pan_kara

I go a JET arbor press from them once, I use if for fretting. That's the only business I've done with them .. I bought the router bits from punta.com.pl, but I see they also have prohibitive shipping costs to Finland. Weird. I used to buy from France or UK but since I moved from France to Switzerland (so outside EU) sending stuff is associated with some extra nonsensical fees so I moved to buying stuff in Poland and bringing it over myself (I'm there once a month).

really? where/which bits are you using? I recently got a pair of CMT spiral cutters as part of trying to transition to mostly guide-bushing-based approach, but one never knows when one a new router bit will need..

binding after radiusing .. hmm I should consider it next time. I put binding on before just trying to cut the slots extra deep to factor in the future radius .. well in the current two and a half bound fingerboards that I'm doing all needed some deepening... Good that I got the little saw that does that a few months ago, but still annoying.

Thanks guys! I do like the way it came out, let's see how the look evolves when the body gets painted.

Doesn't look like rubbish to me : thanks @Norris for the idea! The binding is on (treble side and bridge end only) and the board is radiused to 12". On the other side also the side markers went in the one at the 19th fret sits above the rest a little, I should have come up with some trick to keep them in line when drilling over the body .. apparently just using a center punch was not enough. As you can see I didn't do much, in my defense this is one of 4 guitars (3 guitars and a bass) that I'm doing in parallel so I've been sanding flat and radiusing 4 necks actually. This one has a first coat of oil drying on it now, slots are chamfered and deepened as needed so soon it's fretting time. I wanted to fret the board after finishing since I though I'd want some of the (swirl) finish on the fingerboard, below the frets, but I changed my mind. It'll go on the neck, but not on the fingerboard. It's swirly enough as it is anyway.

yea .. I released a full guitar build video recently, where I filmed the whole process of building a mini guitar for my daughter - I had almost 10h of material, I literally filmed almost every step of the process except things like finish sanding, every coat of lacquer etc. This was over 3 years ago, it took me 3 years to find the time to edit all of that material into 13 youtube episodes of ~10-15 minutes each.

I think he means the line that you've created by cutting through - running the binding through there instead of having it vanish

thanks Carl! Yea, I had to find an enclosed space when moving across from France to Switzerland, balcony wouldn't work. Its still an apartment so I have noise and space limitations (no bandsaw for me) but at least the space is fully dedicated to this now. This is a major improvement for me since I don't have a lot of time for building, just 15 minutes to 1-2 hours at a time here and there. The fact that I don't have to set everything up each time (and clean up afterwards) makes the difference between almost not being able to do anything and actually pushing the builds along. looking forward to the youtube series BTW!

LOL I literally just had an idea today of doing exactly this on some future build - solving the problem of bound body with a thin top being uncomfortable on the forearm by carving through the binding and just having it disappear for that section of the outline. I thought I was being original, but now it I ever do it, it will be another thing to put on my list "and now I'll do what I saw Knightro do in the past" . oh well

Here's a weekend shot from my little tight room. The main table has been occupied by my thicknessing jig for the past week or two because I was trying to get the back of a body straight after having glued the two halves at an angle. This is the result:

I saw one guy use a setup like this once, I think he constructed it out of plexi - the sanding block would go between rails, but the rails also had stuff at the bottom so that at some stage the block would just slide on that. If set-up properly, such a jig is pretty much fool-proof. I never had the patience to try to construct something like this though

hah, you're right, I didn't think of that. For some reason I'm attached to the idea that binding goes on the fretboard before it's glued to the neck.. This might actually be a nice solution, also for another small problem that I have (I could use a bit more fingerboard at the bridge edge, otherwise the 24th fret will pretty much only be for the highest string). So I could bind the bottom and end, actually. I was going to just live with it, but I need to still measure exactly where I ended up at, I'm leaning towards going with your solution already. thanks, man!

Turned my attention to the body for a moment and tweaked the cutaways a little on the spindle sander, exposing some of the fantastic table-top construction of the body When thickessing the body I left the bit where the fingerboard would go a bit higher, leaving some room for manouver on both sides of the fretboard. So now that the fretboard is glued I can remove that wood. I figured this is the perfect use case for my silly "straight line jig" since I can just position it at the edge of the fingerboard and lower the router bit down until I reach the level of the rest of the body. well ok in principle, it actually worked perfectly (on one side) just as intended. Well this was supposed to be fool-proof but apparently it isn't. At least it isn't me-proof. I know you have to center the router base for the guide bushing to work ok, and I did it - I believe. So it either slipped out of alignment or I did it wrong in the beginning. Either way, I was about 0,5mm off and the bit ate into the jig (which I'll have to repair) and my fingerboard is 0,5mm narrower at the bridge end now (which I'll have to live with). Oh well. Lesson learned. I'll have to verify centering each time now just to be sure. Still, I could use this to do the route connecting the pickup cavities: So now I go back to the neck. To get the thickness in the right ballpark I ran the router on the neck back (which is flat at the moment), basically digging a "swimming pool" in the middle, to the depth I want it at. Of course this doesn't give me a taper but at least it sets me up close to the desired thickness. On the next guitar I will upgrade myself to a jig that @KnightroExpressis using for this, I just need to find some straight scrap pieces. I think that's the perfect way to start a neck carve. Before shaping the neck I installed a set of fret markers and I'm working to make the fingerboard flat at the moment.

just price. a set of graphtech saddles is ~70 EUR the hipshot solo bridges are hard to find here and appear to be 30 EUR a piece (so 180 EUR for a 6-string setup) that leaves the ABM that I'm using at the moment are ~18 EUR per piece so again, 110 for a setup (maybe there is something cheaper that I'm not aware of)

I'm a fan of this black&gold mix. Had something similar in mind once but never went with it. I think when done right it makes the hardware much more unique, and here it suits the color theme of the bass perfectly! now do the tuners!

Man, I love these multiscale tele's. The bridge - I only just notice that that's the baseplate+wilkinson-like saddles variety. If I end up doing more multiscales in the future I'd prefer this type of bridge over the single saddle ones. Did you fabricate the baseplate yourself?

I was in the same boat stripping a body that I'm currently making into something completely new. Paintwork went off beautifully from the heatgun and then some weird pink stuff showed up underneath that didn't really care about the heat. Also went with router-thicknessing the thing

well, hello rosewood

what he said do you just whip out a whole tune like this as a demo or you had the backing track done ..?

well I hope it develops into looking even more like a guitar The fretboard is bonding with the neck now:

concerning the fret fan - I'm actually considering doing the opposite thing - parallel at the bride and max fan at the nut. Also with a relatively small fan. The reason is that's going to be a guitar with a floyd rose But with that I'll wait until I play my personal leap in the dark - the multiscale that I'm building right now. Depending on how that plays we'll see.

Tricke update: I'm ready to glue the fingerboard on now, I just wanted to do a few things first since its much easier to put templates in place when the fingerboard is not there yet. the headstock is now shaped. Pre-drilling pickup cavities, I made a template for the 7-string single coil using a normal SC template I had And the pickup routes are done: the fingerboard goes on next.

I always manage to get the top/back dirty when painting on the shielding paint, thinking "it will sand out". Might as well spend the extra time with tape. Good reminder for me. Love the color combinations btw and the gold top is superb!

I'll see about my fingers on the strat, with a shorter scale on the high string it is getting a bit dense at the top .. I made a template for the pickguard modifying the normal strat shape a little. The pickup positions mimic the ones in the Red Special at least for the high strings (I wanted to get similar phase cancellations as Brian May is getting in the out-of-phase pickup combinations) so if I follow that I'll have plenty of room to go up to the 24th fret (I planned on 22 previously). so here we go again: (in the background - the first 7 string single coil arrived, from a Polish boutique pickup builder Merlin Pickups. I'll be using this one for tests and when the guitar is finished I'll get the remaining two.

so its basically the blue first and then the black stuff goes over it? looks really cool!