I haven't finished this guy yet. It was annoying because I was about to attend class again (complete with a big big wood shop) and they cancelled the course indefinitely because it wasn't "financially viable" to have a course where students buy their supplies from places other than the school.
That in mind, my dad and I went pretty nuts buying tools. I currently have a 16 inch bandsaw, 6 inch Delta joiner, a nice tablesaw, spindle sander, a large drill press and I have to pick up the planer this weekend. My dad snagged me a nice Makita router complete with 10 brand new carbide tipped bits which were the exact ones I needed. We did all of this in the past month. The bad part about all of this is that the shop is located far enough away from me that I can only do this on the weekends.
I'm hoping to get the guitar done before the end of February.
As for the bridge, I had a 7 string fixed bridge Ibanez that I swapped the bridge on. I put one of the hipshot bridges on there and I didn't really notice a sound difference. It was easy as pie to intonate though. I'm not sure how the low F# is going to be on the 8 string, but I'm chomping at the bit waiting to find out.