zyonsdream

ZZ top is known for customized guitars. Looks like it's rear mounted. My JB Player body was rear mouted. It just might not be a real Fender body. I love ZZ Top!

Yah I don’t think it would translate well to an electric guitar and I’ve never had an acoustic that moved to a point a truss rod or bridge height adjustment wouldn’t work to correct the action. I think it’s a novel idea and I love Michael Kelly guitars but it seems like it’s an easy way to pass the set up to the consumer. My guess: these guitars play like crap out of the box and need a lot of tweaking.

Also keep in mind the cost of drying it yourself and the cost of having it dried. I have a guy here who will do it for 33 cents a BF and when you factor in the cost of running a dehumidifier or any other heating source with today's energy costs it seems more cost effective to just have it done.

For example, if I run my air conditioner 24/7 for a month it's going to raise my electric bill about $50.00 (believe me; I know...I get the bill) so let's say you can adequately dry the wood you want in 2 months. That's $100.00 to dry the wood (not including what it cost to build the chamber.) For that money, I could have paid to have 303 BF of lumber dried and I'd get it in less time. Even if you dedicate a closet in your home to a kiln I highly doubt you could dry 303 BF of lumber in 2 months (without cracking the hell out of it.)

Most cabinet makers can help you find someone in your area that dries wood or even look up some smaller lumber mills.

Just my 33cent

Very sensable idea, but I am not sure if it would apply to this small bit of pretty much dry wood. It would be very sensable if a person had just milled up a log, and wanted to speed up the process. I would also wonder what wood would be in the kiln at the time(obviously they won't dry this amount of wood by itself), would they mix a wood like Cocobolo in with any other woods that are going to be dried? Seems like drying schedules could be pretty varied, and using an overly aggressive schedule would increase the rate of damage, using a slower schedule is going to waste kiln time.

Your comments make good sense with the cost of energy rising, and a person should really consider that and how they are drying wood. If you have space that is already conditioned and have time available, it can make good use of the space with little difference in cost. If you have to dedicate and micro control or force accelerated drying then you really need to look over the costs to value. I personally limit 95% of my drying to existing available controlled space(or use uncontrolled for early drying). If I am going to crank up fans, and use forced air to speed things up a bit, I make sure I have a fair amount of wood making use of that effort. If I use raise the temp, drop the humidity, and move the air I make sure it is really needed, because it does cost a lot.

Drying and aclimating costs really make strong case for allowing yourself a good deal of time(meaning have a stock of ready wood) so you can have wood ready to use while you allow a back stock plenty of time to get ready for use.

Rich

Good points! It really comes down to how affective you can be at it. I've thought about building my own and even planned one out but I get most of my wood dried and rarely do I have anything I need to have dried. The only reason I know about the local guy with will do it is because my neighbor chopped down a perfectly good maple tree and I wanted it. I'm going to be looking into all of this bit more as my grandpa has a few black walnut trees that will be coming down soon and I would hate to see any of it not end up in my shop!

If anything, building your own kiln is a great learning experience on how drying wood affects it's stability.

Thanks for the info all... love when common names aren't so common and I also love when people who work at a place called woodcraft know nothing about wood!

Also keep in mind the cost of drying it yourself and the cost of having it dried. I have a guy here who will do it for 33 cents a BF and when you factor in the cost of running a dehumidifier or any other heating source with today's energy costs it seems more cost effective to just have it done.

For example, if I run my air conditioner 24/7 for a month it's going to raise my electric bill about $50.00 (believe me; I know...I get the bill) so let's say you can adequately dry the wood you want in 2 months. That's $100.00 to dry the wood (not including what it cost to build the chamber.) For that money, I could have paid to have 303 BF of lumber dried and I'd get it in less time. Even if you dedicate a closet in your home to a kiln I highly doubt you could dry 303 BF of lumber in 2 months (without cracking the hell out of it.)

Most cabinet makers can help you find someone in your area that dries wood or even look up some smaller lumber mills.

Just my 33cent

I was browsing at my local woodcraft and I noticed this great looking board that was just the right size for two fretboards. It's called Orange Agate (botanical name Platiniscium Sp)

I've never seen or heard of this wood wood before and the guy at woodcraft was no help. It's obviously a hardwood and seem to be on line with rosewood but I don't know much about it. This was about all I could find

Platymiscium spp.

I'm wondering if anyone has ever used it. Is it stable or any known allergens?

Here is a pic of what I got. not the whole piece but you can see the interesting grain. A lot of reds and tans

you dont want air tight. Drying evaporates liquid from the wood which causes humidity in the air. You need a way for the moisture to get out. I've seen a lot of set ups where people use brick and make a small "dog house" like enclosure with a door. A couple of 100W light bulbs and you are in business.

I did a search on Ebay for Corian and you can get a ton of assorted colors on there at a great price and most are cut into pen blank sizes were are great for several nuts each.

Anyone know what the long term wear is on these? I'm sure it depends on the amount of string changes but I'm sure they don't last as long as bone does. I've used it several times and so far no one has brought one back for repair. I have one I built for myself but I rarely play the guitar so I'm sure that nut will last forever. I'd just think that it would wear out quicker than Bone or tsuq

Dude, Jim Martin gets zero respect for the work he did! As much as I love Mr. Patton, Jim was a killer guitar player (much more so than Trey) and I for one am all behind your flying V. I've always loved BM's tone but the guitar never did anything for my with it's looks. Still cool to see someone take up the challenge though!

I use CA and I press my frets in.

woodcraft sells it for pen blanks and they have a ton of different colors and marbles. When I use Corian for a nut that's where I go.

Edit: you can also go to the DuPont website and get samples for 1.00-2.00 that are big enough for nuts ..just pay shipping. Go here for samples

Personally I don't like to reinvent the wheel. Go here guitar templates

what did you use to do the decal? I've been reading a bit about doing it so I thought I'd ask?

I will call this VPR-0010808

Specs:

Solid flat sawn Zebrawood neck through construction

25.5” scale ebony fret board with Abalone dot side position markers and EVO Gold frets

Kahler Hybrid tremolo

Gotoh 510 ebony tuners

QPart abalone capped knobs

All gold hardware

Artec QDD2 boost

25K tone knob with Drop orange cap

Guitarheads active pickup. I put a solid gold cover over it to give it a classier look

Finish:

Danish oil with a wipe on poly hard coat sanded down & buffed with 0000# steel wool.

No wax. Gives it a flat finish

This is an obvious copy of an ESP Viper that a friend asked me to build for them. It’s flat sawn zebra and for the life of me, I can’t find any more of it. It was hard for me to let this guitar go.

I delivered it yesterday to the owner! He loved it so much he had to sit on the ground and give the “face melter”

I swivel the table to 90° (vertical) and clamp the workpiece to the table.

That'd be great. As stated, though, my press table doesn't swivel that way, hence my question.

Not sure if you can lower your table enough to do this but this is how I do mine.

First I use a fine point sharpy amd mark the center location on the side of the guitar.

There is a center line that I drew down the face of the backboard. I line my guitar up with that line right where I want the hole to be. I then center it under my Forstner bit and then clamp the jig down on the table using 4 clamps. Then I simply drill out the hole until I break through to the control cavity.

At first I thought I could just use a router but but my hole wasnt 100% clean so I've moved to using the forstner bit because it comes with it's own centering point. There is no jumping around and it cuts a quick clean hole.

Back to the original topic, I've used a bearing guided router bit to do my cavities for years and never had much of an issue doing so (other than it takes forever, is loud and is messy.) However, I recently changed my method and started using the forstner bits to hog. I then clean it up with the router bit. Much quicker and much less mess to clean up.

Front

Back

Most of the pre-made neck through blanks -like Carvin and stewmac have no neck angle. That means you'd need to either take material off of the top of the blank that extends through the body to allow the fretboard to sit higher off of the face of the guitar or you would be stuck using a recessed floyd rose type bridge so you could get your action correct.

So if you don't need to have any neck angle in your build, just gluing your wings onto the sides of the pre-made neck blanks would make for an easy way to build a guitar- but expensive!

I'll be a bit different. I like it as it. I love the upper horn and the acoustic side of everything. Also, I'm guessing a few of the previous posters haven't heard of a slide! I've seen a lot of guitars that have frets that might be more for show or the occasional "finger tapping technique"- see many reasons to have those frets.

What I would do- make the bass side of the body hollow (no F holes or anything) If you have some hollow space in there you'll enhance some of the acoustic properties and avoid some of the sterile acoustic sound a solid guitar ends up with.

I'd like to see some close up pictures but I like it...always did! Much respect for Eric and his SG!

that's awesome sounding and looking! I'm glad to see you got yours done. I've been pulled away by mine to complete tow other projects but hopefully I can get mine together soon. The body is basically done, just have to get the time to build the neck.

Yup, I bolt my bodies to a board that's connected to a bolt in the joists of my shop and I've never had one drop. I like the way Dan E has a roticery set up so he can turn is guitar while spraying it. Just seems like a good idea.

I'll throw my .02 in here. Do some research and find a reputable lumber yard in your area. You'll find that you can likely find some excellent hardwoods and rummaging though a couple hundred thousand BF of lumber can be an addicting experience. I've gotten a lot of great lumber online but nothing beats my twice a year trip to Hearne Hardwoods in southern PA. http://www.hearnehardwoods.com/

If I do buy online it's usually from here http://www.hardwoodlumberagent.com/

I loved the way that some members (avengers63, wezV and others) gave a detailed reaction to each guitar.

I think that should be encouraged. They pointed out things I hadn't previously noticed, in some cases. Very worthwhile info IMHO.

it seems to be the point of GOTM to me. I suppose its my teacher side that tries to find something good and bad about each one but i started doing the detailed thing for each one because its really what i wanted when i entered

I work in call center quality so giving feedback on the plus and deltas are normal for me. I always try to pick out points of interest for me. I'd also like to thank those who threw a vote myway. The winner this month...excellent guitar bro! I'd buy it!

I have an older set of jointer knives that I like to use for scraping but with no handles it's not for the weak of heart! I've been thinking about getting a nice draw knife to work with but one of those finger planes look cool too. Anyone use those for shaping necks or bevels?

It could also be due to location. The UV is different in different parts of the world, air quality also could play a part in just how fast it changes. The PH in the basement under a piece of Padauk was likely out of contact with any UV for the past 20 plus years so it would seem logical that it wouldn't change as quickly. Put that board outside for a month and see what happens.