mistermikev

you may consider the dremel easy chuch. it allows for (slightly) bigger bits ie reg drill bits to chuck up.

I bought one a long time ago and it was like $18... I bought my drill press for less than $60 on craigslist... just sayin!

is it just me or does your truss rod look a little off center (jk)! that's some interesting neck wood. it'd purty. rock on.

is this a strat 6 hole trem? if not and it's a trem with studs I wouldn't hazard doing it w/o a drill press but consider: A) harbor freight has a drill guide or B ) you can use a known straight piece of 3/4" cut two pieces make a 90 and use the inside corner as a guide. afa spring claw... I have a really long bit that I got ages ago from stew mac... these days you can hit harbor freight and for cheap get a long bit... or if you have a dremel (that's what I use) that will get in there just fine.

looks like congrats are in order... lemme be the first! CONGRATS ON GOTM March 2019!

the judges have spoken!

it's funny, I've seen vids of folks using steam and heat to remove a neck and it always seems so labor intense. I was really surprised how little effort it took to get the binding heated enough to where it would allow movement. I hope I don't ever have to repair a neck, but I wouldn't fear it nearly as much having gone thru this experience. I've learned a lot doing this rosewood binding... def going to keep a keen eye on the binding thickness if I ever do wood on a strat with a wavy line again!

that tool there looks an awful lot like a tool I used back in cab shop days - made by dyna brade. very useful and very aggressive... but given the small nature not sure it'd be the right tool for this application. Body is looking good btw.

right on. I thought I saw some sort of stain there... but paint. I spose to seal it. Looks nice.

Very nice. what did you coat the inside with? some beauty wood there.

thank you Prostheta. Your advice makes a lot of sense. I def would try that on a neck joint. I 'spose the concern is that down the line the binding could pop back into it's orig position. fortunately there are many areas that I didn't have to re-heat that will have more strength. I will take away from this that I probably don't want to do it any more than I have to. It def does seem to degrade the glue in the sense that it shrinks it so... point well taken and than you again for the wisdom.

so not a lot of updates lately as working on all details... not much dif to show. trying out stains, wasn't happy so ordered dif color... worked on my pcb for mid boosters... worked on my binding and closing up some gaps... got my frets for the set neck nipped (dremel stone cylendar is amazing on these... will not use anything else going fwd. cleaned em up with a needle file but wasn't much to clean) here's my pcb process... print out on white paper, tape down some press-n-peel blue, print out again... iron at low temp and with a white piece of paper over and pine board under... after about 7mins the black shows thru the blue and a little more work on the edges to even it out and get a clear image and done. peel off carefully after setting on kitchen solid surface to cool... few spots to touch up with a etch pen and voilla note to self... always tape up the bottom of the bag you use to etch... or your etchant will leak out and into the pan and you'll be pissed. also don't use a tight bag as this doesn't allow the etchant to pool on the top. follow these rules and it won't take 6hrs to etch! after etching below: since I couldn't find any pcb mount push pulls this time... just went with good ole burns... needed to put some resistors in parallel to get down to 50k and this works great as I needed lead to mount to the pcb like panel mount - hard to see but there are two vishay resistors under the legs of the pot here: and here's how it mounts: my faux truss cover came out nice - I made it radius... just one problem: I put such a thick ebony overlay on my headstock that there isn't much clearance to get it between the strings and headstock... so I probably won't be able to use it. no worries: I'm flexible! so tonight I was thinking about how I was going to fret my set neck. I have been using my drill press and a caul... but I can't see how I'll manage getting the neck on there and balancing the body while I press... so decided to take a shot at building a clamp. twas way easy. used a graduated titanium bit to drill out the rivets in a harbor freight clamp... nail set to tap out the bent steel holding the caul to the mouting rod (reversable) and had bolts and washers laying round. just have to build something for the back of the neck. put a 1/4 channel in the back of some walnut, cut a neck shape out of it... drill a hole... then I just need something soft to lay on top and protect the neck. in closing: thanks again to @ADFinlayson, @ScottR, and @Andyjr1515 for help/support/advice regarding gluing on rosewood. I did boil(almost) water and submerge my rosewood for 30mins and that helped a lot. I did not use Andy's method of pre-gluing... but am using wood glue, and have channeled him several times as i've reheated the glue to clamp down gaps. This has totally changed my understanding of wood glue. I had no idea how easily I could heat it and re-clamp something! It's like a mulligan! I'm thankful as it's not perfect but it's working!

swamp ash is simply ash that is light. it's not a species. at least that's my understanding. I am going to go hunting for some ash locally and I know I can find 13" wide x 2" but light... well, you are lucky!

Judges? I think set neck refers to anything less than neck through but more than bolt... but I might be wrong. I like the idea of set net... should suit this well. rock on.

lovely ash grain there, and some nice work. is it me or is your neck pocket extremely long?

some nice glamour shots there! yup... just checked... still love it!

trust me... I find it easy to make mistakes going slow! Have a piece of 3/4 flamed oak that I want to resaw but on my bandsaw I have had poor results resawing much thicker material... and I'd hate to ruin it. Think I might invest in a decent saw and perhaps use some hard maple as saw guides when I get to that point. Anywho, your build is looking pretty good. Looking fwd to seeing it develop. rock on!

I love the gun blue... had never occurred to me but I have some need for black 3 way lever screws and am def going to try this! Lot of cool stuff on this guitar. love it.

seeing your jig makes me want to dance a jig! hand made crank... noice!

wow, you are brave. that is a nice piece of wood! I have a bandsaw that can re-saw but I'll be damned if I can get a good cut out of it... seeing your work makes me think perhaps I should consider trying this (not that I think I could do it but that I think I'd stand a better chance w your method than my bandsaw!) Nice work!

the best. you get a lot of credit in my book for being so quick to answer questions/offer support. thank you for that. thanks re 3x3. turned out pretty good! Not crazy about the bigger sperzel buttons, I'd like to find some smaller white replacements but no such luck so far. Functionally it works great - no issue with interference from the "ball end" that is close to the g string so... pretty pleased! I'm building a clone of a blade for one, and a clone of a fat control for the other. I did layouts such that they will mount right on a dpdt. unfortunately I couldn't find pcb mount push/pulls so... will have to do a little trickery to make them mount on the one's I got.

thank you sir! Thank you to also to this community. Very thankful for the encouragement and inspiration I find here daily!

Sure you could glue it... but ferrules and screws are not a bad option either! afa weight... I have this thinline mahog/maple tele that for ages I swore was super light. It feels like nothing. Finally got a scale and turns out it's heavier than a few other guitars I have at 7+ lbs. This makes me think that balance is more important than actual weight because even knowing this I pick it up and it just feels light. Perhaps it is that the body part is lighter than my other guitars... I dunno.

"I like the cut of your jib" - ambitious first project - good on ya. That is a nice piece of figured walnut. this is going to be an amazing build!

thank you sir. yes, couple points to that in my mind: 1) upper fret access and 2) mounting my two neck pickups on the neck itself. This was an idea I came up with on my own but have since seen that ed roman does it on a few models. The theory there is that the neck pickups should gain some brightness from the maple as opposed to the darkness of the mahog. afa color... should be pretty close to the pictures. The set neck I'm going blue but I think I'm going to shoot for a more 'baby blue'. The bolt version I'm going to dye all a brown that matches the rosewood, then sand back. Then I'm going to apply tru oil, then the top is going to get mohawk 'champagne frost' - should come pretty close to matching the off white inlays. Then I'll do nitro.