2.5itim

@Guitaraxz that's exactly what I'm worried about is being to bright, I'm thinking it's going to have a lot of treble once I get it finished up. I measured against all of my Sabres, les Paul's, and ibanez sz and all of them from the break point on the high e of the bridge to the first pole position of the pickup are around 1.25-1.375" distance, all of them have different type bridges than I am using here but I don't think that will make much difference. This one that I'm building now the distance is about .875" so quite a bit closer. The other guitar that I'm building the distance is 1.25" so I guess once I get them finished I will decide on which sound I like better and go from there in the future, if it is to trebly I will take your advice and swap the pot out to a lower rating or swap the magnet in whatever pickup I decide to go with which will probably be some sort of bareknuckle.

Im not sure about this bridge pickup distance from the bridge, hopefully it's not to close!

I ended up not going out of town as I had planned so I spent a little time today working on this, I finished fretting it yesterday and left the glue to dry over night so that is done, today I drilled the tuner holes and mounted my pickups, I still don't have any hardware or electronics for this thing yet so I stole them off the other build for the time being. I was planning on mounting my bridge but I can't find any of my 3/32 drill bits anywhere so will have to run to the store tomorrow. The guy that I was building this guitar for said that he would order all of the electronics and hardware and get them to me when they come in, anyways that was over a month ago and last week he said he hasn't received them yet (he supposedly ordered from the same places I always order from and get my parts within 3 days), anyways I'm starting to think he's dicking me around! At this point I'm just going to go ahead and order everything I need to finish this thing as soon as I get the cash and just write him off Anyways, sorry for the long read! Here's a pics!

I have grown over time to love rosewood, it's a joy to work with, it smells great when cut and it feels great on the fingers! I have 2 guitars in the works with Honduran rosewood and I find them a joy. I really like the look of Madagascar, I'd like to try some soon.

I really need to get this thing done!! So today I made my first nut, it's not the best but surprisingly I did alright. I'm really wishing I would have went with black tusq but it's alright. I also got my frets leveled (again), adjusted my truss rod and set my action. I'm really really liking the way this thing plays! What I have left is to finish my string block, get it powder coated, route the cavity for it, bevel/crown the frets, lacquer it, polish it, wire it up and finally play the damn thing!! We're getting close.

Thank you Scott, I figured I would use this one as kind of a test piece with the scraper for the custom 24 but I like it so much I think I'm gonna do it to the spalted hackberry guitar also.

Ahh that would be perfect! Thanks I will check them out, Andrew. I have a 3 day weekend this week and will be heading to Arkansas for some hiking tomorrow so I figured I would spend today working on this. I re "carved" my top, I went to woodcraft and picked up a set of radiused cabinet scrapers and decided to do an undercut on what I had already carved. I like it a lot more now and these cabinet scrapers are awesome! They don't do so well on the open pores of ash because it pulls a lot of material out of them and then not so much on the closed pores so in certain places I was getting a ripple effect. After lots of sanding I have gotten them smooth again. Also because I'm now going a solid color on the top I decided to wood fill the screw ups that I have from when I clamped the top to the back and the little imperfection I got from hand planing incorrectly. Also finished fretting and glued them in, and reshaped my neck because I wasn't completely happy with it which now I am, I also used cabinet scrapers on that and enjoyed every minute of it!

Pros, I have just been using stewmacs fret wire up until now. The local little guitar repair store here in Tulsa uses it and will sell it to me for their cost and even will bend it for me for no charge which is great with me since I don't have a bender. I have heard great things about jescar and would really like to try some stainless out in the future but I will need better nippers before that can happen. @Andyjr1515 thank you for the kind words! I was really tempted to reroute it and throw a 3rd humbucker in there, but after talking to the guy I'm building this guitar for he would rather just have the 2. Originally he wanted an all black top and natural back and I had talked him into the ash pore colored finish so when I told him we would have to go back to the original idea of all black he wasn't displeased at all! i do have a 7 string in the works that is this same body shape, I might just have to do the middle humbucker on that one. Hmmm 3 humbucker 7 string baritone I'm kind of liking the sound of that!!

I also got my fretboard radiused to 12", re slotted and somewhat fretted. I ran out of fret wire so I will have to run to the store tomorrow and pick more up.

I got the vol/tone cover made and inset, I'm extremely happy with the way this padouk looks with the walnut. I need to drill the holes for the screws on the covers and the back of the body I could call finished minus the finish.

Look awesome man! Really gives me a ibanez sabre feel (which is a good thing)!

^^ this was my thinking! Just extend the treble side to meet up flush with the pickup cavity.

My god @psikoT that was just amazing!! I think I'm going to have to go thru and read it again, You really are an amazing craftsman! Now I'm thinking I should just go ahead and hang my tools up haha only kidding.

Thank you psikot, I'm going to look over that one now, as for the other one after hearing Scott talk it up im gonna have to go diggin lol.

Ahh small world, yeah I was born in humble and lived there till I was 11, all of my dads family is still living in Cleveland, then I moved to bandera and stayed there for about 7 years. Bandera is a really cool town and all of my moms family are still there. If I was to move back honestly it would probably be to kerrville. Gosh I miss the hill country lol, I have to go over to Arkansas about once a month now to get my hills fix but it just isn't the same.

I see what you're say psikot, thanks for those pics that looks great! Do you have a build thread on that? Yeah pros, he said that when ran it sounded like a helicopter was taking off so he bought a speed controller for his router to bring down to a speed that he was comfortable with. Even still would be super sketchy!!

My gosh Scott, that carve looks amazing! I really have my work cut out for me lol. I noticed you mentioned about your hat "head into the Texas hill country to pick one up!" Where are you from if you don't mind me asking? I grew up just north of Houston but lived in bandera tx which is in the hill country just west of SA. I sure do miss that place! All of my family is down there, one of these days I need to move back.

The way that I have been doing which works for me is to glue the 2 halves of the back together, true them up with a hand plane to make sure they are perfectly level with each other, then do the exact same to the top. After I have the back and top together and true I cut a rough shape of the body on each piece and then glue them together, after that I route out my body shape.

I forgot to take a pic of the padouk with the template but it was something like this.

I stayed a little late at work today and made up some positive and negatives of my toggle cavity cover on the lathe, I had some plastic laying around from a job I ran last year so I used that. I didn't think the plastic would make it thru more than one pass with the router bit bearing burning thru the material so first thing I did was routed these shapes into some extra hardwood I had here at the house. Now I used the id template to route my cavity cover shape on the body (my bit is to long so I had to use the plastic as a riser), then I used the od template to make my actual cover out of padouk, and after a little finish sanding it fits perfectly.I'm still not sure how I'm going to do the vol/tone cover, still thinking on that one!

I have only used shellac on scrap pieces but I didn't notice it to be super fast acting, to my knowledge it doesn't "burn in" to the existing finish. I believe you are thinking of nitro, it is super fast acting and does burn in. Im sorry if I'm wrong but I don't think that I am.

Thank you Scott, I will see how I can do with the gouge and scraper for the recurve, if I need to try to use that finger plane I will but I just don't really have the extra $70 at the moment. Its all good psikot, I did see where one guy used a router bit like the one that you posted that was about 2" diameter that worked really well on a router table. This is what that looked like, which I really like but it's like a $125 bit.

Oh I didn't realize the recurve was actually done with hand tools also, in that case I'm gonna need to get really good with a gouge lol. I guess that I could pick up a curved scraper and try to achieve it with that.

I don't see how that would work tho, that bearing would be riding on the top that I'm trying to cut right?

What would be the best way to achieve the recurve around the edges of the body? Maybe a round nose router bit?