Norris

I'm liking that thicknessing jig. Have you got a vacuum hose on the sled box to remove the shavings?

Looking very nice. I like the way you've left the carve un-dyed and still got crisp, flowing edges on the dyed top

I'm looking forward to doing some proper hand sanding on my build soon

As a complete novice I've found the most useful bit of kit that you've mentioned to be the drill press. I have bought a bandsaw because a friend was selling it at a decent price, but haven't had the occasion to use it yet. I must mention though that I attend guitar building evening classes and have access to the school workshop equipment. However apart from roughing out the body & neck I've not had the use their bandsaw much either. I could have probably made do with a jigsaw. The most useful power tools have been the drill & router. The rest so far has been covered by the old school stuff - a decent hand plane, rasp, cabinet scrapers and a sanding table. Then you get into the specialist tools such as radius jigs, fret saws, nut files, etc - luckily I can use those at my classes

That's good to hear. I'm about to order up a decal for my build from there. I must finalise the design - hopefully I'll need it soon!

I did a couple of tests with dye & grain filler for my ash back. In this case it's dark blue spirit-based dye and black thixotropic grain filler. It didn't look much different whether I dyed or grain-filled first in the end, so I've decided to grain fill first as that will require the most sanding back of the two processes. I'm looking forward to seeing this guitar too

Thanks for your kind comments. I'm certainly not going to start rushing now, although I'm as keen as you are to see a finished guitar! My wife even bought me a Hiscox case for it for Xmas!

Lovely transition. The insert looks beautiful

A few more bits & bobs ticked off the list... I recessed the jack plate. First I screwed it in place then used a sharp knife to cut around it to a depth of about 2mm. Then used my Dremel + StewMac router base to create the rebate. A tiny bit of end grain tearout, which is pretty much inevitable - but not bad at all Then on to the control mounting holes. I had to recess them slightly I seem to have managed to catch hardly any highlights - that's a chrome plate The holes are not spaced equally deliberately. There are asymmetric knobs in progress I also got my back plate back. My instructor ran it through his sander thicknesser for me. It's a shame I cocked up the routing on the body recess, as otherwise it would have fitted beautifully. So anyway, I've got to make a new template next, get the recess routed & bound, magnets drilled & fitted - and that will be the body about complete & ready for starting to finish. Unfortunately the body has picked up a few scuffs & dints which will need attention, but it's hardly surprising when I'm carrying it back & forth to class every week. I've officially got that "final approach" feeling

If you ever fancy doing a tutorial on your polishing regime I'd be very interested. You do get rather good results!

It looks even better now I can see it on a proper monitor (I always use my mobile for BassChat)

That's some beautiful wood & a nice guitar too

Italicised LP?

A shine deep enough to dive into. Damn that's good!

Now known as "fake news" . Oft repeated, takes on a life of its own and becomes "fact"

Derail away to your heart's content. This thread isn't quite long enough yet

Thanks, but actually yes. I've done a bit of DIY around the house and am reasonable competent, but this is my first foray into any serious woodworking. That's probably why it's taken me 16 months so far to get to this stage! A lot of it is due to the sage advice of my instructors at the night class I go to... and of course the good people of PG... and the inspirational guitars they build. Thanks for the advice about binding cement - I'll check it out.

That's kind of my intention. The existing shelf is slightly shallow still - only by about 0.2mm but enough to level it out. I carried on routing the pass, avoiding the damaged area, to give myself a decent guide for alignment. I'm using a stubby top bearing bit + template, as I can't use the inner route as a guide due to the magnet mounting lugs. As Scott says, wrecking a template is an inconvenience - wrecking the guitar would have been a lot worse. It shouldn't be a difficult "save". I'm more disappointed with myself tbh to have made an avoidable mistake.

Glad you're making dust again (or plan to at least). I'm still waiting for some progress on your Ric bass!

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly My evening classes started back, so I've been working on it again. It seems a long time since I've done much. Anyway, I have some success and some less-than-success. I suppose it had to happen some time. First, the Good. I used the jig that my father-in-law made for me to drill the holes for the ferrules. Yep, pretty pleased with that. I just need to fettle the ends of the small holes to make sure they align with the small holes in the ferrules and then tidy it up a bit. I thought that went quite cleanly though. The Bad No in not-quite-so-successful fashion, I started routing the rebate for my rear cover.. A slight lack of concentration maybe, I slipped and made slightly more sawdust than I intended. There was supposed to be a 4mm rebate. It's not as bad as it could have been though, as the extra chew is just about the width of the binding I have used elsewhere on the guitar. I've already bound the cover, so we'll have a double binding. I can save that. The Ugly It took me hours of careful sanding to get this template just right, and less than a second to trash it And there at the end of the sequence of gouges you can see the chew out. That template is heading for the bin then. Reminder to self: When handling a router be careful, be sure, be positive, keep a good grip - or next time it could be your fingers! Anyway at least I'm making sawdust again. It seems like ages (and the cold damp garage at home hasn't helped). I'll need to do myself a checklist for the outstanding bits as I get into the home straight.

Great name for a band!

The thickness of the shielding material is more to do with robustness & ease of handling than anything else. AFAIK one molecule thick is enough to shield, but would be impossible to handle. As Curtisa says, it's all got to be connected to ground to be effective - you are essentially making a Faraday cage

I don't know how much experience you have with computers, or indeed how artistic you are. One program I do like for doing layouts like you are trying to do is Inkscape https://inkscape.org/en/ This is a vector based drawing program. Rather than colouring in lots of little dots (pixels) like Photoshop does, this is more like stretching an elastic band until it's in the shape you want it. Text is very easy to grow, shrink, squish, rotate, etc. and change the colour It would certainly be worth checking out the resources and tutorials under the "Learn" menu, to see if it might be suitable for your needs. And the best thing... it's absolutely FREE Then you might want to check out some of the vector graphics on http://www.flaticon.com/ - which you can download in "SVG" (scalable vector graphics) format and use within Inkscape - and again stretch & squish them around

Oh my! I think I need a change of underwear!

Nice article