mistermikev

tis a shame, that's a nice chunk of wood. coming along nicely tho.

thank you sir! the rail table turned out quite nice. I've got ideas of how I might try a compound radius next, but can imagine getting a lot of mileage out of it as is too! Thank you sir! Thank you again for all your input!

so the last week and a half - kind of stalled up at the binding process... on my rosewood binding... I've actually got it bent around the entire guitar now, but I need to build some forms to apply pressure while i glue it up so... here's a shot of how it started: here's one of the pieces bent around the body: had my set neck entirely bound with white binding twice. Once I applied my roundover... it got so thin that the line between body and binding was blurry so I stripped it back and tried it again via scraper and file... but didn't like that either so I pulled it all and have decided I'm going to try something different - leaving it square but offset a little bit from the roundover. Here's an earlier shot of the guitar with binding before I did the roundover: here is a mock up of what it's going to look like when I rebind it: To do this I'm going to have to dye the body first. I can't have ca glue preventing dye... and once the binding is on I won't be able to do any sanding near it. If a little glue seeps out onto the body after it's dyed - it'll be fine as it will just darken it a hair and be a little 'shiny'. cut my control holes: planed down some mahog for my cavity covers: here they are rough cut: and here they are installed - haven't sanded them flush yet... got my tuners installed, got my cavities covered in shielding paint, and my trem mounted... did my mop logo on the set neck: lots to do yet... here is my todo list: bolt: shielding paint on the control cavity, make forms for glueing binding and glue up binding, need a new nut... the bone nut just looks bad to me, after binding is installed need to roundover the top then cut the belly relief, install the trem claw, drill top jack, drill strap locks, finish sand the fretboard add frets and level, dye everything brown (note to self hit the truss cavity) and sand it back, add brown grain filler, hit it with some tru oil, then tape off and finish in champagne frost, print out the logo and add white/clear it, build a preamp, install electronics! set neck: shielding paint the control cavity, add an angle piece to back of headstock (long story), dye the fretboard (nts hit the truss cavity), make faux truss cover and add binding, tape off body and dye it, bend the binding and carefully install it (note to self break one edge!), install trem claw, drill top jack, drill strap locks, install frets and level, hit everything with true oil, build preamp, install electronics!

beautiful. that left horn really sets the whole thing off. nicely done.

right on. that's a nice match. gonna look great.

neck is sweet. is that cooked maple or stain? either way - looks nice. looks like a good start here. nice work @ShatnersBassoon

AD - turns out no one sees the inside after you glue the top on anyway! that thing is gonna sounds sweeeeeeet! rock on.

My bad. so the step mac is good then. yeah, the dremel plunge base is horrible. hate it. the tile base is ok... stable... just hard to see.

looking good. wet sanding? never heard of it. jk. I've seen some guys use a drill and drum w buffing material attached for those horns... haven't tried it myself but might on my next finish. I usually try to over sand before finish to limit the amount of work after finish is on. also try to make sure my finish is really good in those parts if not everywhere else.

sounds like for the price you wouldn't give it extremely high marks. wobble... that's one area the tile cutter base worked well on... such a small surface area and once it's locked down it doesn't move... but even with a head lamp on I could hardly see the area I was cutting. If they made one from clear plastic it would actually be pretty sweet! anywho, your logo looks really good, so nice work!

love your logo.. so playful! I've got to get a better router base (I'm going to blame my shoddy work on that!)... the dremel router base blows and you can't see anything so I use the dremel tile cutter base -which also blows... and you can't see anything! I'd like a stew mac base but don't like it being metal... how do you like it afa being able to see? been thinking about making a plexi base modeled after the stew mac base, but using the tile cutter height adjust, and putting some leds in it. Something to think about anyway.

whatever works right!

hello and welcome! I have a youtube channel... can't offer much for tutorials but I'd love to swap subscriptions with you https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCktim1mj88l9JAwQy4KB4eg just subscribed to yours. My first build was a thinline 32" scale p bass. Probably fairly ambitious but thanks to help from many on this forum I came out unscathed. take a drink from the fire hose and dive in! Look fwd to seeing your build come to life! btw - wenge body looks really cool. have never used an angle grinder but I'm told they work well. my limited carving experience has all been using a router/steps/scraper and that seems to work great for me. There's no right way - just the way that works for you so, that seems to work for you! cheers

nicely done.

btw tried the bits this weekend... they work great. still need something a bit smaller... thought 1/16 would do it but it's just a hair too thick so will test out the harbor freight stuff next.

i have super corrosive fingers... what's worse I have a lot of guitars. I've found that as long as I keep a cotton rag lying round and white the strings immediately after playing I can extend the life quite a bit - 4-6wks. However, they start to loose their snap at about 4 wks anyway. fast fret seems to work nice for cleaning them off when they have corrosion... and since i have a lot of guitars - unless I'm recording - I let the strings get a bit older and just use that to give them a nice 'slippery' feel again. my experience w coated is they only coat the wound strings... so it does nothing for me as the unwound strings corrode just as fast as normal. they tend to be a hair dark anyway. now on bass... totally fine with dark and all strings are wound so I use tapewound or dr black beauties. your mileage may vary.

right on. looking fwd to this single cut done as well!

don't make this weird now! btw - thank you and @ScottR - submerging in water made a huge dif.

I got pretty dark w a maple neck once... sold that guitar but I must have dyed it 30 times and used a powdered dye that I almost mixed very heavy. I think our finishing experts here would likely tell you to first sand with 220 or even 120 and then add dye... to get it deep in the pores.

I liked it a lot before but it looks like you softened the carve a bit if I'm not mistaken? looks good. can't wait to see it finished!

ok first off you win the biggest bit competition. I know some of those neck profile bits ar big but that looks 1 1/4+? saw this top over on amateur luthier and meant to comment - looks realy cool with that carve. gonna be a lady killer.

better than that... I've tried it on this guitar! This will be my 3rd time binding it! The second time I didn't use the router at all. just scraper and lam file. w the burn marks gone from the channel it looked much better... but still a blurry line. (I don't always test my code... but when I do... I prefer the LIVE environment!) The router did melt it a bit the first time... but it was fixable via sanding. I did several passes and lowered the depth each time so it wasn't bad. thank you re gratitude. believe it or not I'm relieved! just how I roll. for better or worse I'm going to try square binding. If I succeed then I'll have something I haven't seen anyone else do. If I don't... I'll have learned that it is another bad idea!

some good thoughts there. it's happening at the top 1/16 or less of the binding. when I did my first run I had burn marks in my binding channel and these stood out like a soar thumb - behind the binding! Just for the top 1/16. this is 1.5mm binding. then i did a clean channel, but I guess I hadn't noticed that the same top 1/16 of the binding looks 'discolored' on my last run. You go from stark white to seeing some of the maple color behind it and any variation thereof. It literally blurs the line between top and binding. afa binding quality - yes: this binding is not the sm quality I have used before. it bends very easily. I think you nailed that. that said my neck is bound with it and looks nice... don't want to risk a color mis match at this point. I tried to put sort of a 67deg on the last 1/16th when my last run started looking bad - it did make it better, but still the transition didn't look good to me. sorry, didn't mean to drag you into this and make it so complicated! You are a lot like me in that once you get started trying to fix something - it's hard to stop that train! I imagine that serves you well as it does me. I am very thankful for your help here - and you constant feedback on this site! I hope I don't ever sound like I'm not. before I did my last run... I remember looking at the binding on there - just square - and thinking that it looked pretty good and that I might just leave it. But a voice in my head said: "now you set out to do X so don't be a b-word... do X"! The problem would have been any glue. it will prevent dye. and be impossible to sand. If I attempt the sqr binding... and I have any gaps that need ca glue - I can tape off and put some in. There were only two spots like that on my last run. I think I can do this... and if I can't I can always re cut the channel, sand the entire finish off, and come up with a new plan.

he he... no I'm not doing it the RIGHT way. I'm holding the binding in my fingers, holding the iron on it while i push it onto the iron. as soon as i see the moisture dry up, I stop, re-spritz, then reapply heat. probably has a lot to do with how long it's taking! It would def be nice to have the curling iron mounted. Gonna have to think on how I'd do that. could probably just clamp it... but since it became mine perhaps I'll epoxy it into a box.

I'm "falling back" on the idea that scraping the binding just won't work. My plan is to apply the binding and NOT scrape it since I didn't like the results of the thin binding the first 2 times. This time I'm just going to leave it w/o any shaping. doing that means I won't be able to sand anywhere near it... so as I see it I need to get my piece all sanded perfect, dye it, apply the binding being carefull as all hell not to get glue on the north side. This top is just getting true oil finish and satin/flat. Probably equally as challenging because I won't be able to wet sand that area at all. is this crazy talk?