Drak

Thanks K. Yes, I agree with you actually. The Blackguard/Maple does look really nice, actually-maybe-probably nicer than the Leopard. But I'm fighting myself to keep the Leopard guard in the mix for some reason, I won't let go of it quite so easily, but it may wind up Blackguard/Maple in the end. What do I do with the Leopard guard then, I ask? I have about 20 other half-finished guitars waiting their turn and no other Teles in the loop. I'd hate to waste it, and I do like it. A conundrum, if not a possibly tacky and garish conundrum... And the Floyd job...if you look at the very first pic, you'll see the name Timmons Strat on it, it is my Andy Timmons 'thang', which is why the AT-1 and H-S-S setup, like his Ibanez setup...kinda...

This is the Floyded Tele-Strat. This one wound up about .5 lb. lighter than the Tele. Basic layout. Ho-hum. I routed every last inch of Oak I could out of this thing. Was a bit tricky remembering everything associated with the Floyd and keeping all that intact and routing around it as much as I could and stay in the safe zone. This one Will be EMG/active, that's why there's an extra hole outside of the pickguard. So here we have both of them. I didn't like the color that came out of the Tele-Strat (shown here) so I modified it to look much more like the real Tele. They look nearly alike now minus their respective wood grain patterns. OK with me, I like the look. But this is how the Tele-Strat started out. You'll probably be surprised to see them together now, they totally look like Brother Builds. This is the real pickguard assembly for this guitar tho. It's a DiMarzio AT-1 bridge and two Bill Lawrence L-290 SC buckers.

The real Tele: Basic layout, ho-hum. Weight Reduction, front and back. If you notice, the control cavity goes all the way through. I routed the back also to get the weight relief. And...maybe one day, I might install my active EMG 'recipe', which it has room for. maybe, maybe not, but the weight got relieved and there's the opportunity to make it active one day. I had to shore up several dried-up and failing glue joints along the way. First mock-up. The dye color palette I chose was designed to compliment the colors of this Leopard pickguard. So you know why the color is what it is. And you can see where the EMG controls will go in the future, if I engage that plan. I bought those knobs, which are brass, not gold, and really liked them for this. First color coat before the pore-fill, this is a super-thin coat, 80% thinner, 20% lacquer. This is the final product more or less, after thin coat, pore-fill, and distress sand-back effect, I like it! ...And just a few short days ago, it was a tabletop... I don't know what's up with the lighting, but this is the same exact guitar, looks very different with the downstairs lighting for some reason. Maybe that's a good thing, it has light-changing characteristics! Just trying out a different look, I like the blackguard look too. ...And a Maple neck just because I have them lying about. Friggin Oak is rocking it, I'm really liking how this is turning out, totally unexpected.

A Tale of Two Tele Shapes. What's not to Love, I Love Telecaster shaped guitars! Although after these two, I must admit, I think I have enough Teles to suit me for quite awhile. These are basically 'free' builds, as I have all the parts for both guitars already and the donor wood has been sitting in the back of my woodpile for ~15 years. I never quite knew what to do with the thing, it's too big to be a cutting board, so I guess someone was going to make a tabletop out of it. I don't know. It's 1.5" thick Oak lammed strips and heavy as all hell. Wellsir, I would much rather have two more free guitars than some old wannabe tabletop collecting dust. But this job will call for some serious weight relief if they are to be made viable guitars. I'm just going to post progress pics of both builds here, as they're being built at the same relative time, more or less.

Thank You for the nice words, they are most appreciated. I don't know if it shows well in the pics, but I knocked the finish down from the previous pics where it was glossed. I micro-meshed it with 1800, then hit it with a used 320 Abralon pad, that's the final finish level. I'm really digging this 'distressed finish' thing lately. I have two more builds I made in the last few weeks I did the same thing on and am really liking both of them. Not black over Mahogany tho, they're dyed Oak, then distressed, but basically in the same patterns I used on this. Kind of a nice break from all the bursting business actually...

Can you take a pic of the container and post it here, front and back, so I can read all words on all labels? And if you can, a pic of some of the powder, maybe just take the lid off and click a pic. Or post a link to an online pic of exactly what you have (minus maybe different color)? There's something fishy going on here, and whatever it is, it should be solved. If I can read the label(s), I can probably figure out what's going on. I've used just about every kind of dye you could come up with. I would really like to see the labeling, if you can, please and thanks, if possible. Don't give up just yet, and don't spend any more money just yet. Fabric dyes and food coloring are not a very good answer to your problem. For the time being...you said it mixed with alcohol but didn't 'set' on the wood. I would imagine you still have the alcohol. Try mixing a bit of powder with some alcohol, then add in a bit of water. But don't mix the water in first, mix the powder with alcohol, then a bit of water. Try that and post some pics if you can. PS, if you think 'hard water' is an issue, I believe a few drops of vinegar (white, distilled if you have it) may help. Vinegar is acidic, which should drop the pH and may work!

Finished this up last night. Done. My Roy Buchanan build is done. Frikkin' Love It. It's black, it's lightweight, its got a 'knockaround' finish on it so I don't care if it gets banged up. And it sounds just like a Nancy-Caster should (IMO). So...the spec 'recipe' I came up with is perhaps as interesting as the guitar itself. What I wound up with: Switch: 3-way switch w/ no in-between. Just neck, middle, bridge, done. Bridge Pickup: Don Mare 2324 3rd (and final) version Roy bridge pickup (no ohms, measures .033 on a uF meter) Middle Pickup: Don Mare 2324 1st version bridge pickup (5.1k) Neck Pickup: Harmonic Design '54 Special strat (6.3k) in the neck Pots-n-Cap: 220k volume, 200k tone, .022uf tone cap Added Cap in Series with Middle Pickup only: .02uf Cap left out: from Don's original wiring layout, I left out the .1 cap between the switch and the volume pot Bridge: Glendale bridge (painted black), and Glendale intonated saddles w/ aluminum E/A So what does this stew do, actually? The Neck pickup is wired as a straight-up strat neck, no funny business, but dropped a little lower than normal to volume compensate The Middle pickup with the cap is the 'in-between-land' between the 'straight-normal' neck and the 'AM Radio' bridge I tried 3 different caps until I found one I was happy with that made the pickup sit somewhere in the middle tonewise. Adding a series cap, depending on cap size, drops volume, so the middle pickup is hiked up a bit more than I normally would have it. I hit it pretty good tho, I like the middle position a lot. I tried the reverse-mount control cavity to get easier access to the volume control. But I didn't like it and switched it back to normal.

Thats an interesting observation that I agree with. I noticed the same thing the other day when I was doing a straight lacquer thinner dye job. I noticed that the cloth I was using really sucked up the dye by the time I was done, where with water it seems to stay concentrated more directly around my fingertips/direct application area. I did indeed notice that, oddly enough.

A few 'in advance' things if you find it and it works... I don't know how much you're mixing at a time, but I remember past threads where people were mixing WAAY too much dye for a guitar and so wasting their product they paid money for. They were mixing enough to do 20 guitars but they didn't know it at the time, so I thought I would just mention amounts...as in you need very little to do a guitar. You may be doing it perfect, just thought I'd bring it up... Typically I'm using these when mixing for a guitar, and no more dye than would fit on the end of a typical screwdriver: So I'm imagining you've bought lacquer thinner and it worked (I'm thinking positive here) There are a few tricks and tips...lacquer thinner, when used as a dye transferring agent (instead of water, or alcohol) goes on fast and dries fast. It's not common, most people don't use it for this, but it IS a viable transfer agent when the situation calls for it. It's not water and so doesn't 'act' like water. With water, some people wipe and wipe and wipe and wipe...sometimes for a particular effect (to blend colors, for example). Water dries slowww, which gives you Time. You won't be able to do that with lacquer thinner as it dries reasonably fast. Not stupid fast, but faster than water for sure. So I'm telling you in advance so you know what to expect. A tip (not trying to confuse you, but you can customize these things sometimes) if your dye dissolves in the lacquer thinner and you've test-tried it on your wood and everything looks good (please do this on scrap first)... You can then add some water to it IF you want to 'buy time' for yourself (the wipe and wipe and wipe thing) I just did 2 guitars a few days ago where I used lacquer thinner (for completely different reasons than we're discussing here) and I added nothing, but I knew what was going to happen. I had more than enough time to do the guitar w/o adding water to 'slow things down'...but you CAN do it. Think of adding water to dye and lacquer thinner as a 'retarder' in this situation. Just a tiny bit of water added buys you time, if you need it. If you don't, I wouldn't bother with it. Again, not trying to confuse you or muddy the waters, but its a trick that's nice to have in your back pocket in case you need it.

So, I typed in 'cellulose thinner' into Google to see what came up. Some products were correct (lacquer thinner) and others were not (paint thinner, among others) So the term 'cellulose thinner', I would believe, isn't definitive enough, but you're getting close. And both paint thinner and lacquer thinner can be made up of various chemical brews and recipes, according to the specific manufacturer... Your product states it dissolves in water, alcohol, and lacquer. You have tried water and alcohol, now try lacquer (thinner), the reducing, thinning, and dissolving agent for lacquer. 'Paint' thinner is a different product, so 'cellulose thinner' I don't think, quite hits the mark. Lacquer thinner does, and you should be able to buy it in small consumer quantities. If you find a 'cellulose thinner' that clearly states on the label it dissolves lacquer, that should work. But I would prefer a product that says 'lacquer thinner' as its primary label since you're having troubles already and to avoid further stress/confusion. Stated more specifically: I'm recommending a product you can use to add to lacquer to thin down lacquer, not just use it to 'clean up' (dissolve) lacquer. Because that's what your product is telling you it dissolves in.

Try dissolving in lacquer thinner and let me know what happens. If that works, just use lacquer thinner as your dissolver solution instead of alcohol or water. I have a feeling it may work. And obviously make sure your wood is raw wood. You have the real deal there, don't fall backwards with the idea of fabric dyes. Just be patient and work with your product, it is the right and intended product for what you want and need. I had the exact same thing happen about 25 years ago with some jars of Behlen dye powder. Drove me nearly crazy there for a bit.

I'll offer my theory. Yes, the contacts must physically follow the direction of the push/pull motion. However, and I think this is what maybe throws people... When you're working in the cavity, your brain gets 'oriented' to that situation, which is upside down appearing as right side up. Then, you flip the guitar over into playing position, and everything is the opposite of what your brain accustomed itself to. If for only an hour, the brain orients itself to upside down being right side up. Its happened to me before, doing this very thing being discussed.

Here's another pic I found that just drives this point home, which I believe is the answer to your fear of being out of alignment: The Centerline. This is a pickguard template I made, and look what's there (because it always is) The Centerline.

So I thought I had a few pics from back in the day to show, sometimes a single pic is worth a thousand words. Probably have a better one, but this is the first one I came across. The shim I was using here isn't the shims I made specifically for doing this, and if I were doing a TOM it would be a bit higher. I think I was doing a recessed Floyd install on this one, so its a thin little shim, but it gets the point across of how the angle for a TOM is built into the pocket. If you are working from a centerline, which you should always be doing, and your template has a centerline etched into it (or you made your own and put one there), you can't be off-center, you just can't. That's why the centerline, really, is the answer to the original question. If you establish a centerline and work from it, you can not be off center, everything will be in alignment. When it comes time to install the bridge, the bridge will be placed right on the same centerline. Its all about having the centerline in place for accuracy. You can see the centerline in place, because the centerline rules everything that happens. And you can see that the only other thing that has happened is the body has been routed to form, the neck pocket is way up front in the process.

So, to answer both the left-right alignment and up-down (TOM) alignment all in the same breath...This is the neck pocket template I've been using ever since I started 30 years ago. I still have and use the original one, dinged up as it is, tho I did buy a replacement somewhere along the line. I found the replacement was 'slightly larger' than my original and I didn't care for that so I continue to use the original. I believe they did that to allow for the very 'slop factor' you're asking about, the whole reason for the original post. So guys who didn't get it dead-on the nuts had a little wiggle-room to maneuver. So basically, they already did it for you in the template. I'm sure they get feedback all the time over the years and decided to make the newer model adaptive (slightly larger) to beginners. I like a very tight fit, which the original gives me. On to the TOM angle. The template is long enough it overhangs the back end of the instrument. I built several thin shims so when I do a TOM, I add shims to the back end (and then to the middle for support) to 'build in' the TOM angle. To raise the back end so the template is already sitting at the angle I want for a TOM. Whatever it happens to be, I can adjust for it. So the angle is built right into the pocket when I route the neck pocket. This is all very straightforward and easy, and I'm always all about the easy (usually). The 'other' template cutout is for a bass neck. And the very long outside edges are great when you need to route a straight line anywhere, so it does double-duty. Even if I'm doing a carved top, the neck pocket still comes first, with the proper angle already accounted for and adjusted for. So I can get the neck pocket routed while the instrument is still flat, before I begin shaping the top. One more note: Usually, the neck pocket is one of the very first functions I do, its right up front right after the body is routed to shape. But the neck install itself is at the very tail end, its one of the very last things done. When the neck actually gets installed and drilled, the guitar is within an hour of being done and strung. Does this help any at all?

Everybody has their own way, and I'm sure they all work. But to say 'you can be accurate other ways' implies some kind of lesser accuracy or less-than-dom, and I would disagree with that. Simply because both ways work equally as well as the other in the hands of someone who understands the concepts in front of them. There is nothing you can achieve by one way that you can't also achieve just as easily by the other. It's totally dealer's choice. I always install the bridge first, and I know exactly where my scale length/saddle adjustment range is before I ever install it. That goes for TOM's and flat-mounts, it doesn't matter to me, I've done all the math and pre-calculating before anything gets mounted, as everyone should. I have just as much access to neck height/angle and saddle adjustment as someone putting a neck on first would. AAMOF, I would find that way actually hindering and limiting, ...but that's because I do it the 'other' way, haha! AAMOF, I look at the neck pocket as the place where the safety net lives. Once you install a bridge, it's there to stay, but you can ameliorate a neck pocket a hundred ways to Sunday. So leaving the neck install as last builds in more insurance for adjustment if you need it, not less. The neck pocket allows you, if you need it (I rarely do but acknowledge the insurance in that pocket) to do just about anything you want. You can deepen it, you can shim it, you can move the neck forward, backward, raise it, or lower it. All the insurance (safety net) lives in the neck pocket, so why would you commit to that first? If we're talking about safety nets...to me, the neck install saved for last is the biggest safety net you could ask for. But that's only because I have my way, and you have yours, and its all good and it all works as long as your brain is working.

So I had a major epiphany last night. It's basically done and ready for assembly, but it wasn't 'sitting right' with me for some reason. It was driving me crazy. I never finish a guitar unless I am completely 100% behind it and in love with it and everything feels right. And this wasn't feeling right. Then I heard the voice of my intuition pipe up and I heard: 'It's not working because you're not fully committed to it. You have one foot in and one foot out and nothing succeeds like that, you have to fully commit to it for it to work'. And I said, 'thanks for that, Mr. Intuition'. But I didn't know what it meant for awhile and I kept staring at it wondering what the message meant. So I asked myself where was I not committing, where did I have the one foot out? And dammit if the answer didn't come through, tho it had to be pushed through. There were two areas where I wasn't 'committing' to the very purpose I had outlined for myself. And both had to do with the 'darkness' theme. One was the gold tuners. I had severely hesitated about using black tuners as I thought it would push things too far from ground zero (standard Fender Telecaster). I mean, I like and use black hardware when I think it works, I have no problem with black hardware and I have a reasonable supply of it. But it just didn't 'seem right' to go full-on black on a Roy Tele, for some reason. The other was hanging onto the gloss look, which I am very accustomed to. Super-Gloss is like my baby-blanket, all my guitars are super-glossed. So I took off all the gold hardware (tuners, ferrules, strap buttons, output jack) and replaced them all with their black counterparts. Then I did some Micro-Mesh level-sanding down to 1800, then hit it with a used 320 grit Abralon pad on an orbital sander to finish it off. And it started to come together and I could see it coming together, ...but that's not the end of the story. So, after performing those two things, I broke out the guitar polish which is part of my normal procedure at assembly. Now usually, guitar polish does very little for my builds, as they are already super-glossed before they ever see a guitar polish. But such was not the case here with the satin-sheened finish, something completely different happened. When I applied the guitar polish, it Really came together, it just tied everything together perfectly. It gave the satin-sheen an added depth and dimension it didn't have before, it Totally Nailed it, Totally Loving it, which is very necessary for me to feel before I complete a build. Should be done in a day or so now, might have it finished by tonight.

If it were me doing that, I would probably thin the Titebond with some water. Not a lot, but some. Either that, or sometimes I'll take a spritzer bottle with water in it and spritz the pieces before glue-up. Very careful with spritzing, its really easy to over-wet, but some additional water helps in a lot of glue-up situations. Either by thinning the glue w/ water, or spritzing (super-light misting) the pieces first. ...Which you would never do when doing a veneer glue-up, haha!... Veneer glue is supposed to be thick and viscous so it doesn't permeate the veneer and come up through it.

So, a few notes. I'm not there, of course, so I can only judge by the pics I see. But there are several pics that look very much to me like a temperature-related failed aliphatic glue joint. As in, those 'whitish marks' are very telltale signs of an aliphatic glue being applied too cold. But with your urea glue, I don't know, I just know those whitish marks are a dead-giveaway of a cold glue joint failure. It also seems you're not really doing a true veneer job (maybe I missed something) but actually making a laminated top. A lam top is not veneer, so I wouldn't use words generally associated with veneering, its confusing. For genuine veneer work, I use Better Bond Cold Press Veneer Adhesive. It comes in 2 tints, a light and a dark, and has wood fibers in it so the glue doesn't seep up into the veneer when applying great pressure to glue. But if you're not doing an actual veneer, then that information is invalid, see what I mean? If it's an actual lam(inated) top, that changes things a bit, and the generally normal rules of veneer don't apply to a situation like that. If you're doing what I think you're doing (making a laminated top), you need heat as part of your recipe. And if those white marks are from cold-joint failure, you most certainly don't have nearly the heat you really need. You're looking more for nearly hot (or actually hot) temps to do lam work. Looking at your first pic, I would imagine that you needed heat to bend your sides into form. Think of a lam top in 'those terms', in 'that way' 'from that approach' and you'll be headed in the right direction. When I was in my 20's, I had a job for a season in a custom plastics manufacturing plant. One side of the shop was artistic acrylic work (3" thick super-fancy artistic tabletops and other crazy artistic things). The other side of the shop was vacuum forming plastic parts. I worked with industrial-sized vacuum presses all day long. The exact same thing you're trying to do except with plastics on a much larger scale and for mass-production. We would bang out (for an example) 70-100 (plastic) guitar tops a day. We didn't actually make plastic guitar tops, of course, but that type and size of object was what we worked with. And success all starts with the proper amount of heat. Just like forming a bent guitar side, exactly like that. Too cold, fail. Too hot, fail. Wrong (too delicate) type of wood, fail. The vacuum machines had huge electric heaters on top where you would slide the piece into place. The form (whatever you were making/forming) was down on the table. When the piece was heated to your satisfaction, you dropped (draped, really) the piece down over the form and the vacuum kicked in to form the piece. If the piece wasn't heated enough, total fail, it wouldn't shape and form properly onto the mold. If you overheated it, it would be too hot and form too thinly. It was all in getting the temps 'just right' so the vacuum process would work correctly. And in basic approach, laminate-thicknessed wood works basically the same way, it needs the right amount of heat to cooperate. So if those whitish marks are from a cold joint glue failure, you can see why it failed, the variable of heat was completely off the mark for success.

The way I'll answer this: The centerline (as said above) is always the master key. You (should) always have a centerline present during the build. Then you should have a neck pocket router template (of some description, you can make one yourself) to use that has a centerline also. Even if you're only going to use the thing once, its easy to make and keeps you on the ball. You just line up the centerlines, put your router template down over it, and route the pocket. And, like magic, the neck is true to the bridge. As long as you line up your bridge during your bridge installation to the same centerline...because the centerline is always present during the build. All matters of alignment all hinge off of that centerline being there and working from it. I always have my bridge installed and usually run two strings down the length when I'm drilling the holes for the neck. Just sayin'...

So, I matched the body to the neck fairly well, I like it. Then I put the neck on the body, and the neck looked too 'pristine and pretty'. So I figured I'd dirty it up a little. I shot a quick black coat over the headstock, flat-sanded it back to where I was happy with it, then glossed it. I used a set of gold tuners I had that are aging and losing their gold plating. Perfect fit for this project. The aging, de-plating tuners kind of 'go with' the brass/aluminum saddles, cuz they're a little of both...

I'd just put a shim in the neck to give it an angle for the TOM. I must admit, I've never seen one of those flat Tele bridge plates before...interesting. Don't do a single thing before discussing the whole job with the customer and getting his/her full agreement before you touch it. Explain the process, what you're going to do, the time involved, and the price, all beforehand. Don't try to talk anyone 'into' anything, if they're uncomfortable about it for any reason, hand the guitar back to them.

OK, back to the Roy story a little bit. Roy Buchanan is what got me into building guitars in the first place, period. If it weren't for him, I doubt I would have ever taken up the hobby. What started it all for me? It was a VHS promo video I saw advertised for sale in Guitar Player, around 1990 or so. It was an ad for the Fritz Brothers Bluescaster. That was an Active, EMG-laden Telecaster tribute for Roy to get their company off the ground, up and running, with Roy as their first promoter. Unfortunately for them, he dies less than a year after the introduction, I believe, so those guitars are a bit of an idiosyncrasy in the world of guitar-lore. A mere blip on the radar screen of guitars. I'm including a link here below as the YT links appear so huge on our screen. Talk about a day-to-night extreme switchup/makeover? From Nancy, with her broken-ass AM Radio sounding bridge pickup, to a Fully Decked and Optioned active EMG Tele rig. In the hands of a guy who started playing guitar before anyone had ever heard of an Elvis. Elvis appeared professionally (Ed Sullivan) in 1956, Roy appeared professionally for the first time in 1958, he goes that far back in guitar-lore. The funny thing is, at that time (Fritz Brothers) Roy had switched to Alligator Records and Bruce Iglauer, and his records sounded completely different than they had before. The point is, the 'Nancy tone' was gone, as he used other Teles, then adopted the Fritz Brothers EMG Tele (which is clearly audible on some of the Alligator material) Telecasters equipped with EMG electronics? Sound familiar? My first five guitars all had that, but I discovered how to ditch the EMG pickups and just use the active tone pots, which I still sometimes use to this day, that's where it all began so long ago, and the imprint of the Fritz Brothers EMG Tele still lives with me. Because that's what I do. And here I am, working the whole plan backwards and in reverse, 30 years later. Going From active EMG-laden Teles To 'The Pure Nancy'. It's a homecoming of sorts for me. So back to the VHS video...It Is Hilarious! Roy is Gulping Down a drink right on camera, and it ain't Root Beer. He is probably the worst promo guy I have ever seen in my life, and I'm in sales. He doesn't know the terminology, the clip is Highly Edited (cuz he was wasted and probably going on and on about nothing)...from a sales standpoint, its just brutal. But I guess they weren't going to do a 2nd take, and tho his speech is mumbly and totally scattershot, the minute he plays anything, there are no mistakes. This is the video that made me want to go search out what the term 'hardwoods' even meant, then go find a local retailer and buy some. This old video is what made Drak, the Drak. The Fritz Brothers' Bluescaster Buchanan Sales Promo Video, circa 1990

These two pics show the brown walnut toner sandback/fadeout pretty well. I left it heaviest in the back corner near the forearm contour. And as it moves towards the steerhead it becomes more and more faded back to pre-toner. I think around the steerhead, most of the toner coat is gone. I also hit all the other sandback areas. You can see the effect well in the bottom corner near the control cavity. Nearest the left, most of the toner, and as it moves toward the right-hand edge, its very pale. I really like the way this came out, having never experimented with such a thing before. The full-on toner coat didn't knock me out, and neither did it look good w/o out, this seemed to totally do the trick of the effect I wanted.

Ha! I guess if you want to call it a burnt look, OK with me. I find that funny as I have looked into how to actually do a fo-real burnt job with a propane torch. This is just black lacquer sanded back ala a typical relic process. But, I'll take the compliments any way they come, and thanks back.