pan_kara

Ahh, that's the solution if you forsee it in advance. I'm at a similar stage with my V and I read somewhere that this is done with a pin router and an oversize template.. but this way its possible with a normal router. You just have to have the templates spot-on. Gotta try next time. This time around I penciled in the bevel lines and did several passes with the router with changing depths. Then I straightened out the "stairs" with a handplane - on the outer straight parts of the V. The curved part in the back is still waiting on me. I'll probably use a spokeshave and then sandpaper...

I'll say! That's killer. What did you do, go back and pore fill with that reddish brown color? And I'm going to say it again, that fretboard is perfect with this body. SR Yessir, i mixed some filler with red dye and rubbed it in. I didnt think it could come out that great, but it really worked well. I really want to do this with neon green, if i can find a way to do that. can look nice indeed: http://www.mayones.com/en/custom_shop_gallery/setiuspro7slime BTW I though you had dyed the black guitar blue, only after the second round of pics I realized that was probably the sky reflecting.. I agree with Scott, there's something special going on between the fingerboard and this finish. Whats up with having ruined it?

isn't using a drill press for this bad for the drill press itself? I'm currently using mine to press frets in but I was thinking of doing the exact same thing as you (buy an arbor press, drill hole, install fret caul) just to take the strain of the drill press..

Ha ha! I will post sound files for sure, to complement the numbers. Not sure about the bridge part, but when I get to comparing necks I plan to record the unamplified sound of the guitar with a mic. I'm wondering how the rather obvious differences in the unamplified tone of the different wood combinations etc carry over to the sound from the output jack - "95% of the sound is pickups", "70% tone comes from the neck, the rest from the body" and all that stuff.

I've already mentioned here and there that I'm going to try to do a comparison between the Hannes bridge and a no-name cheapo hardtail. The aim it to try to see if there is any measurable sound difference between the two. Meet the test mule: this is an alder body with an RG shape, currently wearing the Hannes bridge and a Lace Alumitone wired directly to the output jack. The neck is from my Nylon One build (I'm currently putting some TruOil on the top of that one and I took the neck off for that). The idea is for the tests to be objective, I'm at the moment in the process of writing the numerical analysis code and checking first results. If this works the plan is to try mounting different necks to the body (the body was in fact meant for that) to see if I can measure a sound difference there. If this is successful, there are many other things I'd imagine I could test - stainless vs normal frets, different nut materials, loose vs tight bolted on neck etc etc I will be collecting ideas - assuming the first test gives me any meaningful results, so stay tuned for that.

ah, I meant to comment on the fretboards the other day but forgot - myself I'd lean towards the one on the left, though the center is not terrible either. But regardless of the final choice I'd double-up the dots at the 12th and 24th frets. Just two close together side-by-side or something like that. Good luck with the hand!

Nice vid! The one time I tried wood binding on a fretboard for some reason I made a clumsy clamping setup. I guess I got stuck on the thought wood glue=lots of clamps.. Tape. Gotta try this next time around.

well its gonna be a mini-humbucker actually so kind of in the middle but thanks! @Scott good to know about the screws. I'll take another look when I have a chance, I think I'll anyway try to put a little angle in the neck pocket. For now the Hannes is on another guitar now since I'm preparing to do the bridge comparison I was mentioning earlier.

yep. looks a lot better with the veneer. Looks like I'll have to do the same thing with one of mine too

Welcome! I've only started 1,5 years ago with no previous woodworking experience this is a great place to share with others the ups and downs of learning to build, while watching other people's brilliant work. How's the wenge body? Not stupidly heavy or impossible to work with? I like the combination of a bright top with a dark body, I'm toying with an idea of a wenge body myself so your experience will be useful

thanks demonx! back after Christmas holidays - as there was indeed a lot of wood to remove on the V still, I did it like this. First routed a channel from the front in several shallow passes: then took some wood off with my jigsaw, finally went around it from the back with a long bottom-bearing bit. I'll have to figure out something better next time, maybe more shallow passes from the front.. and I think I'll leave the fingerboard gluing for later on my next neck-thru builds .. dunno yet. I might just make another template with a cutout for the fingerboard. Anyway, the result: I got a chamfering bit but I'll probably end up using the handplane here .. waiting for the guy that I'm building this for to CNC the outline of the bridge for me so that I can make routing templates (the one I tried to do myself didn't satisfy me). So it'll be the neck carve, body chamfering, control cavity etc in the meantime Etna is moving along slowly, I'm still trying out some ideas I have for the front, meanwhile I shifted the bridge holes by 2mm or so following Scott's advice (thanks!), drilled all the neck attachment holes (except the neck ferrule recesses, I realized I don't have a 12mm bit on me) and here's an outer-string test: from which I learned that I need to dial in some neck angle into the neck pocket, the action is stupidly high with the saddles all the way down at the moment.

Nice indeed! Looking forward to this

before someone who actually knows the answer replies let me just say that I'm the process of doing exactly that. I managed to get hold of some Tru Oil finally and I'm now doing two necks with it. After I saw how the first one is coming out I decided to also put it on the top of my nylon string build. Looking good so far.

wow sorry to hear about the accident! Good that you managed in the end with the frets! On my first attempts the way I did it was to hammer them out placing a small screwdriver at the end of the fret and slowly lifting it off the fretboard by hammering from behing. Now thats chipout city, but for some reason I was pretty lucky back then.. For fret pulling pliers I just went to a hardware store, bought small cheap pliers for 5 EUR or something and filed them down..

Its gonna look great with an oil finish! So this light contour is enough to make a difference? I forsee a few drop-top (or veneered) guitars coming up and I'm trying to figure out how to approach them.. that upper edge rubbing against the forearm always annoys me..

Nice! Do I see a subtle carve where the arm rest would be?

I was thinking many shallow passes on the router.. unless I handplane it closer to shape first. I anyway need to clean up the front and back since the wings went in at a slight angle. As for the wood left over.. I realized some time ago that the walnut cut-offs should be good for another V thanks to how wide the central piece is and I love that. I should even be able to glue them along the lines that I was cutting now, making the grain follow the V pattern. I have another ovangkol through neck blank, without the wenge center strip - I plan to do a bloodwood strip and bloodwood fingerboard... There will be a thread next year for sure.

It only took 20 or 30 minutes yesterday evening. Straight lines are cool

I even got the "fret slot depth gauge" but I couldn't get it to fit in the slots cause they were too tight (from the hook being too narrow)... well after I realized on the first few frets whats happening and used the saw to widen the slots back to nominal width I did check all the remaining slots with a piece of fretwire with the tang ground flat before I pressed the frets in... so I guess lesson learned. I still don't know what I'll do with a bound fretboard that I'll be fretting soon, the problem will be the same there. I'll try to get in there with my fretting saw I guess, or I'll cut a piece off and make a poor-man's "stewmac refret saw" Scott - thanks for this. I remember reading this in your build thread and thinking to myself "oh good now I need to remember about this in my Hannes installation"... and what? I forgot. You made it just in time, I just punched the holes yesterday but didnt drill them yet so I'll take a clook at this and maybe bring the bridge forward by a mm or two. Thanks again!

Thanks, man! The handsaw.. I'm using it on the V build since its mostly straight lines and I like the idea of using a tool having seemingly nothing to do with guitar building I'll see how it goes, I'm planning to make the two outer rough cuts with it. The frets - I got almost no chipping in the bloodwood, I could see some wood lift slightly from the frets coming out, but this was basically limited to the region under the fret so looks like I was lucky - and careful, using tape and flush-ground pliers. Since the frets were not fully seated I could relatively easily get the pliers under the fret and work it upwards. After the frets are back in I'm unable to find any trace of this in the fingerboard.

I routed the neck pocket for Etna and chiseled out the corners. After test fitting the neck I could double-check the bridge location and start drilling the holes. Using the supplied template from Schaller for that I tried this already on another body that I'll be using to compare the "sound" of the Hannes against another cheapo bridge. The fact that you use a metal block for the string anchor instead of single ferrules makes drilling the string thru holes more forgiving than usual. I pressed the frets in, this time it didn't go so well.. I messed up with the slot depth for some reason and some frets didnt go all the way in, I had to take them out and deepen the slots. I got the Stewmac fret slot cleaning "hook", I used to use the fretting saw to clean slots but somehow I never managed to do a fretboard without the saw jumping out of the slot at least once and scratching a polished and oiled fingerboard... well this time I learned that the hook in turn - while I can do a better job of keeping it in the slots - is more narrow than the slots, so it cleans the bottom ok, but not the sides. As a concequence, all the layers of oil I've been putting on have made the slots a bit too narrow and the frets were hard to get in there... So in the end I had to anyway go over the board with the saw. I masked each slot with tape in case my saw slipped again and this time managed to get it right. The whole thing took me 2 hours or so instead of the expected 15 minutes.. oh well. I have to re-thing my fretboard making process a bit I guess. Here she is with the frets in: I need to drill the holes for the bridge and the neck screws and I'll be able to do a quick test with strings on. I did one on the V already - since the wood around the bridge will disappear I just screwed down a temporary bridge with 2 screws and made sure all the alignment is ok: I began the neck and neck-headstock transition shaping And glued on the wings - first one: and the second one: Now its time for the hand saw

Some wood porn for a change - Madinter are now selling sets of 4 B&W ebony fingerboards. I couldn't resist and I ordered one. This stuff just looks stunning:

Reading my own messages in wood I remembered to drill the wiring channels and test fit the pickups - the choice here will be the Bumblefoot combo of the ToneZone and the Chopper. The frets are being pressed in - what a joy this is over the hammer... and the neighbor downstairs didn't come over to complain about the noise this time

The Etna neck is about to get frets in, radiused to 14' and with several coats of Danish Oil, here's the start of the oiling and side dots: I did the tuner holes for both guitars, here's pics from the V. It so happen that I read RAD's post about the StewMac tuner hole reamer when I was about to place an order for some stuff to I decided to get the thing and I absolutely love it. So for now my process is: start with 2mm holes that I have drilled already in the headstock shape mdf templates I used for routing the shapes - these are already visible in the earlier photos. Then I follow up with an 8mm brad-point bit centered on the hole, BUT with a jig that keeps the tuners in line with the headstock edge: And finally the stewmac tool from the back self-piloting on the 8mm hole and creating the final shape from the back: Tuners and lock nut test fit:

I don't have experience since I'm just building my first guitar with a locking nut but the way I was thinking to do this was to route the shelf before radiusing the board, trying to stay on the safe side i.e. not going to deep, and then just bring the thickness down with files/sandpaper when setting the guitar up.