2.5itim

That black mark in the pic right above the bottom leveling block that looks like a gap is actually just a pencil mark, I just noticed it in the pic I posted and scared the hell out of myself and had to run and check.

Today I got the top wood jointed and glued up, it look me a while to get the glue joint perfect. Ended up using a table saw, hand plane and a barrel sander but it ended up being nearly perfect! For some reason my high spots where in the middle but I could only get my hand plane to cut on the ends, i was thinking the ends were the high spots so I kept cutting thinking I was leveling but actually I was making it worse so I used the barrel sander to fix my mistake there. I ended up getting the joint perfect except the last 2 inches which will be all cut off when I cut the body shape and neck pocket out so it will disappear. all together I'm pretty happy with it!

@Original Very nice!! Motorcycles are a big part of me as a person, I live breath and sleep them just about as much as guitars. I was on an xr70 about the same time I learned how to walk lol. I completely agree about the smaller bikes, I've owned my fair share of big bikes, ktm 500, ktm 525, gsxr600, cbr1000rr (still have). But the small bikes are my favorite. I've have a kx100 supermotard on 12's, kx125, cr125, Honda grom and use to have a yz125 supermotard on 17's. My street bikes don't get ridden much anymore, most of my riding time is either on dirt or supermoto/cart tracks. My room mate races pro class Ama supermoto so we spend a lot of time on the track. If you are wanting to get back into racing and on smaller bikes you should look into supermoto, it's probably the most fun I've ever had on 2 wheels and under 80mph lol. We have a local supermoto racing organization here in Oklahoma called "osb" there's quite a few guys that are 50+ that have converted over from sport bike racing and love it so much they don't want to ride sport bikes anymore.

that is true, no worries just a pass down the table saw with the finishing blade and a sanding block we should be good to go.

I have also used a few gotoh bridges in my day and have loved them. And also like Scott, I only use gotoh tuners, I have used many brands (schaller, Grover, etc.) and tried gotoh about 10 years ago, those are the first thing I buy when I get a new guitar anymore. I would really like to try hipshots tuners.

Wouldn't you think that spending $250 on a top that they would come jointed and ready to glue up? Goodness I could do better than this on my table saw, there's so much light coming thru.

Got the top in the mail, good lord it's beautiful!!

Also holy crap to the $5 a top! I just spent 50 times that for mine lol

@Original thank you very much for that, I appreciate it! I was actually wondering how y'all got them farther down the neck, that makes a lot of sense now! glad to know about poplar being an ok choice, I will save this piece for a later build, I see how it could not be very pleasing natural but I really liked this piece due to the lines in it and not having much green tint to it. Side note, I saw on the Facebook group that you finished the 7 and it looks fantastic! I also creeped only slightly lol, I like the xr!! It looks like you do some adventure riding?

Man that's rough, sorry to here that about the splitting. Its also to bad about not being able to make the baritone, I have a soft spot in my heart for extended range guitars and long horns!

That is if space is an issue, most people don't have room for a 8' tall machine, otherwise an old Bridgeport all the way!

It is extremely fun and accomplishing feeling, I've kind of lost the feeling of accomplishment in the past years with having to do it day in and day out but it's little things like this that bring that feeling back, the stuff I make for work I never get to see the finished product work, it goes to assembly then thousands of feet into the ground not to be seen for years. Stuff like this I actually get to see the end result so I like that! If you'd really like to get into the metal working hobby grizzly has a table top mill that I would recommend, I've used them a few times and they are kinda cool! Really small but big enough to make anything you'd need for a guitar!

Thanks guys, I have so much scrap aluminum laying around I will probably do these for all of my fixed bridged guitars for now on. Andy, it does get a little rough with the lady at times. I'll carry chips home and not realize it and the lady of the house always seems to find them with her feet!

I got my scarf joint all glued up tonight, the headstock twisted on me a little bit but I ran it back thru my table saw and got it all square again. I know that laminating other types of wood into scarf joints is nothing new or hard for many of you but I am feeling quite accomplished in doing this, mainly because I was so worried of doing it. My top wood should come in the mail tomorrow He wants this guitar to be as close to a custom 24 as I can get so I'm waiting on a set of templates to get here and I think I've done just about all I can do for the moment without templates. Besides maybe getting the neck blank and headstock true to each other after gluing.

Thanks!! That's what this is is 6061, do you not make your own anymore?

The majority of my time lately has been spent on the other build I have going on but today I had to kill some time at work and knocked out my string block to replace my terrible ferrule drilling job. I cut it all cutaneous drilled, just need to round the edges over and get it to my powder coater.

I cut my laminate pieces to short so they ended up not working out. I ended up just using one piece of maple instead of the maple/mahogany/maple piece, now I know next time to make them extra long. I got the maple piece glued to the headstock tonight and tomorrow I will get the neck blank glued to those! i really have no idea how I'm going to get the headstock piece perfectly level with the neck piece when I glue them up, do y'all usually glue the headstock up a little bit where it sits higher than the neck and then level it with a router? This is the main reason on all my other necks I put the scarf in the headstock instead of the neck because it's so much easier in that regard.

I understand now thanks so much! Also that 7 is looking really great!

Thanks Scott, that's a fantastic idea!

Before heading to work I took a quick pic and put a square on the piece, it is very very slightly curved, I can see I tiny bit of light on the edges. Only reason I can see this happening is maybe my base for my router is slightly warped, it's just a 1/2" piece of plywood so it is possible and with setting it on a flat surface there is a tiny bit of wobble. I have a piece of 1/4" aluminum here that I'm gonna take to work and make a base plate out of and then try to route it again and see if that will fix the issue.

I also can't ever get my ends of the scarf joint perfectly straight, I don't know what to do anymore lol. Ive tried for about 2 hours tonight and it just hasn't worked for me, the end is curved, when I put my boards together like I would be gluing it the middle lines up just like it should but there's a gap on both sides...

I could really use yall's help here on this scarf joint, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it. So I've been looking over the pics that original posted of his in his build thread and mine just doesn't look the same to me, I think that I used thicker laminate pieces as him which could be what's throwing me off here but I'm not sure. I cut my scarf and flipped the headstock board and left it on the front side of the neck board, then put my glued up laminate pieces in it as mockup, I'll show some pics of this, so now do I just glue it all together with the laminate protruding past the front and back of the neck and then route the laminated pieces to where they are level on the front and back?

@Original would you mind going over this finish with me a little bit? I'm kind of a slow learner when it comes to finishing, I'm ok at the things that I do know but when it comes to learning new thing regarding finishing it takes me a little bit. This is pretty much what I want to do with the mahogany back of the double cut carve top I'm doing. Could you go in depth about how you mixed the filler for this, in regards to color? Is it just a alcohol based black paint for the color coat or is it a dye? what steps do you take in doing it, grain filler, sand filler, color coat, clear? Could you use nitro lacquer for the clear instead of schellac?

I agree, I'm still a newbie at all of this and these guys have helped me out so much!