manquesa

Very Nice and Clean work! Great job so far, keep it up.

Looks good. Since it's a practice build, i'd also practice carving the contours on the body as well. Also, I don't see any reason for you to not go ahead and start on the real thing, but if you wanna keep practicing go for it.

it is epoxy...after sealing and leveling you can put pretty much anythig on it as far as i know...just don't sand it finer than around 220 and try it.but why tyou would want to i don't knopw...the epoxy itself is a more durable finish than the tru oil... why don't you get some of that epoxy and try it on some scrap at your house...level it up and polish it like a regular finish(apply it as thick as regular) and see what you think.alot of people do that on tables and sch...that's what it's for. they call it "epoxy glaze coating" for that reason. well I was assuming a fairly thin epoxy coat being it just for grain filling purposes as this thread implies. However with a thicker coat I can't see wanting to put oil on top of that. I'd be interested to see how your test pieces come out. Be sure to post the results here, or at least somewhere on this forum.

I'd say it's more a matter of taste. Do whatever you think looks best.

try http://www.guitarbuildingtemplates.com

Quick question about this stuff. I've seen it or another brand of it at the local Home Depot. I may try it but am wondering if after sealing with this stuff, will you be able to apply a Tru-Oil finish on top of it.

That is pretty darn sweet! And I really love that bridge design.

Heck, I was in Sears the other day and I came across this baby -- http://www.sears.com/sr/javasr/product.do?...UseBVCookie=Yes Pretty cheap and you don't even have to attatch a motor, it already has one. I'm thinking about picking one up. EDIT: after looking at that sears buffer again, i'm thinking 3450 rpm is way too fast, seeing as Stew Mac recomends only 862 rpm for theirs.

i'm really digging the creativity here. That's one heck of a design you got there, kudos to you for even wanting to attempt something like that. If ever you do get this thing built, please be sure to show it off here when it's done.

Yeah I realize the volute isn't directly under the nut where it should be. But i'm not really concerned with that at all and i'm defintely not worried about the structural integrity because of it either. It's not really much of a volute anyway, not even sure it should be called that, it's comes together as a small point really and is more there for looks than anything else. Though I will say in future builds I do intend to do more of a traditional style volute than what this one is. And as far as the body, I fully agree with you on that though I don't think i'd go so far as to refer to it as a travel guitar but I did bring up that same point about the body being too small in one of my previous posts. Like I said, partly due to a stupid idiotic routing mistake and having to remove about 1 inch off the majority of the lower half of the body to fix it and due to the original design being slightly too small to begin with as well, this is how it turned out. The upper half of the body I believe is an appropriate size, just the lower half is small, it's a decent size for a guitar though. It does however look much better when turned on its side in the playing position versus the upright position that it's in in these pics. I do appreciate the feedback and am open to more suggestions or critique or what have you. This is basically my prototype design and i'll be wanting to address whatever issues there are that need to be addressed for future builds. Yeah it's my design but it's still being refined and there is definitely still room for improvement. I have no problem admitting that. Ooh that's just fat!. And not Phat, but Fat. Maybe that but longer, it's gotta maintain a bit of sexiness. My thinking when designing this body was to make it sexy kinda like the body of a sexy woman. With it just blown up like that it loses all of it's sexiness me thinks. I will increase the overal body size for future builds I promise, but i'll do it in a way that retains that curviness that I was going for. Thanks though, I do appreciate the effort!

wow, that is very nice. I've checked out your website and really like the style of you basses, and guitars. Good work, keep it up.

I actually did use a rasp. Well, it's a set of chisels that double as rasps, the shafts of the chisels are rasps if that makes sense. I asked for a set of rasps one year for christmas and that's what I got. I used to use a small hand plane to shape the neck and i've tried a spokeshave but didn't like it. So for this neck I cut away what I could with the bandsaw first. Then for the general rounding off and countouring of the neck I used my benchtop belt sander. Got the idea for that after seeing it done in I think what was a Gibson shop video and it worked like a charm. I mostly just used the rasp for shaping the heel and the transition from the neck to the headstock. I do want to try out one of those dragon tooth rasps that StewMac sells one of these days. Anyway, that large divot isn't really that large and it will be gone soon. Though the majority of the shaping is done, I do need to thin down the neck just a little bit more. Everything is in a farily rough cut state right now, I now need to spend a LOT of time hand sanding to clean everything up and get it all looking good and more smoothed out. I'll post more pics as it progresses. Oh, and I have also accidently cut into a neck before all the way into the truss rod, but mine wasn't easily salvagable, it was more in the middle of the neck. That neck is now trashed and new one will be made. Eh, live and learn.

Well I guess it's about time to revive this thread and update it. I started on these builds way back in April, but I moved in August and it took me a while to finally get back to working on these. Anyway, i've mostly been working on the Walnut Burl 5-String lately. Here's the latest pics of it's progress so far. Whole Bass Front Whole Bass Rear Headstock Front Headstock Back It has a small volute as well. Here's a closeup shot of the neck binding. The side dots are all over the place, I kinda messed that up, I need to figure something out to fix it. Here's a shot showing the neck heel. It's hard to get a good picture of this, but i'm pretty pleased with how it turned out so far, it fits with the contours of the body very well. It's hard to see in this pic as well, but I also need to clean up the pocket in the body for the truss rod's spoke wheel. And lastly here's the bridge that i'll be using. It's a string through bridge, I still need to drill the holes for it through the body and install the string ferrules on the back side though. There's also a chip in the walnut burl veneer on the back of the body at the top of the neck pocket that I need to fix. I think i'll just glue in a peice of left over veneer that I have there and then sand it down. For the most part all of the shaping is done, I just have to a LOT of sanding now to smooth everything out and get everything looking much cleaner. And unfortunately I won't be able to finish this one until I get the Tuner's and the Pickup that I need, but I can't afford to purchase that stuff right now, i'm just gonna have to wait till I get some more money saved up. Oh yeah, that's a macassar ebony fingerboard on there, as soon as I figure out what i'm gonna do to fix the sloppy work on those side dots, i'll install the fretwire. The body turned out to be pretty darn small, especially in comparison to that big ol 5-string neck. Mostly due to the routing mistake that I made which you can read about on pg 1 of this thread, but also I think the original design was made a bit small as well. I'll make a new body template with a bit bigger of a body for future builds. Just the lower half of the body is small, the top half witht the horns seems to be sized pretty well. The headstock also turned out pretty small, that's what I get for freehanding it. I'll make a new template for that as well slightly increasing the size.

# 1

Okay well here's my thought. Why not make it a divisional competetion. Pick the top 3 styles of guitars to be built that everyone votes on. Example, - Telecaster - Les Paul - PRS Then everyone competes in their own division, those building Telecasters will compete against each other, those building Les Paul's will compete against each other, etc. This way there will still be a bit more variety and there will be less chance of getting stuck building something that you're not really interested in. There can still be an overall winner as well. I think there's enough people entered to acheive this if i'm not mistaken. just my .02 cents

Hey why not, please count me in as well. I'm surprised with all the Texan members we have here, i'm the first Texan to enter. 1.) Gibson Les Paul Single Cut 2.) Gibson SG 3.) Fender Strat 4.) I have an unslotted or radiused Pauo Ferro Fingerboard blank big enough for a 5-string bass I can contribute, plus an unused StewMac Fret Slotting saw (I accidently ordered 2 and didn't feel like returning the extra one) 5.) I have no Judges preference

Wow, i'm impressed. I have that same StewMac Fretsaw and I used it and hated it. Maybe I didn't have enough patience because when I finished fretting my fingerboard I ended up with a lot of inconsistencies in the fret slot widths as well as the straightness of some of the fret lines. I ended up trashing that fingerboard and ordering a preslotted board from lmii. I think i'm gonna try the fret slotting table saw blade next time and made a jig for it. Anyway, good work on your project so far, i'm digging it. Can't wait to see it finished.

Hehe, very interesting. Don't know if anyone remembers but I posted a build several months ago earlier in the year and the body design, and change of design is almost exactly the same. The original design The augmented design I guess great minds think alike

Side 1 has my vote, easily

Yeah, the rules aren't exactly easy to find or anything. Yet everyone get's yelled at for not knowing them. I actually spent a good amount of time searching for them until I finally gave up. But now I know where to look. They are in the "Announcements and Test Area" forum under the pinned topic "The New Rules and Forum Changes" If they're gonna be that picky about em, they really should post the pic rule in a more likely to be seen place, like maybe a pinned topic at the top of every forum or something. Wouldn't be hard to do. Oh, and I really like the design you got there, great idea!!

Each body is about 1 1/8" thick (I like em thin) and the roundover bit I used is 1/2"

Approximately 1/42" I think . Maybe 1/32" I don't remember and I ain't gonna try and measure it now.

Okay, well I got some more time to work on this today. Here's the latest pics of the walnut burl bass body. Front view Close-up view showing off the purpleheart veneer under the walnut burl veneer Close-up view of the upper horn I applied a single coat of tru oil for the pictures. I still have a bit more shaping to do and a lot more sanding to do as well. Then of course i'll need to cut the neck pocket, pickup cavities, etc. I managed to fix that previous routing mistake by just trimming that back end of the body and re-routing the roundover. It shortened the overall body length on an already relatively small bass body but it should be okay. It's kinda misproportioned now compared to the upper horn I think, but not too much. I've also started preparing the neck blank which is cut from the same curly maple used for the body and has a center stripe consisting of purpleheart, then ash, then purpleheart veneers.

Okay, been quite a while since i've updated this thread, but it has also been a while since i've had anything to update. I finally got back to work on these. I got started on the bass build. Curly Maple Body, Purple Heart veneers on top and bottom of that, then Walnut Burl veneers on top and bottom of that I decided to use a roundover bit in the router for the sides Which would have been fine, but after adjusting the depth on the router, a combination of idiocy and impatience made me forget to tighten down the wingnut that locks the depth in place. So this happened!!! The depth lowered as I was making a pass and a pretty big mistake now exists which I need to figure out what the hell i'm going to do to fix it. I didn't get much more work done on the guitar build, I only worked a bit on shaping the ball end of upper horn. You can't see it too well in this pic though. I've changed my mind about a few things. First of all the guitar build is no longer going to be a guitar, now it's going to be a fretless 32" scale picolo bass. Changed it back to a bass build mainly because of the length of the upper horn, with a guitar fingerboard the upper horn will reach to about the 7th fret or so which I wouldn't like. Also instead of a 2 tone black and red finish, it's now just going to be red (stained with a tru oil finish). I'm going to use a bloodwood fingerboard which is very red but leave the curly maple neck uncolored. I'll put ash veneer on the headstock though and stain that red to match the body. Well, that's what I got worked out in my head right now anyway. Also, as you can see i've decided to cut off the ball end of the lower horn on the walnut burl bass build same as the ash one. I liked the look of it cut off so much, that's now the design. Oh and the walnut burl bass will now be a 5-string with a Pau Ferro fingerboard.

Very very nice man, I like it a lot!! How do you like those single string bridges, those look like the same ones i'm using? I love the current finish you have on it, very classy.