CDH

Thanks! You've got me thinking!

Here are some long overdue pictures of the guitar on its first road trip. I bought a sewing machine to try my hand at making a travel bag as well. Some more shots taken outside I'm really happy with how it turned out. It plays and sounds great!

I'm trying a similar paint I bought from Stewmac. Set your meter to check continuity and touch your probs together. They should read zero. Now touch both probs to the paint in the cavity. If it's conductive you will get some kind of a reading. By the way, love the work you're doing on this build!

I'm on the road at the moment, but here are some photos from my progress before I left town. I continued to struggle with the Tru-Oil on the body. Every time I thought I had it done and perfectly buffed, I would find a spot that had buffed through or a bad scratch/scuff would show up. I decided to pull the trigger on Solarez. I only had three or four days to work on it before leaving town and the days were all cloudy or rainy. I still managed to get the finish close enough to assemble the guitar and test it out. It felt strange to take my orbital sander to a basically finished guitar body! After touching up the dye job the body was ready for the Solarez base. After curing over night (Solarez cures slowly in cloudy conditions and it seems to benefit from curing overnight despite what the marketing says), time for the gloss coat. Time to assemble! The neck and the slide out waist bout are still finished with Tru-oil. I'll see how the slide out finish holds up over time. When I get home I'm going to make some tweaks. The neck still needs some work. It's a little too thick for my liking. Overall, I'm very pleased with how it plays and looks. I can't wait to build the carry case and take it on the road!

I finally got the finish on the fretboard ready for frets! It was time to break out my trusty home made fret bender. Much cheaper than the store bought version! Ready to go. I was using my drill press as a fret press, but I was in danger of breaking it. I picked up this 1 ton arbor press from Harbor Freight for $50 and modified it to accept my fret press caul. It works so much better than my drill press! I really like this new fret end bevel file. I lost my old one that did 35 degree bevels. This one does both 90 and 35 degree bevels and since the file sticks out on each end, you can quickly do spot filing as well.

I haven't used Thru-Oil since my first build, so I did a little research to re-familiarize myself on how to get the best finish with it. During my search I found a post on another forum from a guy who said that "Tru-Oil finishes are matte at best." He also prefaced that comment with "don't flame me, but..." lol Pictures don't do it justice. It looks like glass, but it has taken me weeks to get it that way and I'm not so sure it will hold up to the abuse I will give it as a travel guitar. If it gets to beat up later on I will sand it down and finish it with Solarez. The Solarez sealer seams to stick really well to just about anything including Tru-Oil and the Solarez clear coat is very durable. I should have used it from the start. Oh well!

Here is some of the work I've done lately. I sanded out and filled in the faux binding on the top of the guitar, but I left it un-dyed on the sides. I'm much happier with this. I did some grain filling. I like how the black looks. The covers in place. My logo. I did it in Photoshop. I like that it matches the body a bit. I've been building up layers of Tru-Oil the last few days and will be continuing for another week or so. I will post pictures soon.

I travel for work as an audio engineer, so I will be taking her everywhere.

I've done some more work over the last few days. I inlayed the MOP side markers with an oversized holes filled with ebony dust to make them stand out, as I am only doing a 12th fret marker on the top. Next was the neck contour using my router jig to get the rough shape. I drilled the neck screw holes and put together the sliding bout. Attaching the tuners. Cavity covers. Dying the top. I'm not sure I like how the faux binding looks. For some reason it looks cheap on this guitar. I'm going to fill it in tomorrow.

I got home from a several week long road trip a week and a half ago...just in time for the flu to kick in hard. Before I went on the road I glued the top on. I was finally able to get a little work done this week. A little mockup The first step towards the slide out waist bout. I have this hose in the shop that is a perfect fit for a bushing material No guts, no glory! I was agonizing over this cut. I was trying to think of the best way to make this cut, circle jigs, etc. After practicing on scrap, I just cut along a line freehand. There is something to be said for a high quality band saw! It's official! I'm doing the slide out bout.

Can you tell me which one (model #)? The roll I have is the 3M from Stewmac. Not sure if it's the same thing. I've found blue 3M painters tape and CA to be much less expensive ($8 for 100 meter roll and $3 for a couple tubes of CA) than double adhesive tape (Stewmac $20.88 for a 33 meter roll). Again, maybe my source of the double adhesive is the problem. Glue squeeze-out is never an issue because I use small drops evenly spaced. I've always found it difficult to get the pieces apart when I'm done, which has given me more and more confidence in this technique as time goes by. I'm relatively new to all of this, so I'm always open to suggestions from people like you who do this professionally.

Nice build! Your swirl video is the best one I've seen!

Yep, I had the same experience with my double sided tape. The superglue and masking tape trick doesn't flex like that. It's a much stronger bond as well because you can really press both sides of the tape to each surface first. I learned it here:

I like the hot glue idea. I'll have to try that next time. I've tried double sided tape, but I found another version of double sided tape that works much better. I put masking tape on both surfaces then super glue the tape together. It holds much better, but works just like double sided tape when removing. I use this method when the workpiece is light and/or small.

I was making a small shelf (14" x 3") and I needed to recess all but the front and sides to create a 1/4" lip on those edges. I set the fence on the router table at 2.75" from furthest point on the blade so I could flip the board upside down and cut exactly 2.75" into the wood to make the 1/4" lip on the front edge. I think what happened was that when I was working the right side of the shelf, I pushed the wood with the rotation of the blade and it grabbed it. I was feeling comfortable with having my hands on the wood because, for this cut the blade was never supposed to be exposed (like cutting a truss rod channel). I was using a 1" blade and it tossed the wood across the shop. It's just the tip of the finger. It should heal up fine.

Well, I didn't get any work done on the guitar Sunday. I started out the day with a side project (a small shelf) and while doing some routing on the router table, the wood kicked out of the way and my right ring finger took its place! I shredded the tip of my finger and chipped the bone. Surprisingly, It only took 6 stitches to sew it back into something that resembles a fingertip. I should make a full physical recovery, but I'm a little more shy with my power tools now. So, yesterday I got back on the horse. This is the second time Ive had this large pattern bit chip out like this. The last thing I needed was to have this happen so soon after my accident. I switched bits and went with multiple passes. I should have done it like this in the first place. I used a piece of veneer that I made while testing the new band saw as a shim to put a 1 degree pitch on the neck pocket. The neck fits like a glove in the pocket! With the maple top added and sanded, it will be a perfect fit. Gluing the book matched maple together. Routing the nut shelf and headstock. Starting to take shape.

It's been a while since I've done some work on the guitar. I've been waiting on delivery of my new toy! My small Skil band saw just wasn't cutting it anymore (no pun intended). So, back to the build. Got some work done on the neck today. I put the truss rod in upside down, so I need to sand some clearance for the wagon wheel shaft. Dry fitting the fingerboard. All glued and clamped. Tomorrow I'm hoping to get some more work done on the body.

Today I prototyped the slide out bout with some scrap wood. I couldn't find a small enough lid stay at the hardware store so I just drilled and cut a large one to size. Here I've clamped the test prototype to the routing template to give a little prospective. I'm really happy with how smooth this works and how solid it is. With it retracted there is no movement and extended it is still very solid with only a tiny bit of acceptable play. As I had hoped, the lid stay keeps all the parts rigid. I guess it's a good thing I couldn't find a smaller one.

I want to show you all one of my favorite jigs in action. I built this planer table when I had a 5-piece neck blank that was twisted. Even if I had a planer (not yet), it wouldn't fix a twist. Here is my glued body blank ready to be leveled to the right thickness (1.5 inches in this case). I shim one corner with layers of masking tape until the blank lays flat without rocking. Now I just tape the blank in place to keep it from sliding. I set the router depth to the lowest spot on the top of the blank and pass the router back and forth over the whole surface until I have removed a thin layer of wood off the entire top surface. Then I flip the blank over and the bottom lays completely flat. I tape it down and remove thin slices until the blank is at the desired thickness.

I made brass L-brackets that mount to the back of the tuner. When I tested it I added a small wood screw through the front mounting hole and the tuner was completely solid in place.

That's right...Operation shoestring! That's the thread that brought me to this site. I came across that when I was researching tuners for this project. Beautiful guitar! Thanks for that post!

Thanks for the heads up! I never considered that they used each other for support. I couple weeks ago I test mounted one of the tuners to a board and attached a low E string and brought it up to tension. This test was to check if the mounting would work under tension, but I didn't notice (wasn't looking for) anything unusual with the axle. I'll have to keep an eye on it. You're right, definitely need the wrench to tune it. I may incorporate the magnetic storage technique that the bridge housing uses for the little wrench. Somewhere on the headstock perhaps.

Just brass a far as I know. Yep. They work great.

I originally had 2 rods in the design, but the spring cavity is taking up prime real estate for a second rod. I figured the lid stay might offer enough added stability. If I decide to actually do the sliding bout, I will first prototype with some scrap wood to see how things work out. I got some work done today, but first some elaboration on the tuners. I want to have tuners that will keep a low profile. The guitar will be in a soft case and I don't want tuners sticking out and getting bent and broken in overhead bins. I bought a headless guitar tuner bridge from China. I removed the tuners and will mount them as shown below. These aren't the greatest tuners in the world, but they just need to get the guitar in tune enough to lock the nut and then use the Floyd Rose fine tuners. Yesterday I prepped the white limba lumber for making the body blank. Here I'm using my router as a jointer Ready for gluing, but it was 45 degrees in the garage yesterday so I had to wait for the warmer temps today to glue. So, today I got the body blank glued and clamped... The neck blank will be able to produce 2 necks. Bonus! Routing the truss rod channel. Routing the radius in the fingerboard. 10" - 16" compound radius. To cut the fret slots I tape the blank to the back of a pre-slotted fretboard from Stewmac. The Stewmac fretboard acts as a template and the slots lock into a blade mounted in the bottom of the slotting jig. I just slide the two boards from slot to slot and cut away. After the slots are cut shallow with the jig, I finish them free hand with the blade depth guide to keep a uniform slot depth across the radius. Well, that's all for today.

As I mentioned in my first thread on this forum, my next project is a travel guitar. I travel a lot for work and the Traveler that I bought just doesn't cover my needs anymore. I want to have a neck pickup, a Floyd Rose and I want it to have the ability stay in tune for more than 5 minutes (3 things the Traveler doesn't do). I've started with this photoshop rendering of my design. My Traveler fits in the overhead bins in aircraft with no problem. This design is only 4 or 5 inches longer than the Traveler so I think it will be small enough to go everywhere with me like the Traveler has for the past year or so. One feature I'm on the fence about is a slide out waist bout. I'm not sure if it will be worth the extra work. If I do it, I will use a 3/8" aluminum rod and a lid stay mounted on the back to lock it in the extended position. Here are most of the materials for this build: Flamed maple neck, ambrosia maple fingerboard, flamed maple top and white limba body. Right now I have a couple of cheap spare pickups to get things going, but I will swap those out later. Here is drawing that I used to make the MDF templates. I increased the size of the lower bout and rounded it, but this shouldn't affect the portability much. Here are the competed templates. I started cutting wood today. More pics to come...