2.5itim

Some of you may have remembered me talking about trying to modify a low profile truss rod to accept a spoke wheel adjustment nut for the semi hollow tele build, well after trying a few different things there was just no way that I could figure out a way so i broke down and bought a stewmac hot rod truss rod that already had a spoke wheel on it. I had already routed the truss rod Chanel for the low pro truss rod which is .250 wide and .375 deep, the hot rod is .220 wide and .440 deep so I had to cut the channel deeper which I did with my table router. Then I had to figure out what I was gonna do about the channel being to wide so I put the truss rod in the slot and wedged 2 pieces of wood veneer next to the rod, it's in there nice and snug now. I also got the fretboard glued on and the taper in the neck routed out, the headstock shape is routed and the Purple Heart for the back of the headstock is drying up right now.

It is Scott, I was equally shocked when he showed me. I had no idea padauk sap wood was white lol

I have to think that cutting the neck tenon at an angle would have to be easier than cutting the body. I have only cut the body at the angle in the past and the setup time takes me forever, I think I will try the tenon route next time.

I have had a pretty productive day in the shop so far!! I got the neck blank for the maple/zebra/walnut guitar planed down to thickness, cut my scarf joint on my neck and headstock blank and got it gluing up over night. on the sapele prs body build I got the body blank pieces jointed and glued up, and also got the body shape cut out and routed to the final shape. I learned a valuable lesson today and that is I NEED A BANDSAW!!!! I cut the body shape out with my jigsaw and came within .02 of an inch to my body line, it was a really close call but luckily I was able to clean it up. I also went to low with my router so the nut for the collet burned on the body, luckily it's very minimal so I will be able to sand it out easily.

Also, I posted a pick of my flamed maple double cut I'm building on facebook last week. and I had a guy contact me that has a prs ce24 neck and tremolo but no body so we talked over what he is wanting and agreed upon a price so he put down a deposit yesterday for me to build him a body. I came across this really cool guy local to me who is a hardwood distributor who only deals with kiln dried stuff, I text him and ask him if he has something and if he does he loads all of that type of wood he has and meets me so I can pick thru what I want. I bought that walnut for the top of the other guitar from him and was happy so I asked him if he had some mahogany, he had this really nice piece of 8/4 ribbon sapele so we met up and I looked it over and bought it from him, he has really competitive pricing and it's really convenient meeting up where ever I'm at so I think I'll be using him more often. Well anyways, after that extremely long story I got the board home and cut up a body blank, tomorrow I will get it jointed, planed to thickness and glued up.the guy who I'm building this for is sending me the neck and tremolo and it's in the mail so progress might be a little slow till they get here. Pretty much what he wants is a prs shape body, natural back with a gloss black top. Easy enough!

Small Update on the maple/zebra/walnut guitar: today I got my strips of flamed maple and walnut for the neck cut up, jointed and glued up. In the morning I'll get it out of the clamps and run it thru the planer to get it to final thickness. I have a really nice piece of flamed maple I've had set aside for a while that I will use for the headstock so after I get everything planed I will go ahead and cut my 12* scarf joint and get that glued up.

Great work as always Scott! I really like the back, with the way the grain is it almost looks like someone dropped something in water and it has a ripple effect.

Thanks Andy! I think I will be doing more multi laminate backs from here on, it takes a bit more work but I think it breaks up the back really well, and also it allows me to use cut offs that normally wouldn't be wide enough for a body, which means I can get more bodies together with spending less money so it's a win!

The lady decided she only wanted to watch 1 movie tonight so I got some more free time in the shop!! got the body out of clamps and cut the excess off with the saw and got the body shape routed out. I got a new router bit and let me say I didn't even realize how bad my old one was until using a new one again. Anyways, here's some pics!

I completely forgot I had this post, so I will start using it again even tho we are nearing the end of 2016. I spent the last couple weeks working on the double cut carve top but I've posted about that one on its post so I won't put that up in here yet. I spent yesterday cutting/planing/jointing a body blank for another build I'm starting, it's flamed maple and zebrawood body with a black walnut top. Today I got all of the body glued up and now the top is being glued to the back and set up in clamps. I also designed a new body style I'm going to try out, I just found out Friday what a tiesco tulip guitar is and I think that that had a lot of influence in this shape of this one. tomorrow I will take the body out of the clamps and get the body shape routed out.

It really is Scott, I hope to do it much more often when money can allow lol. That stuffs expensive!! Thank you very much!

Today has possibly been the most fulfilling feeling day I've had in my guitar building "career". I dyed the top brown, sanded it back, saw that I did a terrible job at getting all the sanding marks out, dyed it brown again, sanded it back again, and then finally put on three coats of my dye mixture. I am totally in love with this guitar at the moment and it's getting harder and harder knowing that I'm going to have to let it go soon.

Today has possibly been the most fulfilling feeling day I've had in my guitar building "career". I dyed the top brown, sanded it back, saw that I did a terrible job at getting all the sanding marks out, dyed it brown again, sanded it back again, and then finally put on three coats of my dye mixture. I am totally in love with this guitar at the moment and it's getting harder and harder knowing that I'm going to have to let it go soon.

Welcome, I'm interested to see what you come up with!

Wow that is a great looking guitar, very nicely done!

Today I was able to get the frets trimmed and beveled, neck glued up in the body and started dying. The dye has really got my mind spinning, I mixed up a brown/black/red mix for the back of the body and neck. I used it on a test piece (off cut of the body) and I liked the color, it was a darkish brown with no hint of purple at all. I applied it to the body and boom purple, I did 4 coats of it to try and get it to darken up which didn't work. I then mixed up a brown with a little blue to darken the brown and applied 2 coats of it hoping that would darken it up, which it did but now I get 2 different colors from sunlight to shade, in the sunlight it's very purple and in the shade it's a dark brown. I also can't get consistent coverage of the dye on the back of the body, I have streaks that aren't getting as dark as the rest of the body. I sent all these pictures to my buddy who I'm building this guitar for and he loved the colors and streaks (he loves rustic so I guess it works) so I guess I'm going to keep pushing forward. Not what I originally planned but as long as he likes it.

Slow night tonight but I got the fretwire radiused, hammered in and glued up. Tomorrow after the glue is good and dry I'll trim them and dress the ends and hopefully get the neck glued into the body. The plan is to have the dye on the guitar this weekend so I'll get it all finish sanded and get my dyes mixed up. I'm having a tough time figuring out what I want to do with the back of the body and neck as far as color, my buddy just said he wants it dark brown but my brown dye look more like shit brown than dark brown so I'm gonna play around with mixing brown, black and red at different consistencies to see if I can come up with something I like.

Haha yeah, I had to do a bunch of work on the engine in the truck to get it in good running order and decided to go crazy on building the engine up in preparations for getting it ready for the strip next spring. The Subaru has been down for 4 years and I've gotta get that thing running again because I'm tired of seeing it just sit in the garage lol. The strong winds are finally over!! We ended up getting the whole roof replaced and fixed a few water damaged spots on the house from the winds taking off a lot of the roof and I got the privacy fence rebuilt, so hopefully no more weather surprises for the next year or so. i was able to finish up the control carves tonight and decided to wipe it down with some minimal spirits and throw a little bit of it together for a pic I can't wait to see a finish on this thing

Haha yeah I had to take a slight break for a while but hopefully can get back into my old groove easily. It has been interesting carving the circles on the figured maple, I've learned to take it in sections going in a different direction in each section seems like the only option otherwise it wants to start to split.

Well I've pretty much fell off the face of the earth for a few months, I've had to put a lot of work into my truck and have been working on the Subaru a bit and it's been dang hot in the shop so the guitars kinda took the back burner for a little while, now that the trucks running and it's nice and cool out I can get back to work. Today I spent some time in the shop trying to figure out where the hell I left off, I started to carve the volume/tone/selector out and got the volume and pickup selector done, still need to carve the tone spot and finish sand but I'm pretty happy with it so far.

If you ever feel like giving up your magic yellow recipe you let me know haha

Haha sure!! I just got a laptop so maybe I will retry changing it later on with the laptop since it won't work from my phone, but I'm cool with it for now haha.

As for glue, the guy that has been bending my fretwire for me runs a local repair shop in Tulsa and he showed me the way that he has been doing it for 25 years, this is how I've been doing mine. Hammer all of your frets in and leave the ends long, after all are in flip the neck over and drop a dab of ca glue on the tip of each tang, the glue goes down into the fret slots and once it's all dry just clip your fret ends and bevel the frets by that time the majority of the glue is gone and just sand off the rest.

Looks pretty good man!! What kind of tooling are you using to cut it? Only reason I ask is for the ridges in the shelf, now that you've already got this one finished you can sand these to make it smooth but for future pieces I can help you come up with a spindle speed and feed rate that will get rid of them and give you the longest tool life, I would just need to know the diameter of your cutter, how many flutes it has a what material it's made out of either high speed steel or carbide. Are you taking the full depth in one pass? Getting good finishes in the metal world is all about finish passes, that looks to be a pretty shallow cut but even raising the cutter up .005" running your program and set the cutter back down .005" and running again can make all the difference in it I love seeing people make the things that they need themselves, good job man!! You've earned some points in my book.

routers are super dangerous, they are super powerful and can get away from you in a split second. This was me 2 weeks ago.