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Legoheads

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Everything posted by Legoheads

  1. Legoheads
    Life certainly does get in the way. It took me around 6 years to finish my first build, still nowhere near as long as your procrastination though Looks like you're full speed ahead on it right now. Certainly promises to be a good-looking guitar.
  2. Legoheads
    I guess that's what happens when you source wood from a non-luthier supplier. I bought the wood from Northland Forest Products in NH and it is supposed to be kiln dried. I have bought Maple from them before to make necks with and had no issues. I've undertaken an ugly fix and I guess we'll see what happens. Back to work on Monday so no doubt it will sit around for a number of weeks before I have to make a decision on moving forward. I was trying to work out where the stress is coming from that caused the crack and allowed it to grow when removing material. I wonder, now that I've gone full depth on the hollow-out, whether the pent up force may have been alleviated somewhat. Wishful thinking, maybe. Anyway, as you can see, barring some clean-up and tweaking, the routing is done. I've removed the temporary pillars that I used for supporting the router, apart from the one behind the bridge, which I hollowed out instead. Not sure what this "chamber" will achieve but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I've also routed between the supports for the bridge posts but left the supports themselves at full depth so that they will contact (and be glued to) the back board. Again, no method in the madness, just felt like something I should do.
  3. Legoheads
    Been off the project for a while but having a few days off I decided to get on with excavating the hollow. Unfortunately, I came across a hidden defect in the wood, which turns out to be a pretty bad crack. If you look on earlier photos you can see it in the end grain but I thought it was just an artifact from the bandsawing and would need to be sanded out or filled. In digging down into it, not only did I expose the crack but also weakened the integrity of the remaining structure, allowing the crack to work through to the top side of the body. I've glued the crack as it is but my plan is now to laminate another piece with perpendicular grain on the back side and route around it. Not ideal but I've put too many hours in to start over on the body. I was hoping to start on the neck before heading back to work next week.
  4. Legoheads
    Managed to find a few hours over the weekend to progress a little. I cleaned up the body profile on the belt and spindle sanders and continued with the long laborious job of routing towards a target depth of over 2-1/2" into maple. I mean, whose bright idea was that...!!? Last week I broke out the AutoCAD to plan for the neck and string geometry instead of scribbling numbers on the back of an envelope. I tried using A9CAD (as my version of AutoCAD doesn't work on anything Win8 onwards) but the software is useless and can't locate its arse from its elbow. Eventually, I had to resurrect my Win7 laptop just for AutoCAD.
  5. Legoheads
    Nice of you to say. In some ways, working metal is easier than wood and as as it's slower it's harder to make a mistake. My impatience often gets the better of me when working with wood. A friend just donated a belt/disc sander combo to the cause and I've been using it to clean up the sides which were extremely rough from the band-saw. Blink for a second and your lovely radius is now looking like a polygon...!!!
  6. Legoheads
    Still using "old faithful" for the shallow routing. She's an old 240V plunge router from when I was still living in the UK. I found the same one here, discontinued for $65...Quality...!!! I finished the neck pocket off today before planning the layout and necessary cuts for the pups. I had to re-profile the neck end of the body as I had made it way too long. The 19th through 22nd frets would have been beached on the body. I managed to pull that back around 1-1/2 frets with the modification.
  7. Legoheads
    New router is on duty. Lets see how much damage I can do with extra HP and a 1/2" collet... Please ignore the other recent addition to my toolkit - the old man Dollar Store reading glasses.
  8. Legoheads
    D'oh... I just remembered I have that book somewhere. I should probably dig it out and get myself a clue To be fair, I hate reading and have mostly learned by trial and error and educated guesswork. As my Dad used to say, "You won't be told, will you?" He wasn't wrong.
  9. Legoheads
    I was just reading through @Norris "Nozzcaster" thread and it seems my ignorant assumption may be correct? Occasionally, they are.
  10. Legoheads
    On my first build, I cheated on the fret board by using a salvaged Ric 4001 fret board that I just had to glue to my crafted neck. For my latest build, I want to do a bound neck but have little clue on how to combine the fretboard, the binding and the frets. Do I need to trim the tang of each fret so that it only sits in the board and so that the edge of the frets just sit on top of the binding? After thinking about it for all of 5 minutes that seems to be my ignorant conclusion but before I commit to disaster I would welcome any input to steer me away from impending doom.
  11. Legoheads
    What's a CD....? Here's a link to my ongoing collection of dodgy demos, "The Emperor's New Clothes"... Or... https://www.reverbnation.com/guardiansoftheslowlane
  12. Legoheads
    I was using Chrome. I also tried Firefox and IE to view but still had issues even after force refreshing. As with most things, it seems like more patience gives the desired result and all pics are now displaying. Patience isn't my strong suit and I wonder how I ever get through making a guitar without rushing things and screwing it up. I guess some things are worth the extra attention and time.
  13. Legoheads
    You know what it's like... the wife was bugging me to watch a TV show with her. "I'll just be a minute sweetheart". 20 minutes later I'm still trying to get the pictures to show up and getting some serious frowny face. I've been inspired by the CNC threads and would like to look into machining these tail-pieces for my future works. Not sure how the Shapeoko or Carve-X will cope with 1/4" brass plate, even if it's just roughing out the basic profile. I like that each one is different when done by hand but it takes some serious time and elbow grease to produce, time that might be better spent on the meat of the guitar instead. I'm also considering a new design that isn't so Rickenbackeresque but haven't managed to design anything that matches up aesthetically. Picking up the new router in the morning so I should be able to get on with that neck pocket.
  14. Legoheads
    I'm having issues posting images in my threads. After finding the gallery feature restrictive in terms of image size and having to resize all my images specifically to post I decided to host the images on my own site and provide URLS. However, this too has proved problematic with only some of the images showing up in the post. Copying the same URL to the browser address bar shows that the link is indeed valid and the image is displayed. I've tried typing the html straight in as well as adding via the inbuilt URL image link feature but the result is the same. I even resized the images that didn't show and re-uploaded to my webspace but that doesn't help. In addition, it seems I can no longer go back and edit my previous posts so now there's just a bunch of ugly links and empty replies...
  15. Legoheads
    I give up...
  16. Legoheads
    Spent more time on the tailpiece... polishing, chroming and working on the backside; not as pretty as the front but certainly more functional. I started the routing with my trusty 8mm shank bit but had to switch to the new 2-1/2" deep cut bit after around 1-1/2" into the neck pocket route. Unfortunatley, the deep cut didn't seem to cut as easily or as cleanly as the shorter bit so I made my incremental passes around 50% shallower as I was afraid of breaking the skinny 1/4" shank. To no avail, and before I reached full depth the shank gave way! I was unable to find a 8mm shanked deep cut bit so I'm upgrading my router to one with a 1/2" collet and will be getting a better quality deep cut bit to match. Fingers crossed I get a cleaner more effective cut.
  17. Legoheads
    The "right" tools are often an idealistic luxury that can be somewhat overcome with patience, elbow grease and the "wrong?" tool. When I started work on my first semi-hollow I used a jigsaw for the profile, a panel saw to cut a back panel from the main body and was planning to do the entire hollow with chisels...!!! I had no clue how I was ever going to make the neck but bought a cheap spokeshave in preparation. It worked for me and I'm still not sure if that's the tool that others rely on for neck shaping? I saw a pretty impressive bass guitar build on another forum by a guy in India. The only power tool he had was a drum sander that he'd built himself. His hand tools looked like something others had discarded. I guess we do as we must until such time we can afford something better. Best of luck.
  18. Legoheads
    Well, to be fair, it was a few weeks of planning, purchasing and cutting the body followed by several years of inactivity due to divorce, change of occupation, quitting my band, moving halfway around the world, etc. and eventually finding the body and some other items in am old shipping box at the back of the garage. I guess the compacted timeline would have been more in the region of 3-4 months. I was lucky that I had amassed a superior set of tooling over the interim years, which allowed the end result to be much better than I could have initially imagined. And yes, it felt great
  19. Legoheads
    Tailpiece progress...
  20. Legoheads
    Bridge...? That's a spares bridge for the Rics. I have a Tune-o-matic bridge on its way. Yep, that's a mini forge for meting soda cans. I really built it as a science experiment with y 10 year-old daughter. I did consider using it to help cast an aluminium tail-piece but I'm not convinced it's a good material for such function. I was hoping to post some photos of the brass tailpiece but it seems I have exhausted my image storage space and may have to host elsewhere...
  21. Legoheads
    Profiling the body...
  22. Legoheads
    In my ongoing build post, "The Gretschenbacker", I make reference to my first and only completed build, "The Mickenbacker", a homage to the long discontinued Rickenbacker 4005. Once I realized that I could never afford the $10k+ it would cost to own one of these beauties, I thought I'd try my hand at building one. Strictly speaking, it's not a direct copy and I took artistic license with a number of design cues and dimensions, hopefully without compromising the essence of the original. The slideshow of the build may be viewed on the link below...
  23. Legoheads
    The concept...
  24. Legoheads
    I built my first guitar a few years back, a hollow-bodied bass inspired by the discontinued Rickenbacker 4005, and have been itching to build a 6-string ever since. I recently took a fancy to the Gretsch 5622 but figured I'd have a go at building one, with a few twists, again inspired by my love of Rics. Hence, the concept for the Gretschenbacker came about. Essentially, the tail is to be profiled in a Ric 330/360/4005 style with a chromed tailpiece. The sound holes are to be more in keeping with the Ric cat's eye shape instead of the Gretsch flavor of the 5622. Probably the final Ric influence will be twin low profile truss rods. The rest of the guitar including body silhouette, neck and headstock shall be more reminiscent of the Gretsch. The electronics, including the pickups, shall also be genuine Gretcsh Instead of a traditional arch-top build, I decided to route out the hollow body from a solid chunk of maple... or rather 2 chunks of maple to achieve the 17" wide body. I also had the thought of increasing the depth of the body to approx. 3" without really considering if I could lay my hands on a router bit that would plunge to that depth. Luckily, I found one and it's on its way as I type. In the meantime, I've planed and glued the body halves and cut the rough profile. I've also spent some considerable time recreating the "Mickenbacker" tailpiece from my first build. This time, I'm using brass instead of steel to make life a little easier. Progress so far is documented in the photos below...
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