2.5itim

Yep steel wool is what we call it over here! The only thing I can't get my mind around on not putting a laquer on the fretboard is how the back of the neck is going to feel where it meets the fretboard. Am I going to have a line there that you can feel? If so maybe it can be polished into a smooth transition I guess.

Now that is a thought! I could just go down to woodcraft and buy a can of aerosol nitro just for the fretboard and then brush on the rest. Hmm!!

That zebra wood looks great! Can't wait to see how this body turns out!

The can said to allow 1 hour between paint and clear and it's been about 4 days so I should be good! Yeah I think I'm going to be cussing trying to level between the frets. This is actually my first time using bocote, well that really sucks! I chose this wood for its lightness and chose the body color according to the color of the fretboard lol. Hopefully it won't darken to much!!

Also, I have seen quite a few peopl say that the bocote wood doesn't need any finish at all but I'd rather put one on it since I'll already be nitroing the rest of the body. The nitro should be a good finish for the fretboard right? I figure I'll nitro the fretboard and then cut it off the frets with a exacto knife and hope it all comes off the frets when I level and buff them.

That is great info!! I think that is what I will do for this one. Any idea on how long I should wait between my last coat of paint and first coat of laquer? The paint that I used is an acrylic enamel if that makes any difference. Ive got plenty of time so i figure I'll do 10-15 coats of laquer so I have plenty there to level and buff. I really need to buy a sprayer setup but the funds are just not there at the moment!

Yeah originally I had planned on routing out all my wiring passages on the body and then putting the top walnut piece on. That is a great idea about trying to go from the strap button location to the toggle cavity and then to the pickup cavity, I'll keep this idea on the back burner. I think that I figured out the way I'm gonna go with it last night after having some time to clear my head with a few beers. The whole reason I wouldn't be able to drill straight from the pickup cavity to the toggle cavity was because I have been planning on doing just a 1-1/2" circle for that cavity, that would put them to far apart from each other, so I changed my toggle cavity design to cover most of the upper horn and then taper down towards the back following the edge of the belly carve. This puts the very edge of the toggle cavity right above the pickup cavity so I'd be able to straight shot a drill between the 2. Im at work right now but I'll post pics of what I mean tonight.

Thanks guys I appreciate it! i was able to get my pickup cavities routed today and my bridge should be here in 2 days! ill be going with a Hipshot fixed bridge. i was originally planning on going with a pickup toggle switch on the upper horn but since I am not putting the walnut top on this guitar like I had planned I have no way to get a wiring passage up there, someone on here had mentioned cutting the pickup cavities and then angle a drill bit thru there but I won't be able to get enough angle without drilling into the top or back. The only other way I see possible is to drill a hole thru the side of the guitar, thru the toggle cavity and into the pickup cavity, then turn a little piece of walnut on the lathe and glue it into the hole on the side of the guitar. I just don't know how I feel about this and don't know if I'd be able to make it unnoticeable. What do y'all think? I am open to suggestions if yall know any other way. Anyways, here's a pick of the pickup cavities. Thanks for looking!!

Here's she is untaped. Now I just need to finish it with nitro and get all the electronics wired back up. Have any of y'all done a wipe on finish using nitro? I have a can here and have been playing around with it on some scrap pieces. They haven't turned out terrible but not quite perfect. I could take some pointers here if you have them.

I know that this website is mostly complete builds but figured I'd post this one up. Its an old ibanez sz320 I've had for about 10 years, started refinishing it about 5 years ago and lost interest. I figured while my ground up build is going kind of slow due to money I would finish this one in my down time. I don't have a whole lot of pics thru out the refinish but you can get the idea. I rounded over the top edges of the body, I didn't have a router at the time so had to do it all by hand sanding (which is why I think I lost interest because it freaking sucked!!) reshaped the headstock last week and made a new fretboard out of bocote wood using stainless medium/jumbo frets all filed and crowned using the only file I have but it does feel nice and smooth. Taday I grain filled the body/headstock and primed/painted it. As you can see in the 4th pic my router took a good chunk out of the neck when reshaping the headstock, so I took a scrap piece of walnut and cut it to shape, glued it in, sanded to size and then wood filled it to get it all level. Thanks for looking!

I'm intrigued... I love me some zebrawood!!

Well that wasn't near as hard as I expected, thank y'all so much for your help!!!

Ok I think I may be able to make that work, I was planning on drilling one straight shot from the neck pocket thru the pickup cavities so really all id have to do is drill from the neck pickup cavity to the toggle cavity. Only issue is my body is less than an inch and a quarter thick so idk if I could get enough angle on the drill without gouing into the front or back. I guess I will just ha e to see after routing the pickup cavities.

Les Paul type 3 way switch on the upper horn. I had originally planned to put a top on this guitar so I was just gonna route out a cavity before putting the top on, now that I have gotten rid of the top idea I'm not sure how I'm gonna make a passage to get the wiring up to the upper horn, I've thought about just taking a really long drill bit from the input jack to the upper horn but I think it would be way to hard to keep the drill going where I want it for that kind of distance. Do y'all have any ideas on this or should I just say screw it and put it down there with the volume/tone knobs. Here's the guitar I'm working on.

Did my very first top carve today!! I have to say I'm pretty pleased, all I had was a chisel so I got it about where I wanted and then sanded it the rest of the way. The lighting isn't very good in here so I drew lines around the edges so y'all could see.

I have been able to get a bit done this week, I finished the neck scarf joints and got them glued up. I can't really go any farther with them until I order my truss rods. I have also after much contemplation decided to change my body plans, I got the back walnut piece and the middle piece of hackberry glued up, after about a week of leaving my top sitting sure enough it freaking warped again. So what I decided to do was ditch putting the top on and just making a super thin carved top tele, I think that I would still be super happy with this. The body now will be 1-1/4" thick and I'll post up a pic of what I'd like to achieve with the carve.

Ok now that makes a lot more sense to me now!! I did buy the stop attachment for the saw so this doesn't sound nearly as hard to me now.

Ok this is gonna take lots of practicing I think lol. Thank y'all for your help! My radius block and fret wire should be here today and my saw and index board should be here in 2 days. So fingers crossed that I can do this lol its funny anything that has to do with metal (welding, mill, lathe, manuals, fabrication) I can do without even thinking twice about it but with wood I tend to psyche myself out.

That is a great idea on test pieces, I will for sure! How do you know how deep the slot needs to be? Just measure the tang on the fret wire and cut it s tad deeper than that? Also since I should probably bend the fret wire before installing, should the slot cut be radiused also since the tang of the fret wire will be?

Perfect, you guess are awesome!! I knew that brand wouldn't matter when it came to fret spacing I just wasn't sure about the 22 vs 24 length part of it, i guess that a 24 fret board is exactly the same as a 22 just longer to accommodate the extra 2 frets then they move the neck pickup closer to the bridge to accomadate this?I will leave the extra 2 frets on the index board! You made a valid point.

I do to! It looks much simpler than what I'm trying to do with keeping everything square! It is pretty square for the most part but I think If this doesn't work I'll probably make another one and glue the side pieces to the top of the bottom piece instead of glueing them to the sides of the bottom piece like i did, I think that will fix all of my problems! I searched for a while looking for a ibanez sz fretboard and couldn't find one, so I ended up buying a 24 fret prs 25" scale non radiused board, stewMac didn't have any 22 fret 25" scale boards so I hope that all I'll need to do is cut off the last two frets. I don't have a 24 fret 25" scale guitar to measure against.

Ok, I see how he did it now! I started my miter box jig last night but the bottom tweaked on my a little bit when glueing so if it turns out that it won't work I will resort to how Norris did it if I don't try to make a new box.

@Norris did you use a miter box jig or did you just use the square and measure out each slot?

Ok now that I think about this with a centerline on a straight non angled board this makes a lot of sense and seems pretty easy!! I think that I will go ahead and buy a pre slotted board and do it the way that he did in the video, but I think the hard part is going to be finding one that isn't already radiused, I'll have to take a look on line and see what I can come up with.