2.5itim

Only problem here I could see for you tho is for this to work you have to have a fretboard blank slotted to your scale length to use as a template, with being 8 string (not sure what scale length you are going with) but it might be kind of hard to find one. You could call lmii and see if they will slot one in your scale for you, they have done this for me in the past.

That is pretty close to it, I built the box with the bottom, sides and the walnut across the top then I cut it on a miter saw so I would know that my cut line was exactly straight and at a 90 degree angle, then I took a razor blade ground the sharp edge off and put it inbetween the two pieces to where it's barely sticking up Above the 2 bottom pieces(this is where the slotted fretboard blank you will use as a template will locate on), took my saw and put it on top of the razor blade and then squeezed the 2 pieces of the box together to make sure the width of the slot is exactly the thickness of my saw then just screw the 2 pieces of the box to a piece of wood for a base.

If you are interested in fret sawing jigs this is mine that I made, it has worked flawlessly for me and if you are interested I can go into depth on how to make it.

I picked up the stewmac fret saw with depth stop, I think after shipping it came out to like $28. It's been a great tool and really easy to use with the depth stop.

I really wanted to go with figure 1 but I just don't think I'm ready for something like that, I've thought so much about it that I think I ended up psyching myself out. Maybe for my next one!

@Andyjr1515 I haven't had a chance to read thru that thread but I will take a look today! I fully expect this scarf to be mainly an asthetics thing, I have had many all mahogany necks and never had an issue so that's ok with me but I just don't want to make it any weaker. The amount of laminated woods in this is very minimal, I originally planned on going all out on laminating the neck (figure #1) but I just don't think I'm ready so I am only going to be laminating the scarf joint (figure #2). I may go pick up some maple or podauk today just to be on the safe side and stick with tried and true woods. I just really liked this piece of poplar because of the lines running down the grain, I was thinking if I could get the lines of the two pieces to line up it might be pretty cool to look at! In the drawing black is mahogany and the white is whatever laminate I decide to go with.

Quick question regarding poplar being used in a neck, I was wanting to try out the laminated scarf joint like I've seen a lot of people do on here. I was walking thru the lumber yard while I was picking up some things and saw this cool looking piece of poplar and figured it's cheap enough I'll buy it. Do y'all think poplar would be ok to use in a neck? It would be a mahogany/poplar/mahogany/poplar/mahogany laminate and there really wouldn't be that much used so I just figured I would ask y'all. Id like to have a light colored wood to contrast on the neck, if y'all think it's a bad idea to use this I will just go buy some maple but figured I would ask.

Wow, that turned out great! Thank you for that! I was thinking of making various scaled down jigs and routing levels, then using the chisel or rasp to tie them all in together, I really like what you do with gouges, I might have to go pick one up and try my hand at that!

I totally know what you mean here, I'm not trying to make any money for a long long time minus selling the ones I do make just to get some money to make another one. I'm just trying to get a feel for how the Luthery business works I guess you could say, and in the mean time do everything I can to make myself better while I am learning all of the ropes. No way am I looking to make a butt load of money in this, I just enjoy doing it and if I can make enough and "sell" enough to keep myself going that would be great! This is a pretty expensive hobby and I fear that if I can't at least get to the point of selling to break even I don't think I'll be able to enjoy this hobby for that long or as often as I would like.

I ended up buying that top that I posted the picture of about 10 minutes ago. It ended up being about $225 after shipping! Thanks for the comments on the planing and routing! I bought it the thickness that I needed so hopefully I shouldn't have to plane it to much although I am extremely worried on carving it and actually have no idea how I'm going to do this. If you have any guidance on craving a custom 24 type top I'd be glad to hear it! I was thinking of routing out the edge to the depth that I need and then chiseling everything else from the flat where the pickups are to my ledge that I routed out. Or should I go and buy carving tools?

I think that a big thing I need to focus on right now is being faster while being able to do quality work, the hackberry/walnut guitar I am building now I would say would be in the "run of the mill no frills" category and if I'd like to make any kind of money off something like that in the future 2-3 months build times just will not cut it.

@Prostheta thank you for that, that was really great advice! As ive said before I'm no where near ready but I would like to get an idea on my future and where I would like to be. I would imagine i would end up doing an hours cost instead of days because my building is always here and there and don't have set days that I can put to just guitars with working 2 jobs and all. That has definitely given me lots of insight, I was thinking for a very basic run of the mill guitar it would be in the $1000-1500 range but then I got to looking around and there is quite a few company's, mayoness for this example that has a very basic mahogany body bolt on neck guitar that is pushing closer to $3k, but then again they also have to pay employees, rent, marketing and all of that so that's where I started wondering more on the subject.

How do y'all go about pricing your instruments? From looking at a lot of luthiers it seems like the prices are all over the place. Not that I'm looking at selling any right away but when I do I would like to know it is priced accordingly. I can see how materials can affect pricing (the 2 guitars I'm building now, 1 I have $150 in wood and 1 I have $400 in wood) so I could see how that would affect it, but what about labor and profit margin?

I do have some off cuts but nothing big enough for the headstock, a lot of this board was cracked and dead so I pretty much got all that I could out of it.

On a plus side I have finally learned how to half assly setup and use my hand planer, I have hated this tool since the day I bought it 3 years ago and today has been the first time I've actually been able to get a somewhat decent ribbon out of it! It's defenitely gonna need a lot of sanding but it's at least level now so I can't complain to much!

Was able to get the body blank glued up, needs a little bit of level sanding which I will go buy a extra wide sanding belt and glue it to a 3/4" piece of mdf as pro mentioned! I tried taping down a couple sheets of sand paper for the hackberry guitar and while it worked it was a nightmare so I'll do it right for this one. We decided on a top for this one, I just went onto northrideghardwoods website and screen shot every top in the thickness we need. So here's a pic of the body blank glued up and a pic of the top that he chose, btw holy crap is curly maple tops expensive! It's almost unbelievable how much they are!! also in the pic of the body you can see there is two screw holes which I am extremely mad about, I didn't notice it until after I made my first pass with the planer, how can woodcraft try to sell something like that and be ok with it? Anyways I'm going to put that side up so the top will cover it but still, if I'm spending $80 on a board I would expect to not have screw holes in it.

I guess you could say I've been bitten by the bug!! This will be my the first of 2 builds for my good buddy, even tho we live half way across the country from each other he's still been my best friend since the day I was born! We grew up across the street from each other and honestly if it wasn't for him I probably wouldn't even be a guitar player! So he saw what I did with the ibanez sz and the hackberry guitar that I'm building right now and decided he wanted me to make something similar to a prs custom 24 and prs single cut, this one will be the custom 24! Specs, African mahogany body African mahogany set neck, I haven't done a set neck yet so I'm pretty worried about that!! Flamed or quilt maple top he's having a hard time deciding ( haven't purchased yet, if someone knows a good place to purchase book matched tops in the us I'd be happy to here about it) Prs tremonti bridge/neck pickups (not purchased yet) hipshot tremolo (not purchased yet) top finish similar to prs's black gold body and neck stained dark/black ish He's really helping me out here, the deal is he buys all the supplies and then if he feels like it he can throw me some extra cash for my time, I'm not really concerned about the extra cash because he's paying for materials for me to get more experience pretty much! Anyways here we go, went to woodcraft today and picked up the mahogany and rosewood, they didn't have any 6/4 mahogany for the body so had to buy 8/4. I got the neck planed down to .8" from 4/4, body planed to 1.125" from 8/4 and fretboard planed to .25 from .375". Im gonna try and get the body board cut into 2 pieces tonight and get the blank glued up.

I think that I agree Scott, after looking at it for an extremely long time I just don't think I'd be happy with the end result, the neck wood, headstock wood and fretboard wood is all ambrosia maple (although the face of the headstock has no ambrosia in it and looks more like Birdseye than anything) so I think my best option is to leave it alone. Only reason I was planning on veneering it was because I didn't plan very well when tacking on my router jig and didn't put the tack holes where the tuner holes would go. Could I make up a super glue/ saw dust concaucstion to fill them?

After lots and lots and lots of sanding I got the back of the body completely level, yalls tip about taping down sand paper on a flat surface worked great!!

What do y'all think? Should I veneer the headstock with walnut? Only reason I ask is because there's no dark wood on the front of the guitar so I don't know if it's throwing it off or not. Also im not doing a binding so there's no way of hiding the edge of the headstock and veneer.

My ocd wouldn't allow me to leave the pickup routes the way they were since the pickups barely moved and was a pita to get in and out, so I took a chisel and squared up the corners. Much better now!

I was originally planning on going with bareknuckle pickups for this one but have been wanting to pull the Seymour Duncan invader out of one of my sabers to replace with a Seymour Duncan jb, I figure the invader would suit this guitar well so I pulled it out of the sabre and ran to guitar center to pick up a Seymour Duncan jazz for the neck. Got them all test fitted, my pickup routes will work for this build but in the future I'm gonna have to make new templates to makes them a little bit wider because it's a super tight fit!! The only black neck pickup ring I have here is off a Gibson so it's a slant type, I'll need to find a black flat style before I finish this thing.

Very nice! I really like the way you rounded the end of the neck heel and pocket! It's different and really drew my eyes there.

Do y'all think having a magnet near the pickup would cause interference issues? I'm having a hard time coming up with a way to be able to adjust my truss rod. I've came up with a pretty cool idea that I think will work as long as a magnet being about a 1/2" away from the neck pickup wouldn't cause issue.

Ahh, that is a great idea, i don't know why I didn't think if that! I will see what I can come up with on Monday. Are the string ferrules hard to get out after being put in?