ZekeB

Fantastic looking guitar.  I love the dark texture of that top. 

Here's the dry fit.  Black fiber worked really well.  Glue tomorrow 

I'm going with gold as well.  I'm thinking that the other colors are pretty dark and dependent on your finish it could get darker.   The gold is a good accent against that dark to me.   It also depends on the knobs.  If you go with something gold it'll stand out against the black.   I guess it just depends on your components you'll add as well

So I had an idea to try.  I was afraid the gold mother of pearl wood get lost in the zebrawood and I didnt want to use black dye in the epoxy because it's unlikely the route will be perfect.  On top of that some of these pieces are tiny so I decided to glue some black fiber cloth around the sides to help with consistency of the inlay and allow me to open up the route a little bit.  So far so good.  I think it'll clean up well from what I've seen so far.

That neck really pops against that green.  Looks great

That's looking great Ash.  That prs is one of my favorite finishes.

Just an inlay update.  

I think I'll do that to add the eyes and beak at least.  You recommend any specific combination for the dye?

Here she is.  Got a few cracks as I set some but moving forward.  On to the pickguard.

Here's the results from the ebony dust mixture vs black dye mixture.  The larger piece is the dust.

Thanks again, Mike.  For what its worth, here's my inlay procedure.

Started with a printout of the inlay.  I made the lines .010" on the print so it would be on the line of the cut.  I glued those on to the material and that helps with sanding and holding things together if the material is brittle like the jasper.  If you use brittle material go thicker.  On the jasper its 1..5 mm and the MOP is 1mm.  They messed up my order and the black was .5mm so I routed at different depths for those. I used two blades one fine and one course.  Fine for soft material, course for the harder stuff.  

After everything was cut I laid down some painters tape on the fret board and got another print of the template and cut out the shapes with a razor.  I taped when it was positioned and started fitting the pieces in and gluing them into place.  When set, I removed the template and scored the pieces.  I scored the wood.  Removed the material and tape and I scored again deeper so it'll come off when you get near with the router bit.  I used chalk to brighten up the lines.

From there I have a 3/32" and 1/32" bit that are spiral down cutting bits.  the 3/32" bit works well keeping the material out but the 1/32" is honestly still a little messy.  This is where the scoring will help a lot. 

You don't want to go deeper than the width of the bit.  If you do your more prone to breaking it.  You'll also be able to work clean if you do multiple passes.  If I can't see the edge of the side where I scored it I just get near it and leave it alone.  

When the initial route is down I use thee types of razors.  One with a sharp tip, hook, and rounded.  My rule of thump is to try not to pull.the razors.  You'll end up scoring going places you don't want to go.  If the edge is scored well i'll use the rounded one to stab and turn to break it free and you'll have a nice clean accurate edge.  For the really sharp corners I'll use the hook and very carefully stab the corners while pressing down.  

I then try my pieces, re-score if needed and they'll fit eventually.  

Thanks Mike.  Yeah its inlaid.  Left it a little proud to sand down

Cleaned the inlays a little

Finally back to working on this.  Got my fretboard routed and fitted.  Going to expirement with dye and ebony mixtures

They were pretty thick and I could have spared some room and modified them to work but these are pretty low output pickups as well and I think I want to get the neck a little closer.   

I'm excited to move on with my next one too

Well covers didn't work out.  I trimmed them out and will finish them tomorrow.  Really bummed about that.  The height was ok but the corner of my hand hit the edge on the down stroke and I wanted to raise the pickups just a tad more. 

On the bright side it's the best feeling neck I've got so far.  The key seemed to be giving it just.a tad bow so the action can set a little lower.  .05" to .o6"  at the 17th fret seems to be the sweet spot.  

Thanks!  It only took three tries, lol.  I'm glad I did though.  As for the binding I did it before the color coats of laquer.  Then I scraped it back and followed up with the clear.  I wanted to separate the black from the blue wash so I did one wash of blue on the bare wood and another in the lacquer so didn't wash out the black again but still got the blue.  I was afraid it would dull the contrast but I think it turned out pretty good.  

Nitro is about a million times easier to sand and polish up than poly too.  I tried to polish poly many times and never could get near the gloss on nitro.  

I kept the neck tru-oil so I could sand and fine tune that to my feel if need be.  Pretty happy with the changes.  learned a lot

4 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

Looks awesome, sorry if you’ve posted before and I’ve missed it, what material are you inlaying? 

Oh no worries.  Materials are gold, black, and white mother of pearl.  Also have bloody basin jasper.  Their covered with the templates but they will show up when I clean and sand them off.

Rough cut and sand done.  Time to start fine tuning

Welcome to the forums.  I'm pretty new as well on my second build.  I'd suggest looking at previous build threads.   Really good sources here from some very talented people.

I think it's about developing your perspective and expectation as everyone seems to do similar things different ways which leads to a pretty unique guitar.  Your going to have a lot of fun. 

Another beautiful guitar.  Love the coves for the controls.  looks very ergonomic and natural.

About 8 hours into inlay work so far.  Here's the rough cut of the signature for the pickguard.   Ribbon is done as well.  Finish the fretboard inlay tomorrow.

On 5/3/2019 at 5:22 AM, ADFinlayson said:

Ivory binding gets my vote, anything too elaborate detracts from the fretboard. What's the rationale behind 23 frets? 

Its 22 frets.  I think the scale of the frets is wrong on the image.  

haha, gotcha.