Skyjerk

1 minute ago, curtisa said:

Locking tuners with a double locking trem. Does that make it triple locking?

Maybe I'll change the name of this model to the "Triple Lock"

It might seem redundant, but I like the tuner style, and while the locking isnt much help in regular use, it makes string changing fast and easy and these tuners automatically trim off the extra string so thats a help too

I really like the rosewood on the headstock. Black hardware

8 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

Very clean and neat routing and carve.  Love that top wood, too

Thanks!

Yeah thats going to be an "11" top when I'm done with it

So, for Christmas I drilled the tuner holes and TR access, and routed for the Floyd Rose....

and a couple pix that show the carve a little better...

4 hours ago, 2.5itim said:

Lol sorry I had a brain fart yesterday, tenths of thousands yes! 

Anyways nice work!!

No worries. I had the same brain fart initially, just in the other direction when I said thousandths :-)

5 hours ago, 2.5itim said:

No sir, ten thousands would be the 0. Thousandths would be the 2. Hundred thousandths would be the 5. 

I guess a easier way to say it is your half a thousandth thinner than 1/16" haha

 

it's definitely ten thousandths. I looked it up :-)

The positions are tenths, hundredths, thousandths, ten thousandths, hundredthousandths. Etc

so the 4th digit to the right of the decimal is ten thousandths

the five would be 5 ten-thousandths.

not that my h adstock veneer gives a damn ;-)

24 minutes ago, 2.5itim said:

Nice work!!! 

.062 is actually only a couple hundred thousandths thinner than 1/16 (.0625) I'd say you hit the nail on the head haha. 

Actually we're both wrong! Wouldnt that be a couple ten-thousandths?

Given that I probably wont be able to avoid family stuff for the next few days I'm trying to pack in as much as I can before the weekend.

Needed a headstock veneer. Decided to use some of my rosewood pieces that are too small to use for fretboards or anything structural.

I love how the old, dried out hunk of narly-looking wood becomes beautiful

Here it is just up from the basement...

and here it is after planing one side smooth and flat...

A good resaw blade is just a joy to work with...

Oops. This is actually a little thinner than I wanted, but I love that the blade can cut slices this thin (and thinner))

I actually took another slice off the board at .062 which is a few thousandths under 1/16" which was my intended thickness.

I traced out the headstock and rough cut it

Thoroughly wiped the gluing faces down with acetone, the rosewood in particular, glued and clamped it up.

3 hours later I unclamped it, and routed it down to size. This scrap is actually an offcut from the same board of Brazilian rosewood the fretboard is made from.

tonite I'll be drilling tunerholes and TR access, and thinning the headstock down (from the back) as its a bit too thick at the moment, and complete shaping the neck/headstock transition on the back

Heres a closer look at the carve around the horns, cutaway, and heel area after some more sanding.

Dont judge my rough spots, bits of glue squeeze out, grubby fingerboard, the smudgy pickup, or my fretwork.

I still have plenty of work to do

The pickup is just dropped in to show how that'll look. Not sure if I mentioned it earlier but these will be direct mounted with no rings.

Doing a direct mount pickup works very well for this design given a fairly slim body and a Floyd Rose tremolo.
Typically the wood between the bridge pickup routing and the spring cavity can get pretty thin in guitars that are slim, in this case there will be a lot of thickness left there because the pickup cavity doesnt have to be nearly as deep

Thats a seriously classy looking guitar

Funny story.

I decided during my last build (blue 22 special) to embed a medallion in the back of my next (this one) guitar.

It will be visible through the finish but embedded in a clear acrylic or epoxy so you can see it but the finish will be smooth and unbroken.

It'll be the middle one of the three in this photo...its for my 20th anniversary of being clean and sober, which I celebrated back in April

Here's the funny part. Apparently the bird inlays I chose for this build are the same birds (reversed) designed by PRS for their 20th anniversary.
I knew they were PRS style birds. That why I picked them (plus I like them), but I didn't realize they actually were PRS birds, and I definitely didn't know they were 20th anniversary birds.


Just a funny, kinda cool, coincidence

Ok with the fretboard glued on its time to carve the neck.

For this I pull out Galahad again

I mark out some rough guidelines on the back and side of the neck....

and carve a big, angled slice off of each side and knock the heel down.

After that I use my dragon hand cut rasps and some 80 grit paper to get it roughly where I want the contours.

For me, I've found the perfect neck is .8" at the first fret and .9" at the 12th, and a gentle C shape.

This will need more refining at the hell and headstock transitions but this is now at the rough shape I like.

Jumping back to before I installed the frets, I clamped the fretboard in place making sure was perfectly aligned, and then drill through a fret slot at each end of the board into the top of the neck. I remove the fretboard and put a little wooden pin (i use a round toothpick) into the hole on the neck and then cut it off leaving enough sticking ip to keep the board from moving when I glue it. the hole is smaller than the width of the fret so it disappears after I install the frets.

At this point I double-check the neck for flatness (its flat) and clean the surface with acetone to remove any contaminates. I do the same with the bottom of the fretboard. This is particularly important on oily woods like rosewood which can be harder to glue.

then I glue it up, drop the board onto my locating pins, and stick it in the bag for a few hours. the vacuum bag does a spectacular job of clamping the fretboard. Perfect joint every time. No need for a dozen clamps or radius block, etc.

the bag isnt good for everything. I found its not perfect for thicker, less flexible pieces of wood, but for fretboards and other thinner pieces nothing does a better job.

k, to wrap up the weekend work, I installed my frets.

I use a fret tang filer from LMII to undercut the fret tang. Undercutting the tang is common on bound fretboards and theres a multitude of different tools people use. I find that this one is the best. Nippers are a bit faster (not that much) but can leave a ridge that may still need to be manually files off. This tool files the tang away completely leaving the undersuide of the fret wire completely flat.

I do this even on fretboards that arent bound because I personally dont care for the look of the side of the tang showing on the edge of the fretboard. So I undercut the wire, and fill the end of the slot with rosewood dust and CA glue and sand it smooth. I think it looks nicer.

This is the tang filer....

So this fretboard is just sitting on here. Not glued on yet.

To head off the obvious question, yes. I do install frets before gluing the board to the neck. I've never had a fretboard "move" on me. The way I build my necks makes that very unlikely since I always do multi-laminate with carbon fiber rods. It

The greatest tip of all time is using masking tape and CA glue instead of double-sided tape.

put a strip of masking tape on each piece where they will contact each other. Make sure the tape is burnishedmdown well

put a,small line of CA glue on one piece of tape and press the parts together and hold pressure till the glue sets. You can speed that part by spraying glue accelerator on the side you didn't put glue on.

sounds like crap, but that will,hold your templates 100 times better than double stick tape. It will resist HUGE lateral pressure without comparing apart. But when you pull the pieces directly away from each other it'll come apart pretty easy, and the best part is it leaves no sticky residue.

learned that from one,of,your,own over in the U.K., Ben Crowe at Crimson guitars :-) 

Now that the epoxy has fully cured I can sand the inlays down flush.

Next I use my japanese fret saw to cut the inlays where they crossed the fret slot

Next I put in the side dot markers. These are 3/32" MOP dots from Stewmac.

On my first 6 builds or so I drilled by eye and was frustrated because my dots always had one or two that didnt quite get in the right spot. I had seen a video of another builder that used some kind of template to drill his dots, and looking around on line I found a place that sold them. The chump was selling these things for $135.00. That price was ridiculous. No way I was gonna pay that. So I made up my own template in CAD and found a place (Pololu) that had laser cutting service, and they made me up one from my CAD drawing.

They charged me $35.00 to cut my design, so I got what I wanted and saved myself a hundred bucks

Anyway, I line the fretboard up flush with the edge of my tablesaw...

Then clamp my template to the side. I drew this up with 3 scale lengths that cover about 99% of electric guitar builds. 24 3/4, 25, and 25 1/2.

Then I just drill with a 3/32" drill bit through the holes.

Perfect alignment.

The rest is as you would expect. A drop of CA, gently tap in the dot, and sand them flush once the glue has cured.

and the top. I'm really happy with how these turned out...

9 hours ago, a2k said:

This makes me want to try some more inlaying on my next build. Do you just move the Dremel freehand through the lines you scribed? And what bit are you using?

Thanks for all of the idea sharing in this thread!

Yep. Freehand. This does mean that my pockets are not perfect and there are invariably some small gaps, especially on small, irregularly shaped pieces like these, but the epoxy squishout takes care of those. Maybe someday I'll join the CNC generation and make perfect pockets. My technique tends to restrict any complex shaped inlays to ebony or rosewood boards.

that bit is a 1/32" I bought from stewmac. 

That little piece of blue tape on the bit blows all the dust away as I cut. Before I started doing that I'd have to pause and blow,it away myself, which can leave you hyperventilated :-)

Ok, well its a crappy day out and a good time to install the inlays. Frankly this is my least favorite part of building, and these particular inlays are the biggest PITA I've done so far, but thats how it goes if you wanna do more than dots and blocks...

Once I lay them out I scribe around them with a compass point. My scalpel and other bladed tools tend to want to follow the grain which pulls it off line sometimes so the conical point of a compass works better for me.

I set it up in between a couple pieces of 1/4" MDF so my dremel base sits flat and cuts a flat pocket even though the board is radiused.

Some folks like to use CA glue (super glue) to glue the inlays down, and then top fill the gaps with rosewood dust and CA, but I prefer to mix up a batch of clear epoxy and mix that with the rosewood dust. I overfill all the pockets, making sure to fill all the little nooks and crannies, and then push the inlays down into the pockets. The squeezeout pushes up from underneath and fills all the gaps completely from the bottom up. Epoxy is a better gap filler than CA and the inlay is completely supported underneath and around all the sides so no gaps or spaces under the inlays.

Sanding this down takes a little longer but I think its a small price to pay for what I believe are more solid inlays.

So routing pockets on a radiused board isnt an issue. As you can see I sandwich the board between a couple pieces of MDF and my router sits on that and cuts a nice, flat bottomed pocket.

Laying these babies out to scribe around them is a bit more of a PITA

A good message!

I had a similar recent experience lately with my angle grinder and holey galahad disk while carving the top on a previous build.. Likewise no permanent damage but a lesson well learned

They dont stop being dangerous as soon as you take your finger off the trigger.

Be patient and wait for them to stop before relaxing your vigilance

1 minute ago, Jdogg said:

Well, that about sum's that up.

is it any more difficult to trace the inlays out with a scribe vs a flat board?  I'm rather tempted to build one of these contraptions but with a few mods so I can use it after the FB is glued to the neck blank....  I think that would make it even more accurate....  spose it's likely not too bad if a pre radius'd board is glued to a flat neck blank...  and nothing moves...  hmmmmm.....  yeah, I think i'mna try it your way...  cuz my way sucks....

 

I'm not sure what you mean about tracing inlays with a scribe vs a flat board.

My process is to cover the board with masking tape and place the inlays where I want them and hold em steady with a teeny drop of CA glue. Once in place I use a pencil to trace the outlines. Then I pop the inlays off and go over the traced lines with a scalpel so they get cut into the fretboard. then  I pull off the tape and route the pockets as described above.

With regard to putting an entire neck blank in the jig, keep in mind that the blank would have to be perfectly flat. If one end was thicker than the other then the fretboard would be sitting at an angle and you'd ruin it.

If you DID manage to rig it up so that you could put the whole neck blank in it, you could only ever use neck blanks exactly like that. If you only ever build one kind of guitar I guess that wouldnt be a problem, but what if you ever wanted to do a neck-through-body build? What if you wanted to do a build with a 25.5" scale length and 24 frets, or anything different.

Its a LOT more flexible to radius the fretboard separate from the neck because you arent locked into any particular style of build or neck dimensions. If the concern is about the fretboard moving when you try to glue it on, heres what I do. Clamp the board in place aligned perfectly, then drill a hole (teeny bit) through a fret slot at each end of the board. the hole goes into the neck under the board. Then I remove the board. I stick a round wooden toothpick into the holes on the top of the neck so it sticks up and cut them off so only a small "pin" is sticking up. The fretboard can be fitted onto those pins through the holes drilled previously. At that point I install the frets. The hole I drilled is a tad wider than the actual slot, but the fret covers it completely, Once I have the frets in, I glue it up, press it onto those pins, and clamp it up. The fretboard cant slide anywhere in any direction. Makes clamping it up easy as pie.

Now I've only built 13 guitars so far, so I'm a long way from the final authority on anything, but I always finish the fretboard completely, frets and all, before I glue it on. The one time when I broke down and listened to everyone elses common wisdom and put the frets on after it was glued to the neck, and fretting it forced a back-bow into the neck. I ended up having to remove the fretboard. Everyone said I must have used wire with tangs too thick. Nope. The tangs were the same thickness as the kerf of my saw I actually glued that fretboard right back on again and the bow was gone

Never did it again. I stick with conventional wisdom for most things in lutherie, but I rejected common wisdom for that step and it hasnt gone wrong since.

39 minutes ago, Jdogg said:

Out of curiosity, how do you handle fretboards with inlays (other than dots obviously)?  I'm assuming this method would chew up the inlays if done before radiusing?

I do like the idea of a machine cut radius but I'm not a particularly huge fan of inlaying on a pre-radiused board (might be the only option in this case tho....?

 

I always do my inlays after the board is radiused. Its not any more difficult, and knowing where the final surface of the board is makes it easier to know how deep to put them.

This particular fretboard is getting MOP bird inlays similar, but not identical, to PRS birds

I just wedge the fretboard in between two pieces of 1/4" MDF, and I use a dremel with a router-style base to cut the inlay pockets. The dremel base is wider than the fretboard so it sits up on the MDF boards rather than the fretboard itself, so the radiused surface is not an issue.

Since the dremel is suitting on the nice, flat MDF it cuts a nice flat bottom pocket. Easy peasey.

Glue in the inlays (i use clear epoxy mixed with the rosewood dust) and then sand them flush with a radius beam when its fully cured.

2 hours ago, 2.5itim said:

No joke Norris! I was thinking the fretboard was stationary and the area where the router sides on top would be radiused but being able to rock the fretboird and put it at different heights for different radiused is just genius!!

Agreed. Wish I could claim I came up with the concept, but I just stole the idea from another builders video that I saw

29 minutes ago, meatloaf said:

I'm loving that radius jig, now that's got me thinking. Do you think you could share some details about it?

No problemo

Its a pretty simple design. I dont actually have any plans as such that I could hand out. I didnt invent the thing. I just saw something similar that was built by another builder and the concept was simple enough that I just figured out how make my own.

Hopefully based on my description and these pix you should see the concept pretty clearly and be able to build something similar.

Its basically a box with a board in the middle suspended by a bolt on either end. the board pivots on those bolts. The distance from those bolts to the top of the board where the fretboard sits is the radius. I include the thickness of the fretboard in that calculation. I always use .25" for my fretboards, so for a 12" radius that bolt is actually 11 3/4" from the top of the board. 

I have different holes that are different distances from the top, and therefore different radiuses (radii?)

The router sits on top on a sliding platform. Its centered along the length of the center board and can slide from one end to the other. I use a toggle clamp and some screws to lock it in place so its really easy to put it on and take it off.

This jig will do a compound radius as well simply by putting the bolts on either end in different holes, of course you are limited to the radiuses that you've built the jig to make. I've done 9.5 to 12, and also 12 - 16, and they came out perfectly.

anyway, you just lower the bit from the router until its just touching the top of the board dead center, then lock it. then lift the whole router enough to pivof the board to the side, put the router back in place and turn it on.

Rock the center board back and forth to make a cut. then slide the platform down (how far depends on the bit you have in your router. I use a 1/2" cutter so I slide it just shy of 1/2". Cut, slide, cut, slide, cut, slide. etc till you get to the other end of the board and youre done. Usually takes me 5 or 10 minutes depending on how big a hurry I'm in

You'll have some tool marks on the board, but you can sand them off in a minute or two of light sanding.

Obviously when you measure where you will drill your holes in the sides and the center board of this jig, precision is paramount

Also you need to make sure that your sides are perfectly parallel to each other and the whole jig is square (90 degree corners) and plum

If the jig is racked out of square or plum, or your holes arent accurately spaced from the top, you wont get good results.