mistermikev

jeez this forum... I've got the but and based on all the cool guitars I see I'm going to have about 900 guitars if I build all the ones in my head now... very cool. now I need one with wenge. Looks sort of like the neal schon model as I remember it. what you did with the dots - so simple, but the effect is really classy. very creative. love it.

you got my vote on the top carve - I love it. one of the things that stood out before I read any of this... but what do I know. I just know what I like. That would is beautiful to me. Def clear worthy (NO GOLD TOP!). Nice work!

will have to watch this one for great ideas I can steal!

wow, just wow. so many things I love about this build I don't know where to start. the f holes = awesome. the binding, the shaping of the edge up to the binding... that is excellent work. really just some nice work all around.

that, I'm told, is maple burl. its from canada so it might be "maple burl a". (hehe). here is another shot after routing and with some water... the couple of void spots were pretty 'punky' so last night I was removing some material with forstner and blew out a small piece near the neck joint. should be fine anyway but glued it back in. in retrospect probably not the best decision to have it so close to the neck pocket area but I was trying to minimize it so... alas we'll see if it causes any more problems. If I have to I can always trim out a piece and glue something back in but like I said it's right on the pocket so... may not be a problem. hope to get back to routing the pickups and f holes tonight so- something to look forward to today while I save the world from badly formatted data. so below is another "crazy mike's wireup" I did for a 7 string washburn. think I might use a variant to wire this up. the three way selects between parallel/series - inside/outside coils. a nice marriage between simplicity (3way) and lots of options with the rotary. will do a ebmm diy preamp for this one so have to decide if I need a separate battery cavity. also need to decide if I want to redo my pcb layout. I kind of like the idea of A) board mounted pots and/or B ) putting my trim vol in a spot that would be adjustable through the f hole. Not sure if I have the effort in me as my current layout has been verified a few times. plus still have to etch a pcb, drill it out, populate, test, etc. sounds like a lot of work so will have to check my bag of assembled stuff and see if I have one in there as an alternative. thinking 1 vol, 1 rotary, 3way toggle, bass w push pull for true bypass, treb w push pull for bright.

thanks for the response. nice description ala buff through gloss to gloss. I wetsand with 1k and up... so no real matte layers. I hear ya tho... if you wetsand with 600 and then break through... yeah - you will see the transition. I've made the mistake in the past of wetsanding with lower grit and not bringing it up to 1k and under the gloss - even w/o breaking through - you could see a slight 'haze' if you look at an angle. I dunno, all I'm saying is it seems to me a lot easier to do poly after to and get a completely flat finish that is high gloss. my only complaint with that is the couple of store bought types I've tried have yellowed a bit. Prob my fault for using minwax and other common poly. what do you use? I don't have a sprayer so... I think next build I will try some reranch can laquer or perhaps a better poly. I think spray works best for me afa final layers.

thanks for the response, sorry, must'v missed it. i appreciate the encouragement on the neck/body difference. it has grown on me and others comments helped for sure. 90% of what you said to me makes sense with my trials and tribulations except 1 part. it seems to me that with poly... once we are above the wood... I can wetsand and don't have to worry about wetsanding through one coat and into another... ie as long as I don't sand down to wood it is ok: once I buff/polish you won't see the transition between the two layers. with to... you have to be able to wetsand and not break through the top most layer - even if you don't break through to wood - you have to maintain that top layer - which I found virtually impossible. just leaves polishing and or buffing. seems like you have to lay it on so thin that it is smooth w/o wet sanding at all. maybe that's what you meant, or maybe I just didn't find a way to do it. lot of imperfections in my final layer that you won't see unless you catch the light just right. again, if I had to do over I'd just poly over the top and do my normal wetsand routine. the to does not seem to suffer the yellowing - which I like, but the amount of work is just redic. not doing that again! going to look for some better quality poly that hopefully will remain more clear. thanks again - I can't tell you how much I appreciate the response!

this won't be the most scientific answer and I know that's probably what yer lookin' fer so take with grain of salt... in this case the preamp isn't using a volume on the backside of the circuit... so I would go 250k

very nice reply mr natural. your name suggests perhaps you have a background in professional wrestling? hehe anywho, i guess we all have our own feared tools. as a woodworker - I knew too many people with missing digits and 9/10 were from a tablesaw... few from a shaper, none that I know of from a router. that said, I am very aware that any tool can hurt you on any day. as far as blow out... seems like downhill routing and good blades does the trick for me... at least on walnut. thank you very much for checking out 'boozer'. I very much appreciate your comments. do you have a youtube channel? happy to return the feedback if you do. cheers

thank you sir. have quite a ways to go yet but gettin' there. not bad for a first anyway. prob finish up the body this weekend. might try to tackle the neck wood with my jigsaw. after all the horror stories of folks trying to cut 8/4 with jig saw... mine powered through like it was butta - at least doing straight lines anyway. cheers and thanks for the response!

I don't care if no one ever responds to my posts... I'm having fun so... here is my progress so far: had bought a delta band saw - just an 8". hoping I'd be able to re-saw the 5" 6/4 walnut I bought for a neck... didn't work so well. actually got about 6" into it but just was stopping the saw at that point. I suppose if I bought a better blade perhaps I could muddle through but figured I'd "go with the grain" and work on the body for now. used my router sled to plane it down to approx 1.5". calipers says I'm within 8/1000 thickness on all measured edges so - close enough for me. so drilled some holes and used my jig saw to ruff cut the shape used my drill press and barrel sander on it...but right away blew out a small piece at the bottom edge. so I read up on downhill routing and switched to my whiteside bit 3/4 instead of 3/8. that worked a lot better. the chunk was glued back in but I think it was completely routered off in the end so - no worries there. routed out my f holes cavities and gave her some random weight relief... applied black epoxy to some voids and glued my top on. till next time!

so... needed to join a .4 maple burl top together. have no jointer and anyways I'm not comfy on a jointer - I guess because I've only used them a handful of times. anywho, here is a video of the how I prepped my top to be joined using the frontside/backside router trick. It's a fairly well known technique but haven't seen a lot of vids on this so thought I'd share. sorry, too big to host here so... youtube it is... video of prep on maple burl top

so... finally got her finished. below is a shot of my pre-wiring. Still have some dialing in to do...my wiring worked right out the gate. I've included an updated version of the drawing - only change was I had made a mistake naming one of the wries and I redrew the ground wires for clarity. I knocked the poles out of one of three dummy coils and am going back to nock out the poles from the others when I get to it. seem to get more hum from them. not sure if it's something to do with the poles or just due to the series wiring vs parallel? afa series vs parallel on the non dummy pickups I absolutely love it. much more output but less highs. perfect for in front of my marshall. 3rd mode is even more output and fat. really happy with that as well. knobs and 5 way tip turned out pretty nice for a first time shot. "Texas Stratovarious(parts)" get it... it's a strat made of various parts! haha! I've copyrighted that and if you use it I will sue you for all your guitars and amps! The gold foil logo was next to impossible for me to get 100% right. In the end I settled for one with a few minor blemishes. and here she is... my wife's first comment was "that neck doesn't match that body". She's right. and the headstock yellowed a bit with the poly I put on to seal in the decal. All told, pretty happy with it. Plays amazing - really have to hand it to musikraft - didn't even do a fet level cause I figured I'd see how it played... keep in mind I like very low action. no buzz whatsoever. neck is ridgid as all hell. one small adjustment and it has been rock solid. trem/tuners stay in tune better than anything other than a floyd. it is way better than my guitar with 6 hole and graphtec + sperzels + 4 springs. Gotoh tuners are easily the smoothest I've ever felt. thanks for all the support and reading my blathering on! oh, and a few notes on finish: the body is nbto (nuthin' but true oil). I'll never do that again. what a gigantic pain in the u know what. it is very glossy, but has small imperfections. I may have to try to hand buff them out. kept sanding through layers of tru oil with 2k grit paper. then you'd get white lines where one layer stopped and the other started - even after buffing. tru oil is just too thin to really wet sand. If I put it on thick I'd get 3d finish where the tru oil would bunch up. put it on thin and you'll burn through with any sanding. ultimately, I built up enough finish to wet sand and still have finish underneath. then a final thin 2 coats with no wet sanding.

right on. shipping to us was only $20 so... def reasonable.

I've built a few of these... http://www.runoffgroove.com/ruby.html very easy, sounds great, batteries last forever in it, surprisingly loud.

so went to one autozone and they "didn't have any belts that small" went to another and they nailed it. 21" circumference v belt for $6.5. It fits a lot tighter than the belt I had, and is wider but works - and actually improved my drill press greatly. I needed to drill a 3/8" hole through 2 sides square steel for the router sled I'm making. with the new belt that thing went through it like butter. seriously impressive. thanks for the suggestion!

thank you sir. Good idea.

so... I've got a black and decker model 9402 type 1 13" drill press. One of the belts is about done. Took it off and looked at it and it says "Mountain M-21". Measured it rough and it looks to be about 21" circumference. Found diagrams telling me it's part 99! but that does nothing for me in terms of actually purchasing one. Is the belt I need an M21? I see some other presses with m21 in the lingo but unfortunately, none of the products list the damn belt size. i'd take a gamble if I knew at least it was a 21" belt. What can you tell me about drill press belts and how to find one that will work for me?

lol headache infinitum I would welcome... sounds awesome!

so, first off: not affiliated in any way. this is NOT shameless self plug or anything like that. I've gleaned a lot of good info here from very generous souls and just wanted to A) give back a bit and B ) help out my canadian new best friends - woodtoworks.com! I recently bought a 5A maple burl top from these guys and after shipping I paid approx $60. It is a stunning top - a few bark incursions but the figure is all of 5A. On the down side... right off the bat it started curling up due to the change in humidity. These are all kiln dried... so there's that. I'd show ya pics but I just took the top and laid it on a big flat piece of wood, put two straight 2x4s on top of it... and then loaded it down with barbells (I never work out anyway). Will leave it there for a month. Anyway, the site has some great prices on tops and body blanks (unglued). Wanted to share as even after shipping - for what you get, and assuming you are willing to deal with a little bow - they are better than anything I've seen - plus they are canadian which means they are guaranteed good folks ime.

you've been so kind to me and lots of good advice prostheta - I don't know if I'm being stupid but I actually just realized I didn't see this post before... and I felt like perhaps it was rude of me not to comment... at the same time was conflicted because I don't want to domineer and think I need to respond to every post... long story short - I think too much. but this is true... altho I think 6 coils in this case. could be two strats even! anywho, I'll shut up now.

thank you... thank you very much. you are too kind sir. there is a fine line between kiss and too complex. I know because I constantly cross over it. So much so that I've begun the practice of putting a cheat sheet on the control cavity of many of my guitars/basses -reminding myself of how the controls work. I'm a spice of life kinda guy... that's not for everyone.

no worries... I didn't exactly explain it and am admittedly a newby here so... was a natural conclusion. I thought about bondo... but (i think) it is hard to keep it liquid enough to really drip into the seam unless you don't use much hardner - then it will take a long time to harden... that said I may try it next time as it's cheap and I have lots. Plus that epoxy really sticks to the tape so... students, sisters... sounds like good things your way -cudos.

as always - a wealth of info. i will have to move it indoors - good to know - also it hits 115 here pretty reg in a few months so would have to anyway. afa fingerboard: couple things... I was thinking that if my neck build is a disaster I'd want to buy a warmoth neck and that has the rounded heel... so just being conservative there. afa epoxy - I'm not sure if you smell what I'm stepping in there... what I was doing is rough cut out the neck, sand it right, put tape around the edge, put it back in the piece it was cut from, epoxy in the gap... then this is just used to create a template. The final neck will have no epoxy whatsoever. Now I have a template that is tight.

thank you very much for chiming in. Lotta good info there. I'm not sure I undersand your first line other than that you have discerned that it wasn't a huge tree... my process was: "gee it looks pretty - lets make a guitar of it!" afa dry: I know it was sitting at the place I bought it for at least 3-4weeks. By how fast the pile moved I'm gonna guess they got it 2-5weeks before that. It feels dry when I touch it... not 'cold' altho it isn't really resonant when you knock on it. Not sure if that's just because it is so dense or because it is full of water. For now - the two pieces are pretty much straight as an arrow . You've just answered my prayers with your info regarding sawdust and now I know exactly what I'll do next - cut a corner and see what the dust looks like! I bought this early in my process because I have read that you wanna let it sit in your "shop" (for me a garage!) for 6-12 weeks prior to doing anything. If this is anything like letting my saltwater fish tank cycle... well lets just say I'll do my best to work on other things for at least another 3-4 weeks! afa neck joint... well I know you can do it with straight edges screwed in next to the piece... but the sanding of the heel radius to make it match is an achilles heel (pardon the pun) for me. I am aware that collets would have worked, however the epoxy method is just something I wanted to try... and I like to think it worked pretty good for first time (pics above). It was surprisingly easy. Surely my process could improve and frankly it was impeded by a combo of not enough epoxy, should have used 2 layers of tape for a 'less tight' joint, and a cheap bit that wasn't as wide as the bearing. That said - my joint looks ok yes? no? I thought it was pretty tight, especially on the cavity cover. I don't even think I'd need screws to hold that - just friction! then again... once I have some finish on a piece it would be too tight. Lots of room for improvement in my skills for sure. Thanks again for the response - if I ever sound like I'm not appreciative I don't mean to. I just think out loud a lot and frequently think as I speak! cheers!