Norris

Ooh great thinking. That might just work

Yes - time to buy some cabinet scrapers & learn how to burnish them! You never know, it may look a bit better when it's tidied up

I used the template to flush trim the back piece, then glued on the rough cut top & used the back as a guide to flush trim it Edit: I did draw around my template onto the rear side of the top to help align it with the bottom piece. And thanks. It's a bit rambling & very slow progress (or so it seems to me), but gives a "warts & all" account of my first build, including a lot of my thought processes & blind alleys as I go

So I finally bound the fretboard last night The mummy awakes... Unfortunately although I got the corners nice & tight, it got a little loose on the bottom radius The rear... ... looks worse than the top... ... and the radius isn't quite even. I'll wait until I have scraped it down a bit before I decide what to do about that - if anything. I might be able to gently prise it off the board enough to get the radius even, then use dust & CA to fill the gap. Anyway, this is the glue I used (as recommended by my instructor) - Weld-On. It's more like polystyrene cement than CA, but is just as runny (as you can tell from the state of the board now!). I have a week off work next week (and the wife hasn't! ), so hopefully I can get things moving along a bit.

Is padauk not the right shade?

Great build and a lovely result!

Obviously my memory is getting dodgy the older I get . I thought there were 7

Are you going for the 7-way vari-tone switch? I also have a Prostheta preamp in my 1980 SB-1000 Edit: Good work so far btw - looks very clean. I do like a bit of purpleheart

That's a neat little jig. I like that idea

Yes, I'm very fortunate to have the classes quite so close to home.too.

The jig I used was very basic, but did the job quite well. Yes there are improvements could be made e.g. I had to try to keep the blade vertical by eye, which is not easy by the time you get to the 20th fret or so. One of my slots isn't quite vertical, but hopefully close enough to get away with. Anyway to come back to the earlier point, the same principles apply in even more basic form by drawing a line parallel to a straight edge and taping your board down aligned on the centre line

It seems a shame not to use the bocote - it looks great. Having just cut my first ever slots (and on a pre-tapered board at that), it's really not that difficult. As @Prostheta says, get a board (MDF?) with a straight edge, draw a line parallel to the edge and just over half the width of your fretboard heel end away, then use double-sided tape to stick your fretboard down with the centre line aligned on the pencil line. You can them use a set square against the edge of your backboard to get your fret slots perpendicular

They are not so much structured classes as regular (once a week for 2 hours) workshop time with some experts and basic luthiery tools on hand. It's a privately run class, using a school's wood workshop. It's very relaxed, you can go at your own pace and get plenty of advice. Many of the "students" have been going for years The fret cutting jig belongs to the "class". The board is held in a tapered slot that matches most fretboard tapers i.e. approx 10mm increase in width between the nut & 12th fret positions..This then gives a square edge on the jig to get the fret slots perpendicular to the centre line when you have already tapered your board. As the slot is a bit wider than my board I packed it out with a couple of strips of plywood - which purely by chance were about 3mm when I cut them on the bandsaw (I just aimed for "thin"!). As the board is about 6mm thick, this gave me the 3mm depth that I needed to saw to. It all worked out quite well considering how well used the jig is: the top surface has MANY cuts in it, so the ply also gave me a fresh surface to cut into. As you can also probably see from the second photo, the board has a slight twist to it. It shouldn't be a problem once it has been fixed onto the neck. It twists back into plane pretty easily with minimal finger pressure - it just doesn't want to sit flat unassisted at the moment . I just moved my clamps as I was cutting to ensure that the part I was sawing was sitting flat at the time.

Progress has been so slow so far this year. It seems like I haven't had two minutes to myself since before Christmas. Anyway to prove that this hasn't completely ground to a halt... I've taken down the sides of the fretboard to the correct width for the binding. I've radiused the heel, marked it out and then last night cut the fret slots The "customised" handle on the saw is because I had already made and popped a blister by that point. The cushioning of a few layers of masking tape helped get to the end of the board without much further pain. I also trimmed down the binding - it's 10mm high, so I trimmed it down to 7mm ready for fixing to the board. The offcut is about 1.5mm high (and a fairly neat cut!) and might just be tall enough to do the headstock binding - we'll see in due course. It would certainly make it easier to form to the curves, being only 1.5mm thick as well. The actual binding will probably have to wait until next week's class - they have better facilities than my cold garage with everything perched on a workmate. Anyway, I'm happy to take my first ever board preparation as a minor milestone

That top is gorgeous!

Fabulous! That has finished really well

I fetched the latest set of samples out on Friday night having been in there for a week and we have... From top to bottom: Kensington Blue A similar but slightly darker shade than the Florida Blue, but it seems to have suffered a lot less fading. Not quite as vibrant as the Florida when freshly applied, but might just about be stable enough to use. Sargasso Sea I'm a little disappointed with this one. It looked excellent when freshly applied and really popped the grain with pretty minimal preparation. I was really hoping that this could be the one to use, but it has faded quite a bit. The resulting colour is not unpleasant though. Sapphire This went on more like paint than dye. There's a lot of pigment in it, and it would probably want thinning down if used in anger. As you can see it has faded quite a bit and ended up about the same colour as the Sargasso Sea. Perhaps my test is a little too harsh - it certainly seems to rip the blue inks to shreds. It would be interesting to test a sample of proper colour-fast blue wood dye to see how that holds up. I'll see if I can set up a test on that. In the meantime, I think it's time to put this on the back burner while I concentrate on getting chunks of wood into the correct shape for my build. Plenty of time to "chew the cud" yet.

I haven't updated this for a while so... I had another chat with my "guru" about the bound headstock veneer. He said that he has tried it several ways: gluing/trimming/binding, trimming/gluing/binding and trimming/binding/gluing; and that he had far more success with the trimming/binding/gluing order of events. Fair enough, he's done it before and I haven't, so I'll let him guide me Speaking of binding, that was getting to the point where it was going to start holding things up. So I got on the Rothko & Frost site & bought some nice white pearlescent celluloid binding. It's very nice in a retro-bling way. As I'm doing the body, neck & headstock I bought 2x 1.6m lengths, 10mm high, 2mm wide. As for progress, I spent some time sorting out that top "heel" on the neck (see previous posts) and that is now trimmed away to give a cleaner area for the veneer to go on i.e. it only bends through one axis now . I have also started flattening the back of the maple fingerboard - that's going to look very nice, even with a standard grain (no flashy quilt/flame/birdseye). Finally I have also started preparing templates for some of the details on the body top. But by 'eck it's cold in my garage right now! The UK is having a bit of a chilly time of it at the moment (although I bet a lot of you live in far colder climates!). Oh for a heated workshop, but the electricity supply is not really up to running heaters, and I don't want to use gas because it is damp enough in there already. I'll just have to dress warmly and strip off the layers as I get sanding

Anyway, it's 3 quid

Ooh - that's cool!

Apologies

Delivery to "Europe" is £3 - I assume that includes Scandinavia. Delivery to "Rest of World" is £5 I did have a quick peek last night, and although all of the samples have faded slightly, they do not seem nearly as bad as the "Florida Blue". The "Kensington Blue" is just a shade darker than the "Florida" but seems a lot more resistant to fading. I'm hoping that they will be usable, as the "Sargasso Sea" looks fantastic and pops the flame really well even with a simple wipe-on coat & no other preparation. The "Sapphire" was a little heavy & would require some sanding back to get the grain back in view

I currently have Kensington Blue, Sargasso Sea and Sapphire under test. Pictures to follow in a few days when they have had the full week of testing. I hope one of them is ok, as 30ml of each colour delivered was less than £10 - it's very cheap dye if it works

Maybe @Andyjr1515 could offer some advice. I'm sure he's finished a few guitars using brushed varnish

Agreed. I'm not a fan of single cuts, but this is looking very sweet. Nice work that man