BetterOffShred

Those tops are beauties! I'm still trying to decide/find a top for my project.. Are you planning on doing a painted body with the natural top?

Cool thanks for the good advice. I appreciate it.

My blank ended up coming out smooth when I took it down to .755" so I'm going ahead with this one

-Brett

Uh oh.. That's what I'm using. I hope it's got more life in it! Any plans to get a new one ?

-Brett

After looking through Curtisa's 8 string build, I'm basically copying what he did for a neck there, but my blank is not as wide as his was, and mine is a full 3/4". This should work then. I was thinking about getting one of these http://www.graphtech.com/products/brands/black-tusq-xl/product-detail/pt-4025-00-black-tusq-xl-slab-1-4- for the Nut since my width is 2-1/8".

I know I have lot's of rookie questions, but hey this my first build! The books are both pretty good, but it's impossible to cover everything in a book. The biggest question marks I had were on preparing the lumber for building the neck blank. And now that I've gotten that out of the way, I'm moving on to calculating where to make my scarf joint. According to Stewart Macdonalds fretboard calculator (27" scale, 24 fret), from the face of the nut to the 24'th fret slot (centered) is 20.250" and then it looks like both of my Ibanez 7 strings have added a 3/8" extra past the center of the 24th fret. So cutting the nut shelf into the fret board, I would add .250" to my fretboard up front for the Tusq XL, and then .375" at the end for my extra fretboard past the 24th nut, and I come up with 20.875" total inches of fretboard

I'll think this over a bit and read some more before I do any cutting. still have to figure out how to make my 10 degree scarf cut.

-Brett

Well its my blank thickness. So I'll carve the neck profile and route the heel to shape, and the heel will be .750" without fretboard.

I'm following the design on page 82 of Melvyn Hiscock's book, with a 3/4" blank, which he then stacks a second piece at the heel to carve a Les Paul style heel, but I'm leaving mine at 3/4" to do a flat pocket bolt on like the Ibanez 7-8 string stuff. Both of my 7 strings have a 3/4" heel and then a 1/4" fretboard that is then radiused. This was my plan.

-Brett

Quick question for anyone who might have an opinion.. So my neck is going to be 3" wide at the heel, I made my blank 1/8" over on each side, is this not worth doing? I figured I would make a heel template and route it to size after I rough it out on the band saw.

-Brett

Those look fantastic! I really like the shape with the circular cutout, its pretty unique

-Brett

Well I glued it up, and foolishly I did so in the sun and the glue was drying fast on me, so my laminates are not flat on one side.. it kind of resembles a "W" when you run your finger across it.. But it's glued up now, so ill just run it through the planer tomorrow and see how thin it gets before it's flat. Worst case scenario I'll just cut some more strips and start over

It looks like it may come out pretty close to my target .750" I guess if I put carbon rods in it I could go a little thinner maybe?

-Brett

Haha yeah.. Big shop . The area pictured is outside my garage which is empty and I can work in there once the weather gets crappy, but it was just so nice today I figured I'd cut in the sun

I think I am going to have a cabinet shop in town resaw my curly maple into 1/4" slabs and then just take it down by hand. I was definitely concerned about the planer tearing it up.

I also have a drill press and some crap hand tools. My Buddy has a band saw and a chop saw, and my dad is giving me his plunge router setup so I may have to build a router table. Does MDF work good for tops on router tables ?

Thanks for looking

-Brett

Ok so I ran my equipment for a while and I figured I'd finally post some pictures.

This is my makeshift planer table and my cousins Ryobi 13" planer, which has been working really nice.

This is my Junky Table saw, which works pretty good I guess, the new blade helped a ton.

My jointer, which has proven to be pretty handy as well

Here is what I plan on making my fingerboard out of:

and yeah I saw that it's got a big curve in the end there, but that is 6" or so past what I plan on using

So after I cut and planed, this is what I came up with

I ended up putting a couple of .125" slices of some wood I had laying around (I don't know what it is) into the laminate for added contrast anyway.. I know I said I was going to avoid that, but once I got going with the saws everything was working out so well I figured why the heck not?

I was shooting for 3.250" for my blank to give me a little fudge room at the heel end:

so I ended up at 3.267" .. not bad for wood I guess. I'm used to running a counter-bore machine on caterpillar engines and you have to be within .001" but that's cast Iron ..

so I'm going to glue it up and see how much the dimensions change, right now it's about .830" deep, which I plan on planing to .750" once It dries. It seemed like a good idea..

-Brett

Being broke and in college, I think this is a fantastic idea! It definitely looks like a nice big haul of wood. Ever since I started my project all piles of wood I see when I'm out and about are inspected with much greater interest.

-Brett

Cool thanks for the advice! I ended up getting a new table saw blade, and ripping my maple strips a little over .500" and then running them through the planer to size, so my whole sandwich is going to be roughly .810" tall when glued, so then I'll run that through the planer down to .750" I have a couple pieces of oak that are the same size I was thinking to add for contrast, but this is my first build so I'll just go with the five pieces and see if I can do that correctly!

As for quartered, yeah none of my wood is super quartered, but its not straight grain or anything either so hopefully a 5 piece will help

Ill post some pics of my pieces before I glue. I need to get my imageshack account going again.

-Brett

That's a pretty cool idea, the carbon fiber rods. How far away from the rod channel do you usually put them ?

I cut and joined my walnut last night and started ripping strips of maple for my neck blank and noticed that the blade on my table saw wasn't going to cut it (har har puns). I'll go buy a new one today.

So here's a rookie question.. My lumber is factory cut on 3 sides and is between .805" and .825" thick according to my dial indicator.. So can I rip my appropriate widths off this board and joint them to appropriate width and then use the planer to take a RCH off each side till I'm at .750" for my 3/4"? Or maybe glue all my strips and then plane the whole thing?

Both the books I have don't really discuss preparing the lumber for the neck blank, so I'm sort of confused on what the best option is my original plan was to just use strips cut off and stacked vertically side by side .. But this seems stupid if the lumber is that close to .750"

I did make a body blank to test my jointing and planing technique, it turned out OK but it was made out of a big piece of oak I got for free.. So it probably won't end up a real body.. Its so heavy!

-Brett

Solid. Thank you Sir. I'm going to snag a jug today.

-Brett

Hey thanks for the advice Original. I appreciate the insight. I'm fully expecting some level of failure in this build at some point, and I'm real about the chances of it turning out perfect (slim to none).

The jointer is definitely a beast that would consume body parts if given the chance. I have a lot of push sticks and handles etc I've been using as I practice.

When I was in 8th grade two decades ago in woodshop class I was making an oak clock for my mom and some idiots bumped into me while I was using the band saw. The blade went halfway through the knuckle of my left hand ring finger, but somehow missed all the tendons, so I have a jagged scar to remind me of the power of tools every day. I don't get my hands near anything!

Anyone have an opinion on which titebond I should buy, 1 or 2?

-Brett

Man that 8 string turned out really nice. I have to agree with everyone else in that post.. You have great woods in Tasmania.. The guitar looks really beautiful.

I'll take anyone's tips who's Willing to share, and sometimes someone who is closer to the beginning remembers the early mistakes I'm very likely to make

I do appreciate it.

-Brett

Hey cool, thank you very much for the response. I'm looking forward to scoping out the build.

I spent a couple hours getting the fence on my jointer at 90° and then practicing on some scrap oak I had.

I get what you mean about the total thickness. I'll go with the 3/4" blank and my fretboard will be a little under 1/4", and yes I forgot about the volute. I guess a lot of first builders forget it

Thanks again curtisa I appreciate the wisdom you're willing to share

-Brett

Thanks guys, I picked up a piece of flame maple that has some really amazing grain. Got a short that's got about 3 usable feet for 10 bucks, so I feel pretty good about that. I was planning on using this for a fretboard because I've never seen it and I like flame maple

Thanks for the words ScottR, I'm definitely not a seasoned woodworker but I've used precision tools and done some machine work when I worked at the Caterpillar dealership (did engine work) and I usually watch about 8 videos on something before I go try it on scrap wood

Thanks for the tip Curtisa, do you feel a 3/4" blank is adequate for an 8 string? 17mm is like .669ish inches, so that's shy of 3/4" by just about 2mm. I would be happy with a 3/4 neck heel and I was fixing to have my flame maple resawed into around 1/4" and then plane it down a bit and then radius it. I wanted to have more wood on the body side so I can imitate an Ibanez all access cutaway which I know and love. Also while I'm asking questions.. Did you do double or single truss rod? and how long? Do you have a build documented for this guitar? I'd love to see it!

I scored a crafstman 4-1/8" planer/Jointer today too so I feel a lot better about getting square edges on my neck pieces.

More to come

-Brett

Yeah that grain really pops It looks fantastic!

How did the epoxy patch turn out on the piece that split? Looks like a real awesome build sir!

-Brett

I also have a half of a sheet of 3/4" MDF ready for building templates for this guitar, and a bunch of 3/4" plywood to build the templates template if you know what I mean. I had planned on roughing most things I'm going to cut on plywood or something else cheap before I lay hands on the finished product wood. Having gone through the complete template guide posted here I feel confident in the process once I know what I'm shooting for

I also have an old slab of maple I was going to practice fretting on before I got carried away on my fancy figured maple fretboard.

-Brett

Hello everybody, I have been working on the designs for my first scratch build guitar, and have come to the point where I need to start documentation of my progress. I have some questions for sure, and I will address them as I go here. I expect this process to be slow and involve a steep learning curve, but that's Ok with me.

So lets see here, I know everyone says to build a basic guitar for your first go, and I agree with this completely, but that being said If I'm going to spend the time and money, it has to be something I'm going to want to play. so I decided on building a two humbucker 8-string guitar for my first go.

These are the specs I have at this point:

27" scale

24 fret (not sure how to plan where my heel joint will fall on the Neck yet.. still reading up on that one)

10 degree down bubble scarf-joint

Nut width: 2-1/8" (basing these measurements off a Schecter I played that I liked the neck on)

5 piece Walnut/maple/walnut/maple/walnut sandwich neck

Truss Rod.. I have seen double rods on a lot of 8 strings, and I have seen single rods, so I am still trying to figure this out as well, and I was hoping someone who has built an 8-string (swedishluthier) might share which rod and length they used

I plan on doing a True bolt-on in the fashion of swedishluthier's countersunk nuts with the claws on them for a nice tidy fit.

Some variety of Figured maple finger-board, probably 20" radius, Jumbo frets, I haven't done any fretting before so I'll probably not use SS on this first go.

Hipshot open gear tuners (which they supply specs for on their page, awesome)

I also plan on doing binding on the neck/head/body at this point.

1-1/2" mohogany body with 1/4" top of something interesting I find between now and then.. for a total thickness of 1-3/4" bound hopefully with something red-ish.

Hipshot .125" bridge, which according to my amateur calculations would set the top of my frets at .300" off the top of the body of the guitar with 0 degree neck angle. (give or take a little for fret leveling)

Single volume single tone, 5-way selector with Lace DeathBar and X-Bar set up for coil tapping goodness.

I like the recessed jacks, I forget what they are called electro something.. I have one my Tele and it's great.

Anyway, I am going to do 3x3/4" strips of walnut and 2x1/2" strips of maple for my neck sandwich, which will give me a 3-1/4" wide blank and based off my drawings and the hipshot string spacing of 2.914" can be shaped into 3" at the body end of the fretboard, and I'm still figuring how deep the neck needs to be. My 7 string Ibanez neck has a 3/4" heel not including the fingerboard so I may go measure a couple of 8-strings and see what the norm is.

There is more of course, but I'll start with that and then post some pics later of the tools I have at my disposal and the wood I have acquired

So if this is total folly please let me know, but right now I'm looking at this as a pretty basic bolt on neck guitar build with a super-strat body. Stew Mac's fretboard calculator spit out some fretboard dimensions based off my desired 27" scale, so I'm going to start making the neck sandwich today hopefully.

-Brett

Yeah the curved edge is definitely a real eye popper, love it . I love reverse headstock's, but that design looks sharp as hell either way, pun intended!

I was talking to my cousin last night about wood working philosophy, and he was sharing with me how sometimes his best projects come from looking at his pile of wood and parts etc and letting what's available dictate the project. I think that's pretty cool.

I'm sure these will turn out pretty beast. Looking forward to seeing it sir

-Brett

Very cool, are those carbon fiber rods Arrow shafts?

Yeah the finished product you posted there is pretty nice work. I'd love to hear any audio clips of these you have

The 7 string sounds pretty nifty, I'm a Low B guy at least, and yeah I thought a low F# on a jazz box would pretty neat, though I have nothing against a high A either. Thanks for sharing those pictures of your bracing, I'm always interested!

-Brett

Very cool. I really like the second guitar you have pictured there, It looks pretty awesome! Are these guitars braced in a similar fashion/structure to acoustics? Are you selling these instruments or just working on perfecting your design? Ever thought about a 7 or 8 string jazz box? Pretty nice stuff sir.

-Brett

Hey cool, I like the headstock design a lot! I've never been a big fan of playing Explorer style bodies, but the guitar looks pretty classy. The shotgun shell brass knobs are a pretty great touch too. Very nice work

-Brett