beltjones

So I glued up the top this morning, and had a big internal debate about how long to leave it in the clamps. The temperature is supposed to dip about 20 degrees f tonight, and with the guitar in the clamps in the garage I was afraid of weird movement in the wood. So after about 10 hours in the clamps I de-clamped it and brought it inside. Interestingly, when I put the top on the body today it fit like a glove, with the top basically laying flat on the body with no gaps or anything. By the time I took the clamps off, the joint in the center of the to had failed a tiny amount, near the fretboard side. I used my finger to push some titebond into the crack and brought the whole thing inside. At its widest it's about the same as the pores of the wenge, so it's not that noticeable. Plus, the worst part is where the neck pickup will go, so it will get routed away.

Thanks dudes.

I'm getting close to gluing the top on, which feels like another one of those big "milestone" steps where it looks more like a guitar, but of course I keep making little mistakes here and there.The switch cavity was supposed to be 1 5/8", but I did the math wrong when choosing the router bit and template guide and of course I didn't do a test on a piece of MDF, and it turned out to be 1 3/4". The cavity being on the lower horn there doesn't leave much buffer for the cavity cover. It's going to take some thought on how to do a cavity cover.The other thing I'm trying to decide is how heavy I want this thing to be. Adding up all the components, right now it's almost exactly 12 lbs, which is kind of heavy. Now, I still have to carve the neck and the top, carve a belly contour on the back, and route out the pickup cavities. I think all of that might cut off a pound or so (for reference: routing the control cavities took off exactly half a pound). An 11lb guitar is pretty heavy. My quick googling tells me a Telecaster is about 7.5lbs, and a strat is about 8lbs. A Les Paul these days seems to be about 10lbs, and back in the 80s, before weight relief, they came in at about 12-13lbs, and were considered ridiculously heavy. I could get lucky and the neck/top/back carves could take off more than a pound, and I could try to drill a bunch of weight relief holes with a forstener bit before I add the top. I'd hate to do that, though. I think the thing I might do is a full back carve, in addition to the belly cut. That might take off another half a pound. Ultimately this is a neck-through guitar which is a heavy construction technique, with heavy woods, particularly Wenge and Paduak. I think I may have to chalk this one up to experience and just live with it if it's an 11lb guitar. Here's the cavities routed. And the access channels. Question for the brain trust: If I'm using shielded wire, there is no benefit to shielding the access channels before I glue the top, right?

Yep, that was it. Thanks for not letting me spend another day trying to flatten something that was going to flatten itself eventually.

I started carving the top, beginning with the front part near the fretboard. If I carve this part before the top is glued on I won't have to worry about slipping and jacking up the neck. On that lower horn I'm more or less happy with the carve. I think it will look cool once I carve the other edges, though I may make it more severe with more of a peak in the center. On the upper horn I'm thinking there is too much flat area just past the carve. I think I may attack it with a grinder with a sanding disk to round it out quite a bit more. On the plus side a Christmas Miracle has occurred. Remember how I said I spent all that time flattening the top and body, only to have the wenge bow on me? It went back to normal, and now the top and the body fit together perfectly.

Thanks man. My pictures are pretty terrible, but when the slip happened there was nothing preventing the router bit from cutting directly across the neck. Nothing, that is, but a rock-hard wenge top that it had to cut through first.

As much as I may curse wenge for being difficult to work with, for splintering, for moving, etc, I think it just saved my project. I was routing the top to match the body, and the router bearing slipped and the bit dug into the neck/body transition area. Luckily this wenge is like routing steel, so I was able to feel the slip and the wenge protected the padauk from too much damage. If I had been using a maple top this guitar would be in the garbage can right now. Here's where it dug in a tiny amount before I stopped it. And here's the repair. Not bad - I'll keep perfecting that transition once the top is glued on.

Ok, I almost didn't post this because it's embarrassing. I spent a good amount of time yesterday with the sanding table flattening both the wenge top and the body. I got both very close, and decided I would come back to it today with fresh eyes and finish up. So after about another 30 minutes with the sanding table I figured it was done. I put the pieces together and they fit very nicely, with just about a .25mm gap in places that I could close with finger pressure. I needed to run an errand, so I packed my son into the car and left for about three hours, leaving the guitar in the garage. Well, the wenge moved on me. I feel like I'm back where I started. I know the surface doesn't have little peaks and valleys, it just bowed about 1mm on the far edges. I think at this point I'm just going to say screw it and proceed and not leave the wenge in the garage again for any length of time.

Time and patience you say... I spent about 40 minutes with my new sanding table that I threw together and it's much better, but not perfect. I think another 30 minutes or so and we'll be there.

These are great ideas. Thanks guys! I'm going to spend at least another day (not full day, I mean the 20-30 minutes at a time, here and there, that I have to work on this) flattening both pieces to improve the joint.

Ok, I gotta be honest. I just ordered a plexi pickup routing template. One thing that I'm struggling with now is how well mated the top needs to be to the body prior to gluing. I have planed the body flat, and I have planed the glue side of the top flat, but when I put them together they're not exactly perfect. It occurs to me that with a straight edge you can only test for flatness in one dimension - along a straight line. So even if I lay a straight edge across both surfaces in multiple orientations there are still some peaks and valleys that exist on each piece of wood, and when I put them together the result is an imperfect joint. I can put the pieces together and close up the joint with my hands, but I have pretty strong hands. I suppose that without specialized tools (CNC, for example) it may be impossible to get each piece absolutely perfect, and I'm trying to decide how much time to spend chasing perfection. I may spend one more day on it before proceeding with everything else.

I'm really just trying to make something that doesn't look amateurish. I don't want to route some wonky looking cavity, that's pretty much it. Using half-round files and trying to carve attractive circular shapes in MDF isn't working for me. Previously I was carefully drawing out cavities with a compass, protractor, and straight edges, then transferring the drawing to MDF and trying to cut out the pattern. Today I tried a different tactic - it occurred to me that I have hole saws, I have everything I need to lay out the shape I want. So I simply drilled three 1.5" holes and used a saw and a rasp to connect them with straight lines. I may take one more run at it, but I think my control cavity is pretty much good. Top is the one I did strictly with hand tools, the bottom is the one I did with the hole saws.

Ok, I need to make templates for control cavities and the recessed cavity covers, but I'm struggling with making them look good. I'm about to scour all yall's threads for ideas.

Top roughed out on the bandsaw. That big piece of wenge went from 5.3 lbs to 3.4lbs. Sorry, 2.4kg to 1.54kg. That helped.

It's 2.4 kg. I'm hoping a good amount of that weight comes off when I cut it to match the body and eventually carve it. We shall see...

Oh, I also made a trip to the hardware store and bought some regular old titebond.

Time to start getting ready to fit the top. I made an MDF template by tracing the fretboard and cutting it out on the bandsaw and then fitting carefully with files. It took a bunch of test fittings, but my experience building 1911s came in handy and it came out nicely. I previously joined a couple pieces of wenge to form the top, then I used a router to copy the MDF template onto the wenge, if that makes sense. Under that 5.3lb piece of wenge is the guitar. I also put the bridge in place temporarily just to check to make sure the action is ok so far.And here's a close up of how the top fits the fretboard. Believe it or not there is a whole guitar under there. Next I'll rough-cut the body shape out of the top.

I saw youtube videos where they were using PU, so that's what I bought. So far I've used it to laminate the neck blank and to put on both wings. I'll pick up some regular old titebond for the wenge top, but I'm not very close to that step yet, as slowly as I'm progressing working on this about 20 minutes per day.

Ok, a little progress and experimentation.I got the body all glued up. Next I'll plane the top (well, what is the top currently) flat and prepared to join to the actual top. It's pretty flat already, it will mostly be removing all that glue squeeze-out and looking for little high spots to take down. Yes, I did use PU glue because that's what I had. I did use gloves this time...I also started experimenting with finish options, just because I was at a standstill waiting for the glue to set. The top will be wenge, as a reminder this is what this piece looked like before bleach:And this is after bleaching. (Note: it's a little blotchy because I think I didn't do a great job of applying part B on coat 3) And this is what it looks like with some finish on it, post bleaching. The piece for the top has a lot more pattern in the grain than the scrap I used to test, so the contrast should be more pronounced.

Good point on having to deepen the cavity once the top is on. MDF template it is.

Ok, question for you guys - Would you use the hole saw to simply drill out the cavity for the switch, or drill a hole in some MDF and then use that as a template and go at it with a forstner bit and finish with the router? I'm afraid if I just drill into the wood, even if I put a piece of wood up against the guitar, I'm going to have some tearout.

This is why I come here. I honestly thought that titebond 3 would be stronger than titebond 1. Damnit. The dowels locked up as I was inserting them through the open-ended holes in the neck blank, so there wasn't hydraulic pressure. The first set of dowels was pretty tight in the holes though. You know how when you clamp with PU glue everything is sort of slippery at first, and the pieces will move if the clamping pressure isn't dead straight, and how when you clamp with titebond as soon as the excess glue seeps out the glue begins to set up and the pieces no longer slip, well that's what happened with the dowels. I don't have any regular old titebond, but I guess I'll go pick up a bottle when it's time to glue the top.

Ok, another lesson learned. I attempted to glue up the body wings tonight and it was a bit of a mess. I first did a test fit to make sure everything lined up, and it did, which was great. I coated the dowels in titebond 3 and inserted them into the holes in the neck blank. The dowels fit tight, but I figured the glue would act as kind of a lubricant until it started to set up. Well, I got the dowels about halfway inserted when the glue totally locked up. I tried bumping the dowels with a hammer, and then tried to remove them with a pair of pliers, and ended up having to drill them out from the other side. That delayed things as I had to remake two 4.75" walnut dowels. So I tried again, this time with Titebond Polyurethane glue which IS like a lube until it starts to cure. The dowels went in no problem, but then I remembered why I wanted to use titebond 3 in the first place - I'm all out of nitrile gloves. Oh well. So here's the dowels inserted and glued up. This being my first build, I can't help but feel like ever decision I make is a make-or-break kind of thing, even the choice of wood glue. So I was concerned about "mixing glues," and ended up using the polyurethane glue to attach the first wing as well. Not my best clamping job. I definitely should have planned this part out better. Oh well. Finally, I spent about 20 minutes scrubbing all the glue off my hands, which is way less satisfying than peeling titebond 3 off.

Ok, I got the headstock all thicknessed, and the volute shaped about as well as possible for now. Of course, because I can't leave well-enough alone I had to try to scrape out one more little scratch, and I did something stupid. If you look carefully you will see the evidence in this photo. I was using a card scraper and this chunk of grain just popped off. In my haste I super glued it back on, but I think I should have used wood glue because the super glue dries so dark. Ok, with all that sorted (for now) I'm getting ready to attach the body wings. I guess I could just align everything and glue and clamp it, but I'm not that confident in my clamping skills that the wings won't move around while the glue is still wet. So I used my brother's drill press to drill two holes through the neck blank, and then I took time to clamp the body wings, one at a time, exactly where they are supposed to be on the neck blank and drilled into them. I'm going to use a couple of walnut dowels as pegs to hold the body wings in exactly the right spot as I glue everything up.

To be fair I'm going to do 99.9% of the working prior to bleaching it, if I even use it at all. If it goes on the wenge top I'll do the whole carve and sanding first, then bleach, then a very light sanding to take off any grain that was raised during the bleaching, then finish.