Skyjerk

11 minutes ago, Prostheta said:

 

The portable hand drum sander in the second photo is a very neat idea. It adequately offsets the madness of the first one. 

Yeah. The first one looks like you are using an Evinrude outboard boat engine to carve the wood

16 minutes ago, psikoT said:

Sorry, I'm a lil bit paranoid with that lately...   

and holy cow! I just looked at your 7-string 2013 GOTM/GOTY winner. Thats one absolutely gorgeous guitar

3 minutes ago, psikoT said:

Sorry, I'm a lil bit paranoid with that lately...   

I hear ya. In this case all I need to do to avoid an issue like that is plan ahead

The string spacing is predetermined at each end by the locking nut and the  Floyd Rose bridge itself since those are not adjustable. As long as my neck template is the right width, (and I dont have some kind of seizure while sanding), its almost impossible to mess it up.

Its a bit different when I cut my own nut like with my 22 Specials. With those I have to be a lot more careful

13 minutes ago, psikoT said:

I see the 1st and  6th strings too close to the edge of the fretboard, I had the same problem in one of my builds, still playable but a couple of mm more makes the difference.

Great work BTW, I love your guitars.

I guess this is pretty much a personal preference thing. This is exactly as I planned it. I allow 1/8" on either side. there are no issues with the string falling off the edge of the fret

Bear in mind that a closeup like some of these will cause perspective distortion that will make the strings appear closer to the edge than they really are since the POV is essentially a single eye centered on the body and thus you are looking outward from that point. If I took a photo this close up directly over the bass E it would look just fine while the treble E would appear to be off the edge of the fretboard, and vice versa

Heres a different perspective...in this case the POV is slightly above dead center on the board so it looks like theres room on the bass side, but the treble side appears closer to the edge

Like our respective climates, I seem to be somewhere in between you two regarding my process

Since my build are almost always neck-through, I obviously need to work out all the geometry ahead of time before I cut any wood because once the blank is cut theres no changing neck angles. Trying to wing it would likely produce a fair amount of firewood

So the core of my builds are all very strictly planned and executed.

Everything from that point on is a lot more "from the hip". Final top carves, neck carves, pickup locations, etc

18 hours ago, ScottR said:

I take some 400 grit 7X 3M paper and cut a  couple sheets to fit a foam sanding block. Then I rub the faces of those sheets together. This knocks the sharp edges of the grit off and leaves paper that cuts more like 600 or 800 grit. But the spacing of the grit is still 400 and the bottom line is it barely loads up with sanding dust at all. And it does not leave deep sanding scratches. It does do a nice job of gently leveling orange peel, thick areas, dust nibs and the like without cutting so fast you worry about sanding through.

SR

OK, first rate tip here! Sanding a finish is one of the parts of a build that I really look for ways to streamline the process (because I hate it!)

I'm gonna give this a shot

I really like how this build is turning out. You do as well making it up as you go along as many do with careful pre-planning

Nice job. You eliminated pretty much everything that sucks in a squier and made it into a serious player :-)

12 hours ago, StratsRdivine said:

Super cool build man.  I just joined today, but have poured over every page of your build this evening.  I'm more of a boatbuilder than a luthier, but the art and technology overlaps considerably.  I love your holy galahad.  Not knowing about one of those, I just mounted a biscuit joiner blade onto my 4" angle grinder to hog out and shape inside curves.  And boy, do I share your trepidation about the freaking danger of it. I never got bit by it, but I really hated using it.  

I might actually have a helpful tip for you, although your professional abilities shown prove that your current method might be best.  One of the coolest tools I have is a hand held drum sander similar to the one in the picture for smoothing out inside curves after roughing out (you didn't show how you smoothed the wood after your Galahad).  The one in the pic below is my 3" DIA drum sander in which I added a "handle" which is a 1" DIA aluminum pipe mounted via bearings onto a 5/16" threaded rod shaft.  But the one I am referring to is my huge 6" x 11" pneumatic drum in which I mounted a through shaft of a machined steel axle with the same "handle" made from pipe and bearings.  It just chucks into any good milwaukee drill and you can shape any inside curve with the graceful smoothness of a baby's bottom.  

Looking forward to seeing the rest of your progress.  And yes, I share your preference of epoxy for inlays vs CA.  No brainer.      

 

Heya "Strats"

first off let me just say say that I agree with your name. Strats are my first love. I've built 3 so far and will be building a 4th starting in a couple weeks. Olympic white with maple neck and maple fretboard. Going non-traditional with the pups though. Gonna throw a trio of Seymour Duncan hot rails in there. I've got the vintage Strat tone covered with my last one. I have a build thread for it on my web page...

http://www.addictguitars.com/?page_id=2129

secondly, thanks for the tips. I like your sander a lot. I can think of a hundred ways to use one. I'm going to have to work on getting one :-).

It'll never replace the Galahad though. That's one bad-ass tool. I don't really feel any fear of it. Just respect for what it could do if mis-handled.

cheers and welcome,

chris

31 minutes ago, ScottR said:

That is definitely a beauty alright.

I imagine it will be tough not to risk dings, dirt and grime from playing it before it gets dress in popped red attire.

SR

Lol. Tough is right. I'm actually bringing it to rehearsal tonite and will play it "in the white" as I've heard some folks call it.

the top is dirty anyway from when I was sanding the headstock veneer and the back, and it needs a final sanding all around anyway before it gets lacquer. That said, I don't want to take too many chances, so tonite will be its only jam till it's all done. 

Main reason is that I REALLY like the bridge pickup and want to demo it for my co-guitar player since he, like so many of us, are always looking for that tone that really blows our dresses up ;-)

its a Seymour Duncan TB-16 59/Custom hybrid and damn it sounds good. A lot more mids punch on it. It sounds real beefy and crunchy but cuts great as it's got plenty of highs as well and the harmonics just pour out of it.

Its a medium output passive and so it pairs really well with the Pup that'll go in the neck. The pearly gates is a vintage output PAF tone also with more mid punch than the jazz or 59 neck pups ive used on other builds. TheWish I'd found this pup sooner :-)

yes, I like seymour Duncan  pups a little ;-)

32 minutes ago, Prostheta said:

Damn, that looks nice. I even like the furnishings!

Thanks!

after I get a finish on it the strap buttons (Dunlop strap locks) will be replaced with black ones to match the rest of the hardware. The neck pickup will also be swapped, although the replacement will look identical. The one in it now is a SD Jazz, but the final pup will be an SD Pearly Gates

i just had those ones on hand

Just a couple more pix of this build, and I made the cavity covers yesterday. I used 3-ply pickguard material even though no plys will show because it was thick enough and rigid enough for what I wanted.

the fit is perfect, couldn't be happier 

i used a random orbital sander and a 500 grit disk to take the gloss off and make it a matte finish because, well, I don't like gloss covers :-)

in all my previous builds I almost always do neck through. I take that farther making my neck blank a 3-piece laminate and add carbon fiber rods.  I previosuly always made the width of the neck blank equal to the widest point on the fretboard.

The only exception is my most recent build which is detailed in the "in progress" section, called "22 Magnum" where I went considerably wider

Both ways will work fine structurally, but the reason I tried going wider this time is because when you go with a fretboard width blank, the posts for the bridge are actually in a separate piece of wood separated from the rest of the neck and the nut by two joints, one on each side, and my picky reasoning was that having the bridge in the same piece of wood that is the neck would be better transmitting vibrations because there are less joints between the bridge and nut.

Is that actually true? I dont know. I make good joints so I'd say their impact is minimal, but I figured it couldnt hurt to get rid of them

The downside is you'll have a bit more waste making the neck blank wider.

man, I like the color. Its like eggplant.

I hate eggplant, but I love the color

28 minutes ago, ScottR said:

Beautiful job. I can't wait to see the pooped red top.

SR

LOL. Pretty sure I said "popped"

I dont think I'd care much for a pooped top

9 hours ago, verhoevenc said:

@Skyjerk @KnightroExpress: James MacDonald Art Guitars

Chris

That's the guy! Thanks :-)

@Viktor @KnightroExpress @Original with you guys in the race I gotta admit, I was pretty skeptical that I even stood a chance.

I saw someone on MLP that did marquetry work on the level that Viktor used. Knightro might recall them, They looked like album covers. The time and patience needed for detail work like that is just amazing.

Knightro. Damn you and your fancy scarfed necks! You could sell those all by themselves and probably earn a living. Its so cool to have seen you take your work from school into your own shop

Original, your mashup of Strat and Tele is bad-ass. Classic lines for a perfect workhorse axe

Thanks all for your positive comments and warm welcome to this forum

1 hour ago, Prostheta said:

 

 I gather that it's like a jet engine though, so hearing protection will be mandatory.

Absolutely. This beast roars.

I have -30 db earmuffs I wear at the shooting range and they do a great job with this and my other really loud tools.

My angle grinder that I use with my holey galahad for top and neck carving is also an ear killer. The muffs make short work of both though.

This'll be my last "working" update to this thread till spring when I move on to finishing. Of course if anyone wants to ask me anything or discuss I'm happy to oblige

I installed all the hardware yesterday and wired it up. It was a goal to have the "build" part done in 2016 and I made it with 4 hours to spare.

theres work to be done yet, of course. Aside from finishing it needs a final sanding and tweak to a line or two here and there, but I expect I'll play it over the winter and I dont want to have to sand more than needed and playing it will make it even dirtier. the maple has some mahogany dust and such smudging it up.

It'll need the fretwork and fretboard cleaned up etc. I usually do all that as the last step after its all laquered, sanded and buffed out.

I gotta say, I really like the 59/Custom hybrid pickup. Its real beefy and thick sounding. Lots of mids compared to a JB, but theres plenty of highs to cut through the mix. If I do say so myself, it was a good call

Anyway, heres some pix as it stands right now. I'm planning a popped flame and red top in nitro. Real glossy the way I like em
the back and neck I'm leaving natural. Transparent, maybe a very small tint to darken it just a touch more than the clear will.

Oh, and the whole shebang weighs in at 8.3 lbs for those that care about such things. The reason its that high is because of the trem block. You've all probably heard of brass big blocks to increase sustain? Well mine is made of tungsten, which is super heavy. Its easily 5x the mass of the stock trem block that comes with a Floyd Rose. It adds 3/4 lb. to the weight
so without it the axe would weigh 7.5 lbs.

One thing I'll need to correct. I was very careful to account for where the screws for the locking nut go when positioning the carbon fiber rods, but I had completely forgotten anout the string retainer bar. One of the screws was diverted by the carbin fiver and now the bar is a little crooked. I'll have to re-drill those holes because that crookedness just wont do

45 minutes ago, Prostheta said:

Lovely documentation on this build Chris. Sharing at this level of detail is a wonderful gift and insight into your processes and project development! That switch recess would have all kinds of neuroses firing off in my head all at once, but as you say....it does the job.

I noticed that you have the monster Dewalt DW735....from what I know of that, it kicks out chips faster than an extractor can remove them! It's on my personal list of things to buy, but maybe not for a few months yet. How does it work with respect to snipe?

Thanks for your kind words

On the DeWalt, I find it does a bang-up job. Nothing seems to slow it down and it cuts nice and clean. I did my first blade change a couple months back and it could not have been easier. Took 10 minutes and was up and running.

The blades last a good while. Only reason I had to change it was because I put a board through that had a broken off staple in it that I didnt see and it nicked the blades and everything after that had a ridge where the nick was.

I have not noticed that my dust extractor has any problems keeping up and its not a super-badass extractor. Its a grizzly 1.5 HP collector. I wish the width was like 1/2" wider

I have the infeed and outfeed tables for this which I consider to be a must. they help with snipe. I get a little bit when I give a little assist by applying some downpressure both in and out and the snipe is really minimal. You have to look really close to see it, and one pass through the drum sander and its gone.

In its price range I dont really think it can be beat

13 minutes ago, Andyjr1515 said:

No - I'm very comfortable and practised in that approach   

It was the more unfamiliar straight sides and crisp, square edges of the other bits that had me intrigued....  

I generally use a 3/8" carbide pattern bit for routing body cavities and I take multiple passes of 1/8" or so and I don't force the router through the wood, I let it cut at its own pace if that makes sense. I'll hog out as much wood as I can ahead of time on my drill press and just clean up the edges with the router

i also make sure my templates don't have any nicks or mess-ups. If I nick a template by accident, it's done. I don't try to work around the nick by hand.

of course I try not to ruin my templates :-)

I use the masking tape and CA glue method to attach them and make sure they can't move AT ALL.

those are my general rules.

impatience and a desire to get done as quickly as possibly are the enemies of clean routing :-)

4 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

Your routing is very clean.  Any particular steps taken or just standard router bits / techniques?

Nothing new or ground breaking. I just make sure my templates are attached firmly, route in shallow passes, and use a sharp bit.

on maple I don't run the router at max speed to avoid burns

of course if your comment was referring to the control cavity/switch routing picture, then my technique is wing it with a dremel and don't worry too much about how it looks :-)

Eagerly awaiting photo's

I love a good V

I'm planning to do a double neck V like the one used by Rudolf Schenker of the Scorpions back in the late 80's

WOW!

That is a super sweet looking body! Seriously! I love that thing!

the way the top is beveled to reveal the back wood is just gorgeous and it flows! Nice carving

This slot cleaned up nicely. Once stained and lacquered it'll look just peachy

Cant say the same for what I had to do inside the control cavity to fit the switch. Its not prettyy but it'll get the job done. I had to take the top down to just over 1/8" with a dremel in order for enough of the lever to protrude through the top for the switch to function. I dont like the top being that thin, but its just in that spot, and since almost all acoustic guitar tops are thinner than this I'm guessing that as long as I dont hit the switch with a hammer it should be fine

Drilled holes for volume and tone pot, recess for the output jack (electrosocket), and the slot for the 5-way switch.

the slot looks a little rough at the moment, but I have a solid plan to fix that right up