Stu.

No worries! We all know the pain of going through tens of design iterations before even making any dust!

I'm a bit late to the party and also quite tired, but I have a couple of thoughts: 1. I feel like the F-hole and pickguard are competing for our attention. Maybe restricting it to the upper bout would leave the pickguard as a clearer focal point. 2. In terms of the headstock, it would work to accent the two humps at the bottom with a gentle sweep. That might look more cohesive in context of the headstock area. I can't tell if you'd get away with using the accent as a continuation/conclusion of the pickguard shape. This shows what I mean, but with the jitteriest lines I can manage:

I was actually thinking about how metal it looks. The neck SC and colour scheme give it a shreddy/hair metal aesthetic.

Just a warning... If the binding is celluloid, CA glue will cause it to melt and swell quite badly. I found that out the hard way when gluing some celluloid inlays - it turned them into mush and took hours to set. I ended up going down the epoxy route.

Welcome to the forums! PS. My condolences on being in Worcester!

Prepare for a very dry update! The first pickup ring is basically ready to go, apart from tidying up one screw countersink, and I'll cut the 3º angle in when I have both ready. I took more photos than this post deserves: Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr

Congrats on the GOTM win!

This my robot "StuToo": Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr He was from a cheap entry-level kit on Amazon. I gave him a new lease of life by extending the working area, replacing the chuck, and upgrading a couple of motors. Yep! The maple and ebony are running perpendicular to the wenge beneath. I tried to make the sides a little wider too, hoping that would add strength. I hadn't even thought about that, nice shout! My head stays firmly inside the box sometimes.

Yep, I knocked up a vector drawing and then my little robot did the rest.

The magnet chat has put my mind to rest! I was starting to panic that I'd gone overboard. I've been tempted to put the EMG Het Set into one of my ESPs, but I'm going to keep them as my motivation to blast on with the V. The pickup ring blanks worked out okay. I've managed to cut one that's 90x46.5mm, which might not give me quite enough. I'm going to use that one for the bridge, and make the second closer to 90x47.5mm without it being obviously wider to the untrained eye. Despite prototyping, I managed to forget what stage I'd reached before loading the proper blank in. Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr They're cut to 5mm depth, giving enough meat to run a profiler along after some careful trimming.

They're 5x3mm, but I'm actually worried they're too big!

I didn't get a huge amount of time this weekend, but this is what I managed to get done: Played with my new toy (Makita ROS to replace my old one), Installed little magnets in the covers and cavity rims, Drilled the wiring holes between cavities (without breaking through the front or rear of the guitar), Prepared ebony/maple/wenge blanks to make humbucker mounting rings out of. Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr

I like the idea of bevelling the end of the board to a chevron-style point at the end, but I'm struggling to reconcile the idea of having dead space between the ring and board I'll distract myself with other things until I absolutely have to tackle it! This weekend was more productive than I expected! I managed to drill control holes, route the control cavity, battery cavity, and recessed jack area, and I also made matching covers for the rear. There's a recessed Dunlop strap lock button in there too... Edit: The battery cavity is a bit of a cheat, so I can drill a wire hole from the jack to the battery and then pickup route. Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr I still need to sand the covers flush (after the magnets go in), and you might notice a tiny bit of tear-out in the jack area; that was not my favourite routing job ever.

The inlay has turned out looking excellent! I'm excited to see some fret wire on this bad boy.

Have you guys ever seen decorative fingerboard ends like that? The ebony isn't really uniform enough to try covering it up, so I'd have to make it a feature. Wenge pickup rings could be nice! I also made an impulse decision last night to go heavy on pickups for this one. I've ordered an EMG Het Set in black chrome, because they look awesome and I trust that they sound great. I'm going to use the battery cavity to help with drilling a channel to the jack plate (which will be on the edge of the top wing). Now I have to decide what to do about a battery cavity or battery box. Most battery boxes look awful, but I love the metal ESP ones; they're bloody expensive and only available from Japan though! Maybe it'll be a cavity and wooden cover job!

More progress around the half-marathon this weekend! Drilled some holes: Untitled by S K, on Flickr Tested the holes: Untitled by S K, on Flickr Routed a bridge pickup cavity: Untitled by S K, on Flickr Routed a neck pickup cavity: Untitled by S K, on Flickr Realised the neck pickup is about 2mm away from where it should be: Untitled by S K, on Flickr I think the tidiest way to fix this will be to make some wooden pickup rings and make them a little wider than the plastic ones. The plastic looks crap anyway.

That's a remarkable transformation. Nice work!

It's weird when you reach the point of no return and it becomes a guitar, rather than two concurrently-running projects. Bring on the drilling and routing!

They're just cut from celluloid sheet. I'll glue them in with epoxy this time, because I learnt that they don't like CA glue the hard way The fingerboard was a fun thing to start whilst I'm away from my tools. This weekend went pretty well! After a rare moment of clarity, I finally decided on a nice method for cutting the angled neck pocket; I wanted something stable, which I could execute in a slow and careful manner. In the past I've cut the pocket straight, and then tried to bodge the angle into the bottom of the tenon. That's pretty horrible though! I made a close template and a pair of 3° wedges. I used to the template to cut a shallow rebate in (enough to run a bearing along, and then used the wedges to support the router whilst I cut the pocket angle in. It seemed to work pretty well! Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Yay!

I managed to make progress this weekend! It's slow, thanks to work and life. The neck looks more like a neck now. I ended up having to pull and re-seat one of the frets, which left a couple of tiny chips. Hopefully I'll find a way to make those disappear. Untitled by S K, on Flickr The neck carve is super rough and way too thick right now, but it's a start. Untitled by S K, on Flickr Also, my dad found a pair of my grandfather's planes; a Stanley/Bailey 4 and a Stanley/Bailey 4 1/2. They've been added to my collection: Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr This is after partially restoring the 4: Untitled by S K, on Flickr I picked up some nice padauk for a neck and body last weekend, to go with the ovangkol fingerboard and Iommi cross inlays: Untitled by S K, on Flickr I booked an appointment to visit Exotic Hardwoods near Leek. Their stock is pretty amazing, and I almost walked away with a beautiful spalted maple top.

That beast is magnificent! Nice work, Scott!

Continuing with my theme of dull updates, get a load of this stuff: Reamed the tuner holes slightly, so they now fit nicely Broke ground on the neck Used my brand new fret tang nippers to prepare the fret wire (this saved so much time, it was unreal) Made more dust Rough-shaped the volute in (the neck is still WAY over thickness, but I like to finalise that after it's attached) Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr

Thank you, chaps! I've already cut my hand and stabbed my legs several times with that damn headstock point It had better survive

I had to give it a little trim! There were some little gaps on the back, where the ears weren't quite long enough. I'm competing for "dullest update within a month" with this one: Fingerboard trimmed flush with the neck Nut to headstock transition cut in Headstock sides trimmed and sanded Tuner holes drilled in Lots more radius sanding Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr Untitled by S K, on Flickr The 10mm forstner bit actually cut the holes closer to 9.5mm, so they need some more attention before the tuners will press in. I also still need to sand ~0.6mm off the fingerboard before filling those couple of bubbles in the inlays.

Are you rocking a wooden CNC?!