mistermikev

well, something like this... man you wanna take care. The guitar is finished in gloss? even more care. if it's jammed and you catch the edge of that gloss coming out - you'll be sorry. Post some pictures... there are lots here who can help but I think I can speak for them all in saying that pics would help us/me/them help you best! funny, I go look for keisel pickup route pics and first one... notice the little chips in the finish right where the pickups are. I would suggest you A) just leave them and enjoy or B ) prepare for needing a finish touch up to your gloss. You could put some wax on the edge right there to try and help... maybe see if you can take all the screws/springs out and see if you can bend the little tab a bit... but then you have to get them back in w/o issue too. hope that helps.

dang it awl... I swear I did not intend to start this hootenanny. I feel awlful. Just another brick in the wawl I spose.

y'awl are just being silly now.

some beauty stuff there.

nice work. tis a pretty handle. I'm assuming you built this so that when you now use it on a guitar build you can rightfully say "I gave it my awl".

for the record... the angela's purple is what I would call 'royal purple'. Pretty dark out of the bottle. angela's is great stuff... the teal on my avatar gtr is angela's. the blue on my sweet spot was a mix of angelas and other. I predict you'll be happy w it if you are looking for a more 'purpley' color (hehe).

I'm told there are some solid body builders who do it too but I know not who. I don't necc buy into the whole 'glue is bad for tone' thing but I have to admit... the craftsmanship intrigues me. Also, thats a really handsome join there... so nice work on that level too. not seeing any lack of skill from where I'm sitting.

"I will do my best to keep you entertained." nailed it! gawd I could use a calm mind right now... thanks for that!

when I saw this, I thought this was going to be a 'glueless' neck joint and that the bolt was a truss rod (not a lot of experience, and even less mandolin experience). Having read your post I'm up to speed and think it's super cool but can't help but wonder about glueless necks now. I'll shut up now... way outta my league. thank you for sharing.

right on, thank you for the advice. def the grain/feed direction, climb/convention cut, and most importantly RPM/Diameter relationship is something I could stand to keep in mind more. I write my cut direction on my body tempates to help... probably should get in the habit of writing it on every template I make. according to some charts I've seen anything under 1" is OK up to 24k rpm. seems like after that it drops 2k for every 1/2" diameter increase. Don't have too many bits bigger than 1" but will keep that in mind for a few.

when I look at that top pic... I keep seeing some sort of trotting deer, and this last one... a dragon taking flight. it's like looking at the clouds. Your designs are pretty crazy in a good way.

can't hardly even make it out. probably disappear pretty good with finish on. nice recovery.

thanks curtisa... that is all good advice and def accurate but the issue here is getting a binding channel in there. the faceplate needs to be 1.5mm smaller and there was no good way i could figure to get a bit into the little 'hooks' that would have a bearing on it. in retrospect I 'spose I could have glued it up and used my 1.5mm smaller template to cut the rebate. I ended up cutting the rest last night, taking off only a light 1/16 each pass and it went pretty well except one of the horns had a tiny little piece fly off. fortunately I found the piece and am getting really good at gluing on the smallest of pieces! I probably should have used tape to reinforce those horns a bit. will finish that little horn with a diamond needle file when it drys and I should be ok. Really would be made a trivial task by a small cnc setup and that is more and more on my list. thanks again for the reply!

have often thought about snagging those for other jobs... but for this one... a 1/4" bit won't even fit between the horn... so it'd have to be 3/16... then again if I had a 3/36" dremel stone bit and put a stack of 1/4" washers on top of it... might be able to cut a binding channel. Probably wouldn't have the greatest edge on the bottom tho. but then what motivation would I ever have for sweeping the garage floor? (finding chunks of wood that went flying across the room... looking like a crack addict all on my knees searching the floor - wouldn't want to miss out on that now would we!)

some shots of the body... looking pretty tan in this light... inner binding - and one picture says it all in terms of frustration! side note - did you know binding is easily set on fire via heat gun? binding the headstock overlay was seemingly easier comparably!

noice... s/b a very cool build - looking fwd to following. thanks for sharing.

I appreciate that. I guess I won't worry about it for the most part... but I do have a 1.5" bowl bit that is either unbalanced or just too big to run at full speed because it vibrates more than I am comfortable using it at. This will be nice for that and perhaps my chamfer bit and 1/2" radius. Guess we'll see. thanks for the response. thank you AD. for a symmetrical design like this I don't think I could get uniformity on a sander. also, unfortunately for this headstock - if you look at the shape and consider it's being bound. Have to bind it off the neck because of the tight curves - can't get in there to cut binding channel and not willing to do them with a chisel. I think I can make this work tho... going to probably take it and sand it such that there is almost nothing to remove with the router... then try again removing the majority with a bigger bit... and paying a bit closer attention to direction. wish me luck! Might have been a better idea to make a sister template to sandwich it between. Next time!

right on... can't go wrong with whiteside. I hope that's not 2" diameter and more 2" cutting length. I don't think you want to run a 2" diameter bit in a hand held. Either way... you'll find you really are best off overlapping your cuts when planing as you'll get mill mark/lines either way and this helps minimise them. afa leveling... I can tell you the musikraft neck I bought was either leveled or the straightest neck known to man w/o leveling because my action on it is probably less than 1/16 on a 10" radius neck and zero buzz. That said... bizman is right to be suspicious of them... warmoth def admits they don't level. I have bought a neck from them as well and it isn't perfect enough to get minimum action but it is so good that I've never bothered to level it. IOW you'll be fine with most decent necks for now and can always level them later. esp if you don't need super low action.

I would agree w @Bizman62 that it's nothing to worry about. seen lots of strange things in wood over the years... think it was scottr here that had some sort of 'chain link fence' pattern in ash... I've since had a piece with that myself (man that was one looong fence and one biiiig tree!). This actually looks like some sort of fleck or grain... but could just as easily be the edge of a split. I have a split like this in my current ash tele build but it probably only goes in 1/4". clearly doesn't go thru the piece as theirs a ctrl cavity right on the other side of it and it doesn't go thru. wood must have dried and split... and this was just the edge of it. Just filled it with dust and ca and one we go.

that is a clever tip. when you first said locating pin I thought "there's no locating pin on my drill press" then I saw the picture. mind blown. I've always done the top first halfway, then flip and do the back to meet... but the locating pin thing... have not seen that. Will use that next time. funny, first thing I look at when I see a guitar with ferrules is if one of them is slightly in front/back of the others. Can never unsee that now! what I used on my most recent is top down drill halfway then flip over, and I have an mdf template I made with the largest bit for countersinking the ferules. I have a crosshairs on the template to line up with center and approx location measured back from the end of the guitar. Just sticky taped the tamplate down on the lines... now insert the bit into the template hole and make sure you can rotate it. This got me a nice straight line... but admittedly the locating pin idea is way better.

thank you for the response curtisa. yes, blew out both those pieces. I had it upside down from this pic and was taking the full 1/8" off and it is held to the mdf template below via two pieces of tape so... yes... a bit unsupported in that area. Also was using a 1/4" bit. Thing is I just cut a well figured piece for my other headstock with sm bit and paying no attention to grain w/o issue... but not so lucky this time. I think I blew out the leftmost piece by routing the opposite direction on the opposite side. Not confident I didn't do the same thing on the top piece. I'm thinking had I been using a bigger bit I would have been able to do it without issue. so... appreciate the input. what are your thoughts on router speed? do you use a variable speed router at all?

that is crazy beautiful. nice work!

I'll temper my response by saying "there are more experienced builders here who you want to read their response and place it above mine". that said, I'm guessing most of them would tell you what I'm about to: lay it out. With tremolos you can have it float and do a neck angle or have it flush and perhaps not do an angle. I don't know how readily available the ibanez edge III docs are... but I would start there - finding them and setting up a sideview to see how low it needs to sit for a no neck angle install. I know on my jem the base cavity is 1/2" but how that relates to the edge III is not something I know. typical fretboard thickness is 1/4". hope in some small way that helps.

so got a new router today. it's a porter cable 8902 with variable speed. Brand new condition w all the goodies for $70 couldn't pass it up. subsequently did this: and have some theories as to why but wanted to post and get some feedback. 1) could just be this is hard wood - it's granadillo and is very dense/heavy. 2) could be the bit I'm using (brand new) which has a very small cutting edge... it worked fine on the other side but could have been enough up/down drift that I was off the cutting edge on the top. 3) could be the speed of this router - I'm not sure if you should run at 23k rpm in general? I am well aware that for bigger bits you want to slow the router down as the speed at the outer edge of a large bit will be much greater than a small bit... that's the reason I got this one. Haven't looked to see what my other pc router spins at but wondered anyway - what are your guidelines for variable speed routers for those who use a variable speed router and have used it on figured woods etc. does more speed help?

afa necks... mighty mite used to be decent stuff back when they were out of korea... but I think they moved production to china and the wood just hasn't been great. long ago I had a korean mm neck that was solid as a rock... about 5 years ago I bought a p bass neck from them and that thing needed constant adjustment. other recommendations musikraft is very good. warmoth - if you look at their 'available now' selection you can find some good deals and they are solid ime. allparts, wd. search for those brands on evilbay. I would avoid the super cheap stuff as you are going to find that the fretwork is crap and the wood is not great so at that point - given the work you might put in, might as well build it yourself. just my o. afa flatening bit - what did you go with? I like the bowl bits myself and use a whiteside bit. I wouldn't bother getting a big bit because you'll find that you really only want to remove 1/16 depth and about 1/4 bite each pass. I initially thought I'd get a bit 1 1/4 bowl bit but you aren't going to want to take big bites so there is really no point.