hittitewarrior

Thanks!

That mandolin is GORGEOUS!  Thanks for pointing it out as an example.  I might have to try this.  

I've changed directions on this build so many times it feels like.  Although now I feel like I've reached the same point (from a progress perspective) where I discovered I had made the headstock too thin before.

This time, I think I did it correctly.

Quartersawn walnut, Bocote fingerboard, Ebony faceplate.

Yes, the fingerboard does not go to the end of the neck...  I think I will be able to cover this up with the pickguard, although if I can't, it will require some special figuring out...  

Has anyone ever tried black stain on Koa to deepen figure even more?  Just curious.

Has anyone used this before?  Any issues?

http://www.guitarfetish.com/Modern-Style-Tele-bridge-Upgrade-Stainless-Steel-Saddles-Black_p_497.html

I am building two guitars right now.  One of them is getting the Gotoh Modern Tele bridge, but I am don't want to spend that much on a second bridge at the same time... and the mounting holes are different so I can't easily upgrade later...

Thanks!

I've been saving the neck above, cause I have not decided what to do with it yet... In the absence of decision making on that, I decided to make another couple necks (I need the practice)... Which leads me to a question.

I have a fretboard blank that I knew was going to end up PRETTY thin once radiused, but I thought it was worth giving a shot.  It's pretty thin...  Too thin to use by itself? The caliper is right on the edge, so the middle is thicker, but I'm still wondering...

Thanks!

It felt really good to get back to the shop...

I'm leaning towards the volute as well, although I'm not sure I've played a guitar with a significant volute before.

What about adding a couple of splines?  Would that take care of the short grain issue and let me carve as desired?

As far as thickness, I'd like to get to about 20mm at the 1st fret.  Favorite guitar I've owned was a Ibanez JS1000... sold it to support the hobby after I built my first one, but still think it is one of the nicest necks I've ever played.

3 hours ago, Prostheta said:

As long as you don't have areas of short grain it should be fine.

It's a flatsawn maple neck.  If I take 1/4" off all the way up to the nut, and then taper back to the back of the headstock, you think what's remaining will be strong enough?  I looked up short grain, and I think this approach minimizes that.   I'll post another picture with the "plan" just to make sure I understand well enough.

Thanks for the advice guys!

9 hours ago, curtisa said:

Any reason you couldn't continue slicing the 1/4" off to just ahead of the nut and carry on building it with a purposely-exaggerated headstock back-step? You could even claim the increased nut break angle where the strings pass back to the tuners as being tone voodoo

Or re-laminate a piece of contrasting timber onto the heel (make it a feature) and build the neck with a 1" nominal thickness prior to carving. The neck pocket might be a little deeper than a standard Tele, but the body should have more than enough meat to take it.

Haha, tone voodoo... I like that idea.   I'm mainly concerned that to get a nice carve (neck thickness/shape) behind the first fret, that it would weaken the headstock too much?   

Well.... I discovered a big screw up...

I rough dimensioned the lumber for my neck at 1" (too conservative...), and never took it down to .75"... Not that bad, except over the months of intermittently doing this, I forgot it should be at .75" before putting the fretboard on.... and ESPECIALLY important when cutting the headstock down to thickness... see image.  You can see where I went to trim the .25" off where it will bolt on.  The more I thought about it, I wanted to just go down the whole length, but that leaves almost no support at the headstock.  I am thinking my only recourse at this point would be to scarf joint a new headstock onto it.  Thoughts?

I'm actually leaning towards popping the fretboard off to recover the truss road, and just abandoning this one...

Quite an unfortunate learning point here...

Well, its been quite a while since I last posted.  I ended up not using the fretboard from before.  I still have it, but the overly wide fret slot, and some lack of even sanding I discovered made me decide to put it aside.  I'm not sure if I will spend the time to fix it, but I did create a second one.  And tonight I trimmed it up, and officially mounted it to the neck.

I repurposed the 10" radius sanding beam I had made in my jig for clamping cauls since I purchased an aluminum sanding beam in this radius.  

Next up I think is, deepen the fret slots, mount the nut, shape the neck.  I'm debating whether I want to fret before shaping the back of the neck... I imagine using my drill press to seat frets would be far easier with a flat back.  Thoughts?

I love this!  Glad you found some good solutions to some of the problems in the design I was working with.  I like the band clamps to hold the router in place, I think the way I mounted my router led to a decent amount of my troubles due to the extra joint in the base.  That, and (as you said), I fed it through lengthwise, which could have further confounded the issues.  I got a 12" radius out of it that looks ok after sanding.  My 10" one ended up being cut up for clamping cauls.  Gotta confess, I ended up buying an aluminum beam to meet my 10" needs... *hangs head*...  Anyways.

Great job and great write up!

Alright, looking for some advice.  I started radiusing the fretboard, and it looks like my fret slots did not go deep enough.  I have a fretting saw but no mitre box.  Do I just be careful and manually deepen the slots, or do I try to re-attach to the table saw setup... i'm thinking manual is less risky. Thoughts?

Haha, Yup, the jig.  I did go back and check the jointer cause I had been getting a hair of snipe, and figured it would be a good opportunity to see if I have the adjustment to fix it.   I haven't done it yet, but it looks like some decent adjustment on this unit.   Thanks for the concern and advice anyway!

Just now, Prostheta said:

I've always thought that it might be possible to laminate a thin sheet of 2-3mm laser-grade Birch plywood into a roughly-radiused beam using epoxy....

Now that is an interesting thought......  I have some really thin veneer... I might have to try this...

9 hours ago, Prostheta said:

Low spots aren't that much of a problem in comparison to high ones for a sanding beam. The paper won't conform perfectly to the low areas so in general your beam will be functional. The most important point is straightness by length. The rest averages itself out.

If the wood isn't perfectly stable, your 10" will be more likely to move according to relative humidity than your 12". At least, the 12" will squish or expand the radius very marginally whilst the 10" will distort it. In reality, this is very unlikely to be of consequence if the wood is already good and dry.

Excellent work, and I love the madcap setup!

Thanks :)... it is definitely a bit madcap isnt' it lol.

7 hours ago, curtisa said:

Could the radius beam you're routing be wobbling in the cradle, rather than the jig moving?

Presumably you're feeding the beam through the cradle with the router clamped at a particular rotation, then swinging the router a smidge and repeating the process. If the blank piece of timber you're feeding through to create the radius beam doesn't have a flat back, or it goes in with a slight upwards angle you'd probably get a similar effect.

It has a flat back cause I sent it down the jointer first.  I was really scratching my head at first, but when I started trying to move things by hand, I found a couple notable axis of rotation/slop.  The guides on either side did not go down the jointer though (that would be one of the future upgrades if I did it again)... They bind when the board is 3/4 of the way through and I have to push hard with a push stick... I suppose it is possible that the board climbs a little bit, but I doubt it.

Thanks all for the comments!

It wasn't as simple as I thought it would be (rarely is...).  I've had a bear of a time removing flex from the framework.  It kept giving me varying depths in the cuts, sometimes very severe.   I added some additional supports, changed the thickness of the cross member, and (not shown below) added a support directly behind the raidusing board as low as I could (prevents deflection as you push into the router bit).  

I wasn't able to get rid of all of the deflection, and am having to deal with some spots with .005" varying depth...  Visibly noticeable, and I can feel it, but I'm thinking when I'm sanding, it won't affect anything.  Below is the worst of it. Thoughts?

I did go back and set the bit to the deepest spot, and reworked the board.  It looks better, but I can tell there are some issues... At this point, I will probably just try it, and see how it goes.  The 12" radius board came out much better.

I ended up going with about 16" in length.

Time to purchase some double sided tape so I can get to sanding.

Thanks!  I gotta admit, I've been amazed at how good Pinterest (of all places) is for jig inspiration.  Seen a lot of useful ideas there.  I'll be sure to post pics of the blocks.  We'll see how long it takes to make them, but I'm hoping to do a full set (9.5, 10, 12, 14, 16, 20), and then just dismantle the jig once that's done.  Big Red sells them in a couple different lengths... Do you guys have a length you find most useful?  I was planning on 8" or so.

Here's the youtube link of the one that inspired the design:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP1HgLmZhDw

His design is a little more robust, but I was looking for simple & easy.  

Moving very slowly towards physically working on the guitar again... Been working on building the shop up mostly.  Procured a new bandsaw, and new to me jointer and drill press (the local tool auction this spring was great...).

Most recently, been working on making the fixture to create radiused sanding blocks so I can work on the fingerboards... Hopefully I'll get to radiusing this weekend... a high aspiration, but we'll see.

Hmm... Thanks for the input and pics.  That's really helpful!

Haha, good point... I guess nothing other than it being an unintentional result of putting the template on the board wrong! 

Progress!

ZCI:

Sled & First fretboard!

I did run into one snag... I accidentally ran one fret through twice, and part of the slot is now too wide.  Is this something I can fix with superglue when fretting?  Looks like 1/4 of the fret will seat in the wood snugly, but the rest has a little play in it.  Thoughts?

And I made one more for good measure...

Haven't decided which I'll use yet.. and yes, the top one will have 23 frets... A silly mistake, but it was the first.

One last question... For those of you doing inlay, do you inlay before radiusing or after?  Ideally I'd think after, but I'd imagine the radius means having an unstable base when using the router?...

I am looking at drill presses, and wondering if a 12" swing (6" depth" is enough for most guitar builds?

It seems like it is on the hairy edge of being able to reach to the "center" of guitar for the string-thru holes.

Looking for your experiences! Thanks.

Table saw is now fixed!  Replaced the bearings, blew out all the sawdust (old craftsman so not a TEFC motor...), and some other light maintenance.  Runs much better now. I still need to install a new blade, and figure I should check and make sure everything is plumb/aligned etc.   

I did start working on a sled for cutting the frets, as well as using a laminate trim bit to trim up the top on the guitar.  I had some problems when gluing the top on, and it left me with some gaps... I think the only way to truly hide it is to rout a binding channel and put a binding on... which I don't really want to do.  I guess my only other option is fill it.  At the moment, I'm feeling like trying something like Japanese "kintsugi"... embrace the mistake, put some copper dust or precious stone in (malachite?), and just let it be part of the learnings and story.  Feels like the cheap way out, but I'm not really ready to take on binding yet..

18 minutes ago, Agave Spirit said:

Agree with all on the Bandsaw. I have a Laguna 14" and it works great; however, I always go to my table saw for ripping and some crosscuts. I have a Jet standing drill press, Dewalt makes an excellent and affordable planer (DW735). You can upgrade it later to a Byrd shelix blade. Keep in mind that it is a 13" planer. I have a 8" Powermatic jointer and I love it but I also do others things in my shop besides building guitars so it comes in handy for building furniture. The planer and jointer go together. 

Other equipment that is useful for building guitars is a nice router table and a great dust collector. I actually would put the dust collector first, An air filter is also a must have in a wood shop. Something not on your list is lots of outlets and lights for all that equipment. If your shop is humid, get a dehumidifier. Also get an air compressor. Great for clearing dust off tools and projects. Also can be used for spray painting. I won't even get into hand tools.

Thanks for the thoughts!  Which Laguna do you have?  I have been planning on getting the 14-12 and the resaw king blade.  I had a chance to get a Rikon for about 300 bucks less, but I thought the potential value of being able to do really good resaw, would be worth splurging on the Laguna (and it seemed like the reviews all indicated the Laguna would be better for resaw purposes).  Thanks!

I've been quite distracted and am also having issues with my table saw motor (bearings went bad)... taking a brief hiatus as I work through some of these issues... 

Worked on cleaning up the new fretboard a little tonight.  I think the color matches the koa nicely, interesting grain, and definitely simpler than the highly figured piece.

I'm not sure what to call this, but it's the one flaw I'm finding in the board.  Have you all had this before in a fretboard? Did you do anything about it?  I thought about filling with CA and letting it all get sanded down when I'm radiusing, but I'm not sure....  

Fretting template comes in the next day or two, so I'll have to spend some time making a sled, and then I get to slot it. 

Also, here's how the vinegar and salt mixture patina'd the copper material used for the pickguard.  I'm waiting to do the pickguard though cause I think once I rout the cavity and mount the bridge I may need to do some trim work on it.

No notable progress this weekend... :-\  

Been experimenting with some of the cutoff's from the pickguard and giving copper a patina.  It looks pretty cool, but comes off reallllly easily.  I let one piece dry, and will try coating with polyurethane.  Pictures to follow at a later time.

On that fingerboard with all the figuring,.. it's almost ready to glue up, but I've decided to save it for another build.  I have a design idea in the back of my head that it would look much better with, so I've been prepping a different piece of cocobolo.