just wondering if it's the same ones we're talking about.

I got my offset diamond crowning file from eBay, from a seller called "The Fret Shop". Their diamond fret crowning file has the same feature as Stew Mac's 150 Grit but I feel that the small/med side is too wide for small frets. I tried it on an Ibanez Jem with jumbo fretwire and it did a good job at re-crowning the frets. I took very light passes until I could no longer see the black sharpie mark I had put on the top of the flat frets. I tried the same file on a Gibson Les Paul Custom with med/wide wire and it worked ok as well

In hindsight, I wish I had gotten the 300 grit from stew mac. The 150 grit is too aggressive and The Fret Shop only carries the 150 grit version

I laminated the pieces:

Wow! Nice. You're making two necks at once?

Don't worry, i've got it all figured out, I hope. Actually, I still have room to angle the mortise if I wanted to, and I may as well just end up doing that instead of recessing the bridge, I still don't know yet.

I guess I should get working on this again eh?

Chris

I think the recessed TOM is a great idea. So much more comfortable than having the strings 3/4" off the body .

The wraparound I got (not the stew mac one, mine is a brass badass copy) was too high to my liking. Check out the specs for height on the wraparound before you buy as it could be higher than a TOM.

They are string through ferrules.

Back:

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Hardware,_part...g_Ferrules.html

Front:

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Hardware,_part...p_Ferrules.html

Thanks - I didn't realize you could buy those. My Godin LGX doesn't have the front ferrules like those. They're tiny little things and after a while, the strings and ferrule kinda bite into the wood. I want to avoid that on my next build. Again, thank you!

I like the way this guitar is a string through with the standard ferrules in the back and the way the strings come out on the face of the guitar. What exactly are those things on the face of the guitar? Hollow tubes? Is that something I can get in a hardware store?

If you want the string spacing to be straight, I’d suggest starting out by drawing the string lines, then the tuner positions, and adjust your headstock shape to accommodate I find rough drawing headstocks to scale on paper first a good place to start - and then 'cadding things up' from there

The original intent was to base the drawing on a picture of the Ken Lawrence headstock which is a starting point I guess. I've updated the drawing to base it more on string pull. Here's the result. It'll make the design a little more unique

All,

I've been working on this project for a couple of weeks now, mostly working on the plans but this week, I actually got some real work done. The guitar is an Explorer style body with a Ken Lawrence style headstock.

The body will feature a 1/2" (maybe 3/4" - not sure yet) Black Korina top over Honduran Mahogany.

The set neck will be a 5 piece hard rock maple / Jatoba laminate with a Mahogany scarf jointed headstock with black Korina veneer (to fully match the body), angled at 10 degrees.

The Tune-o-matic bridge will be recessed into the body to ensure comfortable picking hand positioning, 2 humbucking pickups, grover mini tuners, braided wiring, 3-way toggle switch on the upper region of lower bout and a fender strat style jack cup on the side of the guitar. The finish will be most probably polymerized Tung Oil buffed to a nice sheen to enhance the natural beauty of the wood. I might put a thin coat of french polish to ensure extra protection.

Here's what I have so far in my photo album http://www.PictureTrail.com/gid13121210

The Headstock - Notice that the string pull isn't perfectly straight. This is the best I could do given the headstock design. Let me know if you have any suggestions to improve on it (edited with new, improved version)

The neck laminates ready to be glued together with the fretboard showing on top.

http://pic18.picturetrail.com/VOL912/43163...0/194313608.jpg

The body template which still needs a bit of work on the straight lines. I'll fix those up at the same time that I do the neck template, probably within 1 week or so.

http://pic18.picturetrail.com/VOL912/43163...0/194313601.jpg

The neck and bridge setup

http://pic18.picturetrail.com/VOL912/43163...0/197333086.jpg