Norris

Thanks chaps.

Those remaining pencil marks are now gone, but it was too cold in the garage to do much more last night & the log burner was roaring & calling me into the living room . It's getting harder & harder to drag myself outside as winter kicks in. I might have to try insulating it in the spring.

17 hours ago, Prostheta said:

LEDs are a bit of a game to get right for illuminating a space. They generally have a narrower viewing angle requiring a bit of thought or experimenting with placement to avoid hot spots or shadows.

I would have angled it towards the rear so that the only light shining out would be from internal diffusion. I even went as far as buying a surface mounted AA battery holder. Perhaps I'll try it on a future build. A reddish/orange glow would have looked good though.

I'm certain I commented on this yesterday to say what a fantastic job you've done. Have we had overnight site issues? Quite a few posts that I read yesterday have been marked as unread. Hmm.

Anyway to reiterate, that carving looks terrific!

By 'eck there are some big woodworm around these parts! They've done a nice neat job though

There... the not-an-f-hole

Luckily I got first use of the new set of forstener bits that the guitar building course just bought, before any of the other students got a chance to abuse them .

Can you remember all that time ago when I dyed & lacquered the upper chamber? I almost wish I'd gone ahead & installed an LED to give it a glow. I was toying with the idea at the time, but decided it might be a bit too cheesey. Still the red "rock 'n' roll heart" is prominent enough, and should look good when the top is blue.

Once again I'm pretty pleased with that. Those holes were what inspired the tear-drop recesses in the first place.

Edit: 14 pages?! I really must up my tempo on the next build!

17 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

I've just had a look at that last photo on my desktop monitor rather than my titchy mini ipad.  WOW!  Very, VERY, classy 

16 hours ago, Prostheta said:

It is. Norris has really graduated with this one!

Aw shucks guys

I'm itching to get it finished, but desperately trying not to rush it.

...and Mrs Norris was commenting this morning about some of the interior decorating that needs doing in the house (never a good sign imho).

Anyway I spent two hours on the neck heel last night - and you'd probably not be able to tell from a before & after shot. Anyway I've brought the "heel break" back by an inch or so, so that there's less of the "platform" sticking out from the socket. Boy it's not easy to blend it in, but we're nearly there apart from a couple of birds eyes that need smoothing out a little more. Another tick on the list

You've created a gorgeous bass there. Lovely stuff & so quick too!

Very nice work and a gorgeous bit of quilt to boot. Looking at the thickness of the top I assume we are in for another carve-fest

Ooh - that's a gorgeous blue! Very nice work

I was playing around using several shades to try to pop the grain. However I eventually decided to do a single colour to try to let the chatoyance out a little. Obviously using lots of pigment to get a deep colour will limit that to a certain extent

On 29/10/2016 at 0:05 AM, Andyjr1515 said:

It's looking great, Norris

On the subject of ink I did eventually contact Diamine ref fade information...but no response as yet.  In the meantime I continue to use it and with no issues so far

Thanks. The fading seemed to be very specific to the particular ink. Some very similar looking shades had very different light-fastness

On 28/10/2016 at 2:16 PM, ScottR said:

So you've already got a couple of wins under your belt and haven't even finished yet!

I don't know about "wins" yet, but I'm very satisfied that I've exceeded my own expectations as to what I can achieve - given enough time!!!

On 25/10/2016 at 2:16 PM, ScottR said:

I had a similar problem Sunday.

This is looking very good (still). You may have mentioned somewhere along the line how you planned to finish this.....but I know longer remember. In fact, you've had plenty of time to change you mind.

So, what are your finishing plans?

SR

Sorry I took some time to reply. I've just had a couple of days off work due to a heavy cold - not nice and no energy at all!

My plans are to dye it blue, with the ash back grain-filled in black & dyed blue too. I'm toying with the idea of attempting a subtle burst on the top using careful sanding - I still want it fairly saturated though (although the creased denim look might be nice as well). The headstock veneer will be dyed to match.

I was hoping to get this finished for Christmas, but there is still so much fettling to do that I'm starting to have doubts. Still, my emphasis throughout has been to try to do it "right", to match the image in my head - if it takes a little longer then so be it. I'm building up my skills and the next build will be quicker. What I am learning is where to put the effort in to get things right in the first place, so it will take less time to fettle it later. Plus, I'm having fun

One small step, but a substantial milestone. I have finally fitted the neck to the body, albeit temporarily

Please excuse a few photos

And with some not-so-subtle downlighting...

I've already marked out where I need to extend the neck carve further towards the heel (second photo). I'll also be refining the heel area on the body 

The rest of the evening "class" was spent working on the jig for drilling for my ferrules

Edit: One of the photos seems to have gone AWOL. Attempting re-post...
Edit #2: Hmmm.....
Edit #3: Looks like PhotoBucket was playing up when I posted, and PG tried to proxy the image. Hopefully it will turn up eventually. Edit & re-post was unsuccessful
Edit #4: It was a shot of the rear neck join btw
Edit #5: Two hours later it seems to have turned up at last

I love that neck pocket shape - and such an accurate fit too

On 21/10/2016 at 9:51 PM, ScottR said:

I look at that timber and see a Yorkie or an English Sheep Dog looking back at me.

SR

It looks more like it's facing away from you to me

Nice wood

I did some test samples for my guitar, to see if there was much of a difference between doing the grain filling before or after dyeing. They both looked about the same to me. Therefore when I come to do the guitar I'll grain fill first to reduce the risk of over-sanding through my dye.

21 hours ago, narked said:

Brilliant work so far. Just read through the entire thread, can't wait to see it finished!

Thanks - and welcome to the forum 

Not much time this week. I did route the recess for the neck plate and rounded off the heel

Darn - looks like it's focused on the reflection - a nice shot of the rafters in my garage 

Shinto rasps are excellent tools, but not very nice on the hands. I wear a pair of thick suede gardening gloves if I have much rasping to do

A small amount of progress this week. My neck pocket was a little shallow, so I deepened it a bit with my Dremel using a 3.2mm bit. It turned out nice & neat but hardly worth a photo. I've also made a template to recess my neck plate - another job for the Dremel.

I have some chrome knobs kicking about, but thought I'd have a go at making some from the wood offcuts, inspired by numerous build threads on here. However, I don't have a lathe. What I do have in the way of turny-roundy things is a drill press. So I cut a chunk of the ash and roughly squared it up. I then cut the head off a coach bolt & ground off the sharp tip. I drilled a hole in the end of the wood, just small enough for the thread to grip without putting too much lateral stress on the wood and screwed the coach bolt in. Then it went into the chuck and I set about it with my shinto rasp.

After a few minutes of very GENTLE rasping (I don't want to wreck my drill!) it was basically round. At that point I clamped a set square onto the table and used that and the rear pillar as a guide for my sanding blocks.

... a decent start. I have a lot more work to do on these and I probably won't post many more pictures of them until the "big reveal"  - I can actually start thinking about that now!

18 hours ago, Prostheta said:

Inventiveness and making your own solutions is the way forward.

That's the advantage of being a novice at this - I've not had time to learn what I should and shouldn't be doing, so sometimes have to think my way around what is common & established practice for more experienced builders 

18 hours ago, ScottR said:

That's flippin' awesome!

You're going to have to do another build and keep the two bevels. This guitar needs the curves, what with your curved teardrops, but the double bevel was a very cool look. I don't know that I've seen that before.

Thanks!

It looked pretty good when I smoothed out the lower ridge, leaving just the upper ridge where it meets the flat top. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos at that stage, but that was a pretty cool look too

Gorgeous V - the binding looks spot on!

So I had some annual leave building up so took a couple of days off last week. Three days of making sawdust - heaven!

I've been working on the round-over of the edge of the body (drop top?). I'd previously carved a 60° facet around the edge, fitted the binding and scraped it to the angle. Next I did another facet at about 80°...

I may have invented a tool here, a contour marker...

... which I used to mark lines at 6mm and 2mm  - a 1:3 ratio

Then carefully used the shinto rasp, cabinet scrapers and sanding block

Skip forward about 2 days of sanding...

... and it's getting there. The light through the garage window is ideal for spotting ridges & scratches

I've not taken a photo yet since I've got it down to about 600 grit. There are still a few scratches to go, but I'll wait until I've done the rear access panel before going too mad.

Anyway, I'm rather pleased. I didn't think I was capable of producing work quite to this standard (though I do say so myself! ), so I've had to raise my personal bar a bit. In light of that, I did fix that slightly dodgy binding on the heel of the neck (if you can remember that long ago) with a spot of acetone (no pictures yet, it's still mummified)

18 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

Hi, Norris

Only just caught up with your progress on this.  Looks fab 

The misalignment of the holes at the back won't, of course, be seen.  I've seen a good explanation somewhere of how to do through holes (I think you drill from both sides and meet in the middle but there's a trick so that the two sides line up with each other). I'll try to find it for your many future builds 

 

It's nothing that a good jig can't sort out along with a bit of needle file work

If it all goes wrong I'll say it was intentionally "vintage spec" - it does have Fender CS Nocaster pickups

10 hours ago, Rockhorst said:

So yay or nay on acetone?

I like how you got your binding channel there. Very clever, without any need for router tables. To late for me now, but I'll consider that next time!

I don't know if I have enough experience to say. @Prostheta swears by acetone. I used the Weld-On on the recommendation of my instructor. The Weld-On does give you a few minutes to faff around and doesn't evaporate away like acetone. However on the couple of bits that have needed tidying up I used acetone to do the fix (which handily dissolves the Weld-On). If it's your first attempt you might find it easier to use Weld-On due to the working time. Beware though, it's very runny - the same consistency as the old polystyrene cement you used to use on your Airfix kits  (although obviously not as fluid as acetone!)

One thing that will help, whichever fixing method you use, is to try to pre-form the binding into shape before trying to stick it on. It's a much easier job when you're not fighting against the tension. Stop occasionally on a straight or gently curved section to bend the next part A hairdryer on its hottest setting is useful for bending plastic binding.

1 minute ago, Prostheta said:

Vintage correct man.

Ha ha! I'm not lowering my standards just because Leo did

3 hours ago, Prostheta said:

...what you've done is well within Fender vintage specification anyway.

So I've been told!

However I have a lot to live up to posting my build on PG and will do my utmost to get them nicely aligned