pan_kara

Well here's a plan of how it's supposed to turn out and here's a pic of the guitar with the fretboard as it is cut, so the long scale version. The drawings one the body match the design = the short scale version: Behind the guitar are two fingerboard blanks that I'm considering if I decide to make a new fingerboard - ovangkol (so matching the neck wood) and B&W ebony (contrasting the neck wood and also with a grain pattern following the frets .. somewhat). I was thinking I could use maple but I don't have any, would need to buy. I think I'll turn my attention to the body for the moment while I think about this.

I have the ABM single bridges for this one. By design the bridge is more or less where it would be on a normal strat. If I change the scale back from 25,5 to 27 (and the nut doesn't move) the bridge goes back by ~4cm (1.5 inch). That's maybe not completely terrible, but on the other hand the cutaway only reaches fret 17 or something like that (I'm not at home to take a picture at the moment) so without a modification to the body shape the upper positions are basically unplayable.

well it aint gonna be Lambo. I messed up, just realized yesterday when I went to lay out pickup, bridge etc locations on the body Originally this guitar was supposed to be a 27"-24.75" multiscale 7 string. But at some stage I decided that I since I already have one 7 string that I use any time I need 7 strings, I don't need to build myself a second one, so to make this one different I'm going to make it a 7 string with high A instead of low B. So the scale needed to be shortened, but basically moving one fret down (taking the 1st fret at the new nut etc) would give me 25.5"-something multiscale so perfect for this application. Well apparently the fretboard printout was done before the design change. So the frets were cut for the long scale version, and the scarf angle was also tweaked for that version... so now it all doesn't fit together... and I'm debating several options 1. I could just cut off fret zero from the fingerboard and move on, placing the nut on fret 1. Drawbacks: nut angle will not fit scarf angle + I already trimmed the bridge end of the fingerboard so I'd have only 21 frets. I wanted 22. Its stupid: adding a whole new string only to extend the guitars fretted note reach by two semitones to an F# (above the E of 24 fret guitars). 2. I could redo the fingerboard. I can make it such that the nut angle will be the current one, so that problem solved. I can have as many frets as I want (so that problem solved). Drawback: I grew to like the board that I used, with its funny grain lines that Scott commented on. What would I use it for? A future 27-24.75 7-string? Maybe ... (but 22 frets) 3. Go back to original scale length etc - nope, the bridge will shift too far back (and I decided on the high A already) 4. Go with 1. but somehow splice some wood at the end of the fingerboard to get the last fret back .. (I even have the piece that I cut off, I cut all 24 frets initially, but of course it won't fit back on anymore) As I type this I'm gravitating towards 2 ... I did have a 7 string for sale planned for some time in the future, I could maybe re-use the fingerboard then.

I can still play on the "twisted neck" illusion with the fret dot layout .. still undecided on that. The weekend brought the neck glue-up. First the neck "pocket" jig: Routed down as far as my bit would reach from the mdf templates: Then flipped over and did the rest with a bottom-mounted bearing. Then cleaned up a few places, chiseled out the corners and voila - the mandatory tight-fit shot: And finally the glue up: ..cue the "not enough clamps" comments

Yes, pretty much like this. I'm using threaded inserts as opposed to these t-nuts (is that what they're called?), but otherwise this is what I meant. So it works ok? I saw demonx do this in the past, initially I was thinking to do what he's doing which is having the screw access under the pickup, but I've been looking at my thicknesses and in my design I have 45mm body and the neck pocket at 29mm (the neck heel is 30mm thick). I started out with 20mm pickup cavities but I figure they don't deed to be that deep (except maybe the "ears"). If they're at ~18mm then I'd have 11mm of tenon thickness in the pickup cavity. My threaded inserts are 12mm long so I'm pretty much there and I could have the screws go in from the back. On the other hand, given the neck (and heel) taper, one would need to anyway remove the neck pickup to take the neck out I guess... on a 38mm body this is a different story .. I've been playing it safe and staying with the usual 45mm mostly so far, but I have two body blanks which after I plane away some warping will get me somewhere in the 30-35mm range, so unless I go for a thick carved top (which I might), these will force me to explore the thin-body territory

Ah, so this is for sideways stability too, I see. Yea, so the tenon is not thick enough to hold screws, but still plays a role (in bolt-on, for set-neck it clearly does). That's pretty cool! How thick are your bodies? I was thinking with a ~45mm body I could actually have ~10mm thick tenon and have screws holding the neck under the neck pickup (either from below or from above)

Wow, I love the multiscale Tele! Awesome idea and the design is great! I'm looking at your neck pockets - this tenon lip that's extending under the pickups, you're planning to keep it there, right? But the screws are only in the area under the fingerboard. So is the idea here just to have some extra lever arm to counteract the force from string pull?

That was the reason for picking this particular board it even looks better than I thought now that I've cut the slots.

Just a quick update, the fingerboard is slotted and roughly shaped (I'll radius it once it's on the neck) The neck section "heel" has all three sides ready for gluing, after the weekend I'm planning to set up the usual neck pocket jig on the body and to glue them together.

Headstock sanded flat and rough-cut. This part is ok now. So next is the fingerboard. I decided to go with another piece of merbau, this one actually has some figuring that should flow nicely with the fanned frets. I also did the truss rod channel as you can see in the pic. And here's my hi-tech multiscale fret slotting jig: Also, guest appearance in the back - hi-tech jig for squaring-up the sides of the neck section. I'll want to glue the "wings" on next, before I glue the fingerboard, so that I can work on the front and back surfaces of the guitar without the fingerboard getting in the way. Which will require a bit of though actually, since I think I need to put a tiny neck angle into the whole construction as the fingerboard is going to be pretty thin and I risk having strings really low over the body. I'll have to think about how to do this properly, but first I'll make the "neck pocket".

well I wasn't THAT dead, but yea- I'm back. thanks anyway: after a few minutes on a belt sander and some sandpaper glued to a flat surface I got this: and pretty soon I realized that this will not accommodate a stretched 7-string strat headstock... so I'll have to glue on another extension .. so another merbau piece will have to hop in: for whatever reason I decided to cut out and glue on an L-shaped piece, since I need both the length and the width extended. This should do the trick:

The one time I did a neck-thru I kept the neck blank at the width that it had when I got it (minus whatever I sanded off to get good glue joints for the wings). If the blank is more narrow you can go more narrow, I'd just keep the gluing surfaces straight. Other than that I think it's a matter of preference: - you can just extend the fretboard taper to the thru-body section (though non-parallel glue surfaces will make the wings want to slide more when gluing) - or trim the width to the widest part of the fingerboard, keeping the sides parallel (so a tiny wedge of neck wood will appear next to the fingerboard in the upper horn for example) - or (IMHO simplest) keep the blank slightly wider, the shape is anyway routed after the wings are on.

All right, time flies, but it's about time to come back I think I'm back to building with enough regularity now that it makes sense to start posting in my build thread again. So here's some progress report on this guitar. I'm currently running about four builds in parallel. So first I had to gather together most of the wood to form the neck section. So say hello: The stat remains in the top right corner we already know. The ovangkol neck section also. The piece of wood right between them (sort of) is an ovangkol piece that also made a brief appearance in my first post (actually its two pieces glued together...) but not it has 2 or 3 mm of walnut glued over the top. When this goes at the back of the neck section it will get the thickness to the thickness of the body so that it will fit in ok. On the left we have a small purpleheart plate and some flame maple veneer - these will form some accent lines in the scarf joint and move the headstock away a bit (which I need to do). Speaking of the scarf - as you can see I managed to cut it, but the piece of neck wood that remained is too small for the headstock so I'll have to bring in this piece of merbau: It started its life as a floor tile, then got thicknessed to become a fingerboard, but finally I decided that it's going to become the headstock for this guitar. I cut it in half and glued the halves together to have the needed thickness and that's what you see at the top of the previous photo. Gluing the scarf joint was an adventure in itself as the wood of course wanted to slide in every possible direction and none of the methods I used in the past could be used here. I ended up constructing a weird contraption that basically prevented the headstock piece from sliding in any of the directions it wanted and this appears to have worked: and the end result was this:

ah cool, I bought a few pieces to see if I can make some templates for myself but I started having second thoughts.. Thanks!

is laser cutting the only way to get acrylic templates or can they be "made" just by copying an mdf template?

Thanks Andy, looking forward to your writeup. What I was trying to do on the second speaker (after finding out what is happening on the first one) was to first glue down the veneer edges and then when they cool down a bit try to move on to the rest without re-heating them. I did get better results this way, but still not perfect. Didn't think simply holding down the wood in place could fix this.

Hey @Andyjr1515 any advice about shrinkage? I hit this exact problem twice already. Haven't tried on a guitar yet but I was just playing around and veneered an IKEA stool with some padouk veneer leftovers and had it develop some cracks after cooling down.. this wasn't a big deal, but recenly I've been veneering a HiFi speaker cabinet that I'm trying to make for a change and the speaker to ended up being three pieces of veneer side by side (like in the guitar photo above, though using one type of wood) and there I ended up with ~1mm spaces between the pieces a few minutes after the application. Is there some magic trick to avoid this? I guess this is some effect of the wood swelling from the water in the glue and then compressing after the water evaporates from the heat, but I'm not sure how to counter this.

This guitar took much longer than planned, but finally here she is. Etna - a 6-string baritone with a 27-inch scale, 2pc padouk body with "cracked" wenge veneer top and a rock from the Etna volcano cast in epoxy in a hole between the pickups. 5pc wenge-padouk neck, bloodwood fingerboard. Gotoh locking tuners, Schaller Hannes bridge, Lace Alumitone pickups. Body finished with rattle can 2k, neck with tru-oil. Plus a custom electronic board inside that a friend of mine designed, that lights a diode under the Etna rock as the strings are strummed The build thread (shared with another guitar) is here: Pictures: and, a video demo:

she really is a work of art. extra special thanks for the videos! I'm always itching to see and hear these guitars played after seeing the pics..

finally made a video demo. I'll put her in GOTM and time to move forward! edit: hmm looks like the embed didnt work .. here's the link: ok, so it saw the link and embedded the video again .. wonder if properly this time ..

This is awesome! I love the idea of turning seemingly hopeless wood pieces into guitars, I recently acquired a pine ikea table top that almost got thrown away during a move but I decided we'll keep it and I'll try to make a pinecaster (or two) - I figure every guitar builder has to make a pinecaster at some stage in their life ... Looking forward to seeing this build progress!

go for it! I also prefer to oil the necks nowadays (like Scott), though every time I comment on a problem somebody and think that it doesn't apply to me I realise that it does: I actually will be facing a similar problem in a build with a glued-in neck in a body that I want to swirl - and I want the swirl to fade out onto the fretboard too. So I will have to worry about similar things - I'll have to lacquer the fretboard, I'll have to figure out what to do to not get the lacquer (and color) on the frets etc etc

"no lacquer on fretboard" is referring to the fretboard face I guess. I'd finish the back/sides of the neck including the sides of the fretboard (covering the fretboard and the frets with masking tape). I think that's the usual way to do it, no?

yea I should put her in GOTM I guess.. the build is far from flawless so I didn't jump on that immediately. @Knigtro you might reconsider "not cheesy" when you see the flashing diode . Thanks!

Brushed on nitro. Been there done that. Maybe will again. As Scott said, the beauty in Nitro is that the subsequent coats blend into each other so even if you have brushing marks, you can get away with that by just putting enough coats on and then sanding it all flat. I think I was asking @psikoT about this once when he did a similar thing and his trick was to start with really low grit, like P200 to get the finish nice and level and then to go up through the grits. Also, hit it with P200 between coats to get some of the brush marks out. 10-12 coats should be plenty. As for Nitro over frets - I did this once but with rattle-can nitro. With brush-on, getting the spaces between frets flat is going to be a nightmare. Myself I'd just oil the board with danish oil or tru-oil. In fact I have a bocote board waiting for a build right now so I will be testing this in practice in a few months hopefully :)