Andyjr1515

I'm actually not sure how you would do that and the neck fixing and joint be strong enough except maybe a 'flat scarf' joint at the heel end? The full leverage of the string tension on the neck is going to be acting on that heel. Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

Oh - and yes - the telescope: An in-focus shot: And an out of focus shot to give a size perspective - this is the same patio you usually see my workmate on with a guitar being butchered You can see the main scope (white) and the small blue tracking scope. The mount has motor control on two axes and is lined up to follow the axis of the earth rotation. A sensor fitted to the eyepiece of the tracking scope sends a signal to the motors to correct any perceived motion in the star it is locked onto. Then the main scope, which will be centred on the object you are looking at, will appear to be completely stable, allowing the camera fixed in its eyepiece to be on for significant exposure times. The camera itself is supercooled internally to minimise electronic scatter (that looks like tiny stars!)

Just a couple more and then I'll move back to guitars These below are a few planet photos. Saturn: Mars - see the white dust storm at the bottom and the light patch in the middle of the lighter patch in the bottom hemisphere which is an extinct volcano on the surface of mars as seen through a £30 web cam from my back light-polluted patio! A random shot of the moon, showing shadows from some of the mountain ranges: and Jupiter: The technology is completely different but just as clever. The exposures are actually very short because the objects are so bright. However, the effect of the atmospheric movement is so great at high magnification, that a single shot would be utterly distorted. So - take a standard webcam and take a 30 seconds or so video of it....maybe 2000 frames worth. Then run the video through some stunning and free software that: Chooses the best, maybe 30, shots out of the 2000 lines them up, stacks them decides common pixel features that are therefore there and reject ones that are not common and are therefore optical aberations Hey presto - a pretty respectable photo. The real enthusiasts who know what they are doing produce space-telescope quality photos from the ground with exactly the same technology, and which make the above look utterly basic!

Fascinating! At first I thought what a lot of effort to go to vs just doing it by eye...but the results are visually crisp and look so right. Then I thought about what you say - it's quantifiable and repeatable. Hmm....beginning to look well worth the effort all of a sudden. It looks very good indeed.

That is such a good result, @ScottR. Wonderful build.

I think it follows the adage of 'if it looks right, it probably is right'. I agree with @ScottR , I'm not at all surprised that it sounds good. Very pleased that it does, too!

Yes - this. The development of the ccd for digital cameras and video recorders plus the ridiculously open sharing that goes on in the astro software development has transformed this. I have photos that are much better than those from reputable text books of a decade earlier...theirs from major observatories and mine from a backyard webcam. For anyone with the interest and clear skies, it's a great time to pick up the hobby. Based on the latter criterion, that generally rules out the UK, of course if I get a moment tomorrow, I'll post some planetary shots Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Done differently to the above shots - actually done with just a £30 webcam but with some stupendously clever - and free - software

No...most of the time my back garden is just chilly

By the way - don't get carried away and go and buy a telescope expecting to see these....the best you see with the naked eye is a much smaller exceptionally faint fuzzy patch! If you're lucky....

No problem with the off-topic - I've given up trying to take a decent photo of the LP anyway The telescope is a refractor (lenses rather than mirrors) at 110mm aperture and around 1m long. Then there's a smaller scope that piggybacks which tracks a random star and sends signals to the powered mount to keep that star in the centre of view. That means that the object that the main scope is looking at then appears to stay in one spot and you then can get exposures of up to around an hour (although 15mins is usually adequate) to capture the very, very, very faint light coming from them. A few more and then I suppose it had better be back to guitars: The gaseous remains of a star that's died, but not gone supernova, the Dumbell Nebula: Two galaxies in the process of merging into one, the Whirlpool galaxy: And the nearest galaxy to us, Andromeda:

You see, the red works on this one!!!! Taken in my back garden with a relatively modest setup but with some wizz-bang software to ease the detail out of the shot, a tracked exposure of 15minutes, stacked with a second shot at 1 minute to avoid burnout of the central cluster of (very new) stars. Anyway, final try and then I'll give up trying to share what it actually is looking like so far. This is with Tungsten Light white balance and starts showing the amber: However, you need to ignore the upper bout....it's not that colour at all Anyway...I'm moving onto the back and neck

Yes - it drives me mad! I used to do quite a bit of astro photography and used to use software that was used for some of the Hubble photos to eke out the slightest details, contrasts and shades in some of the galaxies and nebulae...and yet I can't take a decent photo of a guitar that's right in front of me! Anyway, I'm pretty cool with what I see in front of me as a base for the next stages of the finishing. It's actually the back and sides that are bugging me at the moment. But that, as they say, is another story...

Not really. In tweaking the colour for the lighter bits, it has turned the outer areas greenish, which it isn't. The outer bits are closer to the pre-tweaked shot, the lighter bits are closer to the post-tweaked version. If I get chance, I'll layer the two in Photoshop and merge to get closer. If I hold the guitar up to the screen with the very first example shot in the thread (which is what the owner sent me) the colours are pretty close....assuming that photo is also representative

In fact, this is much closer (I've tweaked the colour balance with the guitar in front of me to try to get close). Even so, the patch of red in the middle of the lower bout isn't red at all - it's brown! Just looked again...yup, this is pretty close to what it actually looks like, for better or for worse

I know exactly what you mean, Carl - but it doesn't actually look like this Each time I look at the photos and I think "....nah, that's not right", and then I go to redo it, go to the workshop, see it in the flesh and think, "hang on, that IS right." Part of the problem is that my camera has real issues with reds, oranges and ambers. In real life, this is yellows to ambers to browns and not at all tango that it looks in the photos. This is maybe a better shot - no direct light and a tweak on the white balance - although it still shows through as overly orange: Does that make it look a bit better?

I've added the first sealer coats and am now getting much happier with the results. In real life the maple grain catches the light quite dramatically for a 'plain' figure and brings out the yellow tints rather than the red and orange ones. I'm now starting to thing a bit of a gloss coat might enhance - originally I was going to go satin. I'll ponder on that one.

You get used to a different geometry of guitars very quickly, @Lofteren I doubt that a 2 degree neck angle would put it into anywhere near unusual territory, however high your bridge seems to be! It looks fabulous. Kick**s and wicked

For this particular job it would certainly be a binding too far

Looking very good

Welcome, @RudysBlues . Good video. Is that a scraper plane at 5:20? If so, I thought I was the only person who used one

OK - this is starting to get to what I was after...

Great that it's resolved. I think that some dints and gaps are done by relatives of gremlins - they arrive and infiltrate the work and play merry hell, usually at night when no-one's around, levering open joints and hitting smooth surfaces with any chisel or hammer lying around and then b****r off before daybreak to let you find them later that morning.... I'm sure of it...

I had the first bash with some stains. Got the colour reasonably well but - to me - it looked a bit boring so I've sanded it off again to try a few other things. From a colour point of view, I was aiming for this one: ...and got to this first time round: The main issue is that one of the 'wood dyes' I was using turned out to be NOT what it said on the tin. It wasn't a soak-into-the-wood dye, it was a sit-like-paint-on-top-of-the-wood stain in reality. As such, it all but completely hid the wood grain. So I've stripped it all off and am trying some alternatives. By the way, the finished article will, of course, have cream pickup rings, etc.. I popped the original ones on because I am hopeless at envisaging the overall look of a finish without at least some token hardware in place

From your comment on clamping pressure, I assume the neck is already glued? If it is glued, then in terms of the pink or blue options, are these planned to be stained or painted? If it's going to be a stained finish, I use Metolux 'Timbermate' Decorators Filler. They do a light stainable and dark stainable version. I generally use the dark stainable and mix a tiny drop of the stain into the filler, then fill. It sands super easy and then, when the whole body is finish stained, it is usually pretty invisible. Trouble with glue and sawdust is that it tends to darken the fill and then also rejects the stain.

That's looking really promising . Can't wait to see it in all its playing glory!