pan_kara

this is great thanks so much!!

cool! that's something I'd like to make semi-standard on my builds since ever but for some reason I haven't tried once yet

I need something for the bigger tasks - roughing in the volute, heel on a neck or on a neck-thru, tummy cut etc. I was thinking a 225mm (one step smaller than the one you reviewed) and I was wondering what coarsness would make most sense - #9, #10 .. the ones that I'm comparing to are these: https://www.lmii.com/products/tools-services/rasps/files/razor-files

do I see scallops there?

@Prostheta do you have a feeling on how these coarsness grades of Liogier files stack up against "razor files" that LMI and others are carrying? I have a flat one that I got some time back and recently got a half-round one from LMI, but in parallel I was eyeing a Liogier like the one that you are reviewing here and I'm wondering which one would make sense as an add-on to my "collection" (not duplicating what I have already). Any suggestions?

I actually made myself a google doc spreadsheet where I have a sequence of "tasks" for a build (neck and body separate). Since I normally run ~4 builds in parallel I have a summary sheet that pulls from all the builds and shows me the 3 upcoming "tasks" for every build. Makes it much easier when I find a moment for guitar work to see where I left off and what to dive into. I love those pickup rings! (actually I love a lot of other things, the list is long the carve!!) Do you have any in-progress shots for the rings? I was trying to to make wooden pickup rings on a couple of occasions, with varying degrees of success.. I can't get a good process down for this.

I was considering this actually but I wasn't sure it would look good .. but all is not lost - I'm toying with the idea of making a prespex pickuguard for this guitar. For the moment I won't be shielding the cavities with the usual black paint, just in case.

well getting closer to the dangerous part. Made the headstock decal, aplied it and started shooting shellac all over the guitar: here's a closeup of the headstock: I need to find something better to spray this stuff, I'm using this strange aerosol can that I can fill with air from a bike pump, I think this was working ok in the past, but now the atomization is poor and half the shellac is dripping from the nozzle onto my hand. I did clean the cap thoroughly so I don't know .. Looks like I'll need to figure out a better setup. I was trying to level the shellac with P220 and started to go through the paint in places, fortunately I noticed early. I did level the worst nibs fine, so I think I'll leave it at that. I'll try to paint/wipe and extra coat of shellac or two maybe. Then I need some better weather (we had a horrible 2-week heat wave and now its supposed to rain for a few days) for spraying the aerosol 2k that I got. I have 2 cans, so the plan is to do 2-3 light coats from the first can (until its empty), then wait 24h, level with p600 or thereabouts and shoot the second can before 36h pass from the first spraying. I understant this should make the coats melt together. Meanwhile I started on the pickguard - here is my fancy new router table: I need to work on extraction a little, right now the whole workshop is covered in this small black&white bacon ... Here's a test fit after laying out and cutting the neck "pocket"

thanks for the info. I might need one of these (or more ) but I'm not sure whether my next batch of builds will feature a multiscale, we'll see. Right now I have to finish the current four builds so realistically speaking in Fall I might be planning out the next series. (I mean of course I have 7 or so other builds laid out, some already have hardware purchased already.. )

yup. it takes me 6-8 months to get to this stage normally. lol and here you have the whole process in a nutshell. plus the current "hip" woods - black limba body, b&w ebony fingerboard, ziricote top ... I wanted to make myself a dark top-light body + light fingerboard-dark neck guitar - and here it is. plus multiscale this really is a "tick-all-the-boxes" instrument so these hipshot bridges are a custom order from them? I didn't see them on their website last time I checked ..

I had no idea hipshot now made dedicated multiscale stuff .. yea the whole slanting business is one of the main visual problems with this type of guitar. Even in this explorer, which is super-nice, the point where the fingerboard edge is not parallel to the last fret (or "continuing the fan") looks a bit weird to me. It would be much nicer if the pickups could actually follow the fret fan with their angling, but that would indeed require a custom pickup job I expect.

thanks, gentlemen! I'm super happy with the way it turned out, I had my share of frustration and failed attempts but after this one I'd feel pretty confident doing another one. shellac is my best bet to protect this from the 2k clear I have prepared for the topcoat. Worked last time with brushed on nitro ... I'll make the headstock decal first and then I'll shoot shellac all over the thing (except fingerboard of course)

Ok, so it IS possible to get a good result with Magic Marble. For some reason most of my previous tries (and many of the ones I saw online) ended up with washed-out colors, there was not enough paint towards the end of the dip. But apparently if you keep the surface of the water reasonably big and go slow you can get nearly full coverage. Proof: more to follow. Also video. Now to not mess this up ...

all right: The body was also sprayed silver (acrylic auto paint) but I don't have a good pic. Today I did the headstock swirl with brand-new magic marble paints. I should have probably used more black (lesson for the body) but overall I'm happy with it. after removing masking tape: The body is ready to go in next, maybe tonight...

hah, this would be something. Does this potentially have the "coats melt together" properties like nitro? i.e. no witness lines? I'd guess for coats sprayed in succession maybe yes, for touch-ups or coats sprayed after curing maybe no, but I have no knowledge about this type of finishes ...

motorize it so that its periodically going back-and-forth - like some sort of phaser effect

hah I think I'm having the same thing happen to the strat that I'm building now, the primer coats used to be completely flat but now an outline of the neck section that I glued in is slowly starting to show. Probably because I've been leaving her in the sun for too long over the past week

I always wanted to try something like this

I do the same. As long as the slot is deep enough to guide the saw you should be fine.

yea I know there are special products for that, I'm not sure I have access to them .. I was thinking maybe thin superglue. So you used shellac? Interesting, I didn't know it can be used for that.

I'll be watching this one, I have a spalted maple top lined up for a superstrat build for myself. Are you going to be stabilizing the top? I guess that's something that's necessary with spalted tops..

yea, I've seen these too. And indeed it looks like the best way to do this is a secret guarded by those who figured it out, though the first vid appears to be done with magic marbles and turned out pretty good. He does get some paint drying out when he stirs it with the pencil (or whatever he's using) but he appears to not really bother with that and just keeps going. I actually like crazy contrast on the swirl (never thought of doing a low-contrast version, might actually look pretty cool too..), so I wanted black-light blue instead of zebra black&white, to at least limit the color palette. Another thing is the base color - I somehow assumed I'd be limited to the color of the primer, so gray or white, but when I think about it I cant see why I can't just spray an acrylic color over the primer and use that as base - this is what people appear to be doing, like in the bottom vid above. Then the light blue, which is translucent to some extent, would let some of the metallic flake from the silver through. And if I get problems from paint becoming too washed-out I'd just expose more of the underlying silver and pretend it was meant to be like that. Well enough theorizing, I'll order the paints and I need to paint the headstock. Maybe today.

any pics for inspiration? yea I think I'll stick with magic mable. From what I can see they have slight problem with coverage (the end of the swirl can be a bit washed out) and they dry quickly on the water surface.. But I'm thinking if I use enough paint, fresh paint and go fast, it should be ok. "humbrol" and "borax" somehow landed in a drawer labeled "weird stuff only available in the US" in my mind, though I actually went to the trouble of googling them yesterday and it appears that they are available in the EU and called more or less the same so I could try them in principle.. but I'm not sure, there seems to be some tricks with water temp and borax concentration that need to be controlled, and from what I remember @curtisa was actually considering switching in the other direction (borax -> magic marble) due to problems he's been having. Which one method did you use?

it did come out lovely however, after all the fuss

well maybe not a brisk scrub but yea, they came off 24h after application. I did another one last night and it sucked even worse. I used a lot more paint in the beginning but then ran out of some colors and in general created big color spots and big places with primer showing. Wiped off after 10 minutes, came off easier, though had to spend some time on it still. I think the old magic marbles are partially at fault here, they are behaving differently on the surface of the water than they used to and they're drying up faster (this might be due to ambient temperature .. ). I checked my own vids of tests when I first got them. So anyway I have to decide on a color combination and order fresh paints. I'm thinking black-light blue-silver. I'll also do the headstock so I have to put primer on it. And actually finish the headstock-fingerboard transition area, that's not yet fully shaped. For clearcoating - I'm hoping shellac will save me, without messing up the colors too much. We'll see ...