Skyjerk

2 minutes ago, 2.5itim said:

That's actually a pretty great method it seems like. I've been thinking about getting a new miter box for my fret slotting but I may have to rethink that and go with the table saw blade. 

Thanks for sharing!

Stewmac sells the blade and the templates. I tried to avoid buying the blade from them because they charge a lot, but I couldnt find one with a thin enough kerf anywhere else so I bit the bullet and bought it. It only hurt till the first time I slotted a board in 3 minutes, then I felt a lot better

Always glad to share. I learned all this stuff from other people that shared

1 hour ago, 2.5itim said:

Norris, I've been seeing quite a few people using a table saw to slot fretboards and it seems like people are liking it. I don't quite understand how they know where to make the cut but is interesting. 

Also that fretboard radiusing jig is pretty damn cool!

Its actually pretty simple. Theres a steel template (Stewmac) that is notched along the edge. The notches are spaced according to the scale length you are going for. I have several templates for various scale lengths.

I made up a jig that slides into the guide slots on the table saw and is perfectly square to the blade.,,

I attach the fretboard to the template like this. I actually radius the board first because if I slot the board and then put it on my radius jig

the router might cause a lot of tearout along the slots. To prevent the radiused board from rocking I simply attach a small block at either end of the template. Keeps the fretboard flat when its face-down.

Once its flipped over, a indexing pin on the guide/fence fits into the notches along the edge of the template...

with the pin in the slot, and the whole shebang flat against the guide, and the blade at the right height, I just slide it over the blade. Cuts the perfect slot in one smooth motion in exactly the right place.

Then I pull it back, move the template over one notch, and make the next cut.

Takes about 4 minutes to perfectly slot the board

I did them all the "old fashioned way" when I first started out, but I'm all about saving time and effort where I can. I have no room for CNC stuff so most of the work is still done the old fashioned way, but between the radius jig and the slotting jig I cut hours of tedious work down to about 15 minutes and have arguably a better result

6 minutes ago, Norris said:

Nice work

Are you slotting your fretboard on a table saw? Very brave if so! I assume it's quite a thin blade...

No bravery required. I have a stew mac fret slotting blade for my table saw. It has a kerf of .023" which is perfect.

i have a jig I made where I attach the fretboard to the stewmac slotting template. The template notches fit into a pin on the jig.

perfect slots every time, and it takes about 3 minutes.

As long as you have the blade height set properly, which imtest on scraps before putting the real board on, you really can't mess it up :-)

Bravery is slotting a board by hand! 

Radiused the fretboard on my radius jig, sanded off the toolmarks, slotted it, and cut it to shape...

and a quick mock-up. I'll be doing the inlays next in the next day or two...

Ended up needing a little ear anyway. Lost a chunk right off the tip while routing the headstock

worked out fine :-)

Ok, that inlay is just plain bad-ass

Nice work!

By "both" I mean that both the lighting and the naphtha are making it look dark. The maple itself isnt particularly dark

4 minutes ago, ScottR said:

Is it just the lighting or is that some fairly dark maple?

SR

Both, actually. I wiped it with some naphtha to highlight the figure which darkens it some, and its lit with a not very bright, but quite very warm color temp CFL bulb (probably around 2600k) at just above the height of the top to make the carve more obvious and causes more shadows

Yeah, nobody that is familiar with a PRS will ever mistake this guitar for one, but theres definitely similarities. Not enough for Paul to send me a C&D letter, though

A clearer notion of where this build is heading

if this was a water based stain it might have caused the wood to swell and make your holes a little tight, but I wouldnt re-drill because when the wood eventually shrinks back to normal they might not be tight enough. Id make sure you wait till the wood is completely dry before installing the posts.

16 minutes ago, Jdogg said:

Emachineshop is a vendor based program for custom machining is it not?  i wouldn't expect that to be as powerful or as easy to use as strait up AutoCAD.  Have a look at a little program called Draftsight.  it's VERY similar to the big expensive AutoCAD but it's freeware.  I use AutoCAD at work and Draftsight at home for guitar stuff.  At least for 2D stuff it's like playing a beautiful Les Paul, but your not sure if it's a genuine Gibson or a really well made copy.  they're that close.  They even have some of the same negative quirks with the snap mechanism.... 

I dunno. I also have AutoCAD. Emachineshop is actually a lot easier and simpler to use. I dont need a lot of features to design in 2D and emachineshop is a LOT more intuitive. Took me about 15 minutes to figure how to do what I wanted. I STILL havent figured out AutoCAD

So I tossed the axe into my box jig over the weekend and routed off the pickup plane.,,

This is my favorite carving tool for tops and necks these days. Its called a "Holey Galahad" attached to an angle grinder. These are carbide points over the whole surface so it can chew through wood like you wouldnt believe. It can also chew through flesh like you wouldnt believe. Back when I first got it, it slipped in my hand and lightly brushed the index finger on my left hand and carved a nice groove. Cant be stitched because it doesnt slice. It just removes what it touches. Suffice to say it left a scar that didnt deter me though, I'm just ultra careful when I use it.

and roughed out the contours around the outside....

and then inside the cutaways. The holey galahad removes a lot of material really fast and touching the neck by accident would pretty much wreck this guitar since its neck through. Had to be super careful in there...

some rough sanding..

while routing pickup cavities the bearing on the cutter slid up the shank and popped off the template and caused a small gouge. I wouldnt sweat this normally but its planned for direct mounted pickups. No rings. You'll note that a pickup ring on here would hang right off the lower cutaway here so a ring isnt a viable plan B.

which I fixed by gluing a strip of maple to the edge and re-routing. Once this edge is rounded over, dyed, and lacquered it should be totally unnoticable,.

So a couple naphtha enhanced shots...Still needs a teeny bit of refinement to the top. I didnt show it here bit I put a 1/4" roundover on the back of the body. This is as far as I got over the weekend...

OK, this is a re-entry since I got this in too late for November

This is an original design in that its not a direct copy of any existing guitar. It is a single-cut design that incorporates the features that I love about Les Pauls, but eliminates the things I dont care for.

My brand is "Addict" although I'm not actually a professional guitar builder.

I call this model the "22 Special"

When I refer to things I dont care for I mean a body shape thats too rounded for my taste, bridge, pickups, and strings too high above the body, the well known big heel and difficult upper fret access, heavily angled string pull over the nut producing tuning stability problems when doing a lot of bending, and of course cheap factory parts and plastic inlays.

This model has the following notable features:

• Neck-through-body construction
• 3-piece laminate neck
• carbon fiber neck reinforcement

Specs:

• 24 3/4" scale length (actual)
• 22 stainless steel frets
• Genuine South American mahogany ( Swietenia macrophylla ) body and neck
• Body and fretboard binding
• Bookmatched, figured maple top
• Ebony fretboard
• Unbleached bone nut
• Blue Paua abalone fretboard and truss rod cover inlays
• Rosewood cavity covers
• Tonepros Nashville bridge and tailpiece
• Schaller locking 3x3 tuning machines
• Seymour Duncan pickups (JB and Jazz)
• Switchcraft 3-way toggle switch (standard config)
• CTS pots, orange drop caps
• Nitrocellulose Lacquer
• Weight 9.3 lbs

OK, this will be a first for me. I'll go on record saying that I despise Telecasters.

This is a whole new kinda animal, though. This is a VERY cool build, and great work!

7 minutes ago, 2.5itim said:

Very nice! I like the idea of using smaller templates for each step up, seems like it would work better for recreating the carve on other guitars exactly the same. I've thought about doing it but I'm terrible at computer stuff so would never be able to get the tremplates drawn out right. 

Its easier than you might think. I use a freeware CAD app that is not so full of mysterious functions that its unusable to us average types

It does take a little time to draw things up and get them right, but not nearly as much as you might think.

The app I use is called emachineshop. Its free and I learned how to work with its basic functions in just a couple hours. I work strictly with the 2D features. Its not really something you could use for CNC type stuff...

Its hard to spend time not specifically on the guitar itself, and while I could easily "wing it" with the top carve, I'd like to be able to repeat the carve as closely as possible should I ever want to build another, so I made templates to get the rough shape of the top.

Designed the templates in CAD and had 10 copies printed, cut them out and used spray adhesive to attach the to the MDF, then cut them on the band saw.

Then used them to route the steps on the top, raising the bit with each template. To figure out how much to raise it each time I measured from where I wanted the edge height to be (starting 1/4" inch above the mahogany to leave the natural binding edge) up to the final height, Since I have 8 templates, and the first one sets the starting height, I divided the distance by 7 to get the amount to raise the router bit with each step.

I did get a teeny tearout on the edge of the upper horn here, but its not that big a deal. I can sand the edge of the guitar in about 1/16" here, and combined with the slight roundover the edge will have that should get me past the tearout and leave a nice binding edge.

Tonite after work I'll be routing the pickup plane and then sanding the steps smooth

10 hours ago, 2.5itim said:

Really nice job on the top carve of that PRS body.

 

That headstock logo is just plain cool

How did you make it?

I do my own inlay work, but I'm far too lazy and impatient to actually cut my own inlays. I generally order them from DePaule or custominlay

This build is no different. In keeping with the general PRS "vibe" I got some birds. Different birds. The piece of rosewood is realyl nice so I dont want big inlays that eat up a lot of surface. These are small, nice, and have a great flow to them. Just ordered this AM.

These are white mother-of-pearl and the streaks are abalone.

This photo is not my fretboard. Its just the picture of the inlay set from the custominlay website.

Apparently I'm too late for November :-)

Howdy,

I'm a new member here. Just joined today in fact :-)

This guitar is named "22 Special" (exciting, right?)

Ive just completed a new build a few weeks ago. This is an original unoriginal design, meaning that it was obviously inspired by the Les Paul. There are many things I don't care for about the original Les Paul, but many things that I love as well, so I kept the things I love, and got rid of the things I don't love.

I don't love the bulbousness/roundness of the Les Paul body, so I altered the shape more to my liking

I don't love the 24 5/8" (or 9/16) scale length that they call 24 3/4, so I changed it to 25" scale length. 

I don't love the neck angle that causes the bridge and pickups to be very high off the body so I reduced it

I don't love the heel and lack of,upper fret access so I made it neck-through and made the cutaway deeper.

I love trapezoid inlays, but hate plastic so I used blue paua abalone for the inlays and for my logo on the truss rod cover, which says "Addict" by the way but the lighting angle isn't bringing it out 

I don't love nickel/silver fretwire so I used stainless steel

I don't love ABR1 bridge so I used a Tonepros Nashville.

The neck-through is a 3-piece laminate, all Bolivian mahogany, with carbon fiber reinforcement.

The fretboard is Ebony, the top is flame figure maple, the back wings are also Bolivian mahogany like the neck.

pickups are Seymour Duncan JB and Jazz, the Tuners are Schaller locking tuners. CTS pots and orange drop caps.

It's finished with Nitrocellulose lacquer

This is the template I made up for the top carve. As you can see its also PRS-like, but I'm not going to do that deep bevel in the lower cutaway that PRS is famous for. The cutaway is deep enough for easy access to fret 22 already and doesnt need that...

10 minutes ago, ScottR said:

Welcome to PG, Skyjerk!

That's a nice clean well balanced design you are building. I see similarities to PRS but not really any influence. Frankly it's nearly impossible to come up with a design that doesn't bear resemblance to one that's gone before, whether you've ever seen it or not. The fact that it needs to be playable, limits the design possibilities a bit. 

It looks like you've got some fine toys for building in your garage and some nice timbers as well. What is the wood running between your mahogany in your neck blank?

I'll be enjoying watching this one come to life.

SR

Thanks! Glad to be here. Cant believe I didnt find this place sooner

OK, so this brings me up to date. the pix above are where I'm at.

I just designed a series of 8 top carve templates which I'll be cutting out of MDF probably tomorrow night and then I'll start that carve by the weekend,

Updates to come soon