2.5itim

One of my wood suppliers posted 4 pics last week of 4 black limba tops he had just cut up and I just had to have them. I messaged him and he said 3 were for sale and he was keeping 1 for himself so I bought the 3. So my plan here is to do 2 guitars I need a twin type fashion but a little bit different from each other. The 1st one will be black limba top, padauk body, wenge neck, wenge headstock, black limba headstock faceplate and I haven't decided of fretboard yet. I'm thinking for the fretboard maybe curly maple or roasted curly maple maybe. 2nd one will be black Limbatop (the one with the wide v down the middle, padauk body core, black limba back (the one with the thinner v down the middle) wenge neck, wenge headstock, black limba headstock face plate and sand thing with the fretboard. Today I got the black limba in, went and picked up my padauk and wenge, cut the padauk to get ready for joining, scarf jointed the necks and have them gluing up.

I really love that chinaberry! Nice work so far and welcome to pg.

Yep it should be fine doing it that way with thick bodies, my bodies are usually around 1.25" thick (31-32mm) and it does get a bit complicated when you get that thin. The only way I could make this work was to either take the heel of the neck really thin in that area which I didn't want to do, so I ended up at 3/8" thick. Or the other option was to modify the pickup, so all the pickups I put in these models will get the base plate swapped out for a flat plate instead of the dog ear type. While it is all figured out now and I know what needs to be done on the next ones I do it was a real pain to figure it all out. And yeah they are called t-nuts.

Like this pan kara? Sorry it's the best pic I've got of it, you might have to zoom in.

Yeah the grain on this piece was pretty much straight up and down, I figure that's probably why it turned out the way it did. You can see from the heel to the neck carve that it did space them out quite a ways which I do like. And thank you Scott!

Carved a little zebrano this evening. The grain pattern didn't at all do what I hoped it would do but it still looks nice. I tried to do something different with the headstock veneer and volute but it didn't at all turn out like I saw in my head so it got cut down, I should have just kept it to my normal volute but it still works and feels nice, I just need to refine it a bit more.

I guess I forgot to post about the quilted maple/sapele guitar but on Friday I got the fret slots recut, fretted, dressed the frets and installed the fret dots. I still need to level the frets and inlay the mountain in the headstock and then that one will be ready for oil.

Walnut/ curly maple/ zw update. I learned a valuable lesson today and that is, removing fretboards from necks is really freaking harrd!! The zebrawood just wanted to splinter off instead of coming off as a whole so I decided to scrap that neck and just get my truss rod out of it. I made a new neck for it, it's quartersawn zebrawood, zebrawood headstock with a piece of maple veneer in the scarf joint and curly maple fretboard. I used my fretboard radiusing jig and it worked as it should, I cut the frets before radiusing but I think I'm not gonna do that again, I had to cut really slow and take shallow cuts or it would tear out. On a good note, I think this zebrawood neck is gonna look really cool after carving and this guitar is 24 frets again. I really didn't like the idea of 23 frets. Tomorrow im gonna get the neck carved, thickness the headstock, carve the volute, drill the tuner holes and hopefully get the fretwork done. After that it should be ready for oil.

I saw it too, it's definitely your guitar Luis.

As promised @Andyjr1515 and anyone else that's interested. I have completed the fretboard radiusing jig and am pleased with the results, I used an old fretboard I screwed up for testing. It's really pretty simple, a main base with a riser, a sliding piece with a radius 1" larger than what your trying to achieve that runs on the main base, a router base that has a 6" radius so only 4 corners touch the sliding piece. With making the radius so small on the router base I can make a new sliding piece for any radius I need from 7"+.

Red ash update: its been another slow night here but I have gotten the pickguard for this one done except for the screw holes and beveling the edges. This is my first pickguard so not sure how I'm gonna go about beveling the edges but I think I'll try a scraper out on some scraps and see how that goes.

I really should start thinking about this more now that I've got so many guitars going on, I have been leaving them extra long because it makes it easier when gluing with the way that I do it. But it does add up to quite a bit of waste.

I have been working 13 hour days recently so Not much of an update but... quilted maple update: I finish sanded the fretboard, recut the fret slots, drilled the fretmarker holes, installed fret markers and fretted it tonight. im waiting on my 1/32" endmill and templates for doing headstock mountain inlays to come in, hopefully after I get that it'll help me to do a better job on that inlay, after I get that done I can go ahead and start the finish stages

Man, talk about working fast! That was a productive day.

Man I totally know how that goes! Ive got an sg build coming up so will definitely be keeping an eye on your build.

Ahh I was wondering when this was gonna get back underway!

I'm glad you decided to leave the sapele natural, I love the ribbon in it.

I definitely will keep y'all posted on the radiusing jig, I've made the router base for it but haven't had a chance to try it out yet. Update on the red ash/walnut/padauk guitar: yesterday I got the inlay done, again it's not perfect but it's not terrible either, I've got a guy local to me making up a set of templates on his cnc for me to do them with from here on out so hopefully that will make me get better. I recarved the neck, it feels much better now (I've learned quite a bit since I carved it the first time that's for sure), I leveled, crowned and polished the frets and got it in odies oil. Today I got the oil buffed out and also picked up a pair of Seymour Duncan black winters for it. I'll let it hang for a few more days and then get to assembly, wiring and setup.

I like the idea of scrubbing the 400 grit together to reduce buildup on the paper. Seems I have a tuff time with this and am always having to run my sanding block down my jeans leg to knock it off.

I've done an insane amount of work on necks today, radiused 3 fretboards, recarved a couple of necks that I wasn't completely happy with, finish sanded 5 necks and made up 3 mountain inlays for headstocks. I will try to get them inlayed tomorrow and get the red ash topped guitar and neck in odies oil tomorrow. I mentioned that I was having a problem with sanding out fretboard radiuses, I tried using a sand paper with a adhesive back to stick to my sanding block and that solved all my issues, I still haven't finished making my jig yet. I don't have much to show with the necks but here's the mountain inlays I made up.

Some of you may remember the walnut body/ash top single cut that I did the gothic finish on, I realized last week that somehow while it's been hanging in my shop for the last few months it acquired a chip right between the neck pocket and neck pickup cavity. While this really made me mad because it was a really hard finish to achieve I decided to let it sit there until I figured out what I was gonna do, I knew there was no way in hell I was gonna do that same finish again. The guy I'm making the guitar for came over and we talked it over, we decided on a black grain fill and cherry red top with a odies oil finish. I sanded the top and left the back and sides of the body with the nitro on it so I wouldn't get any bleed thru from the red dye, I wire brushed the grain to try and get all the primer and paint out of them (which was really hard to do), then I tinted my grain filler with a black transtint, grain filled and let it sit over night, sanded the grain filler off and dyed the top. I stripped the nitro off the neck and still need to strip the nitro off the rest of the body and then it'll get the odies oil. I will be making a small pick guard to cover the area in between the pickups that I had to make the plug for. Anyways, sorry for the long read. Here's some pics!

Well I had hoped to start my build thread of 2017 with a bit better update than this but I started on this today and figured I'd share it with y'all. A few weeks ago I saw skyjerks fretboard radiusing jig and I really liked it but I didn't plan on making one until later in the year. Last week I totally screwed up the fretboard radius on the walnut/zw/curly maple guitar due to my way of doing it which is with a radiused sanding block which for some reason I can never use just right. So I get to pull off the fretboard from the neck and start over and decided to just go ahead and make a radiusing jig. I liked skyjerks jig but didn't want something quite so big so I started searching the internet to see what others have done and came across a pretty cool design. I'm half way thru making it now but figured I'd show where I'm at. The first pic I'll show is of the image where I got the idea, the first piece is pretty much a 30"X11" base with a 3/4" rise that's 5" wide. The second piece which is as far as I've gotten tonight is a sled that is 11" wide with a 13" radius which while I'm cutting the bit will be 1" lower to give me my 12" radius, the center of the radiused pieces are cut out to 5" wide and 1.125" deep to clear the riser of the base and fretboard. Tomorrow I will start making my router base and try to get a test piece out of it and see how it works. Thanks for looking and happy new year to ya all!!

Thanks John! I do too, there's just something that looks so elegant when they are together. This one is 1.312, I have a guy that wants me to make him one exactly the same but he wants an evertune so it's gonna have to be really thick, not sure how that's gonna work out yet.

Thanks Andy, hopefully I don't disappoint. Yeah I knew about cutting and flipping Scott I have done that on some of my maple flat sawn necks. I am definitely gonna go with the qs now that I see what it looks like after carving.