Lwguitar

Loving that walnut neck!

What oil did you use?

22 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

One main reason for a flexing saw blade is too much downwards pressure compared to the friction. Based on the images it looks like you followed the bottoms of the circular saw grooves, a method that maximizes the friction. Instead you should have knocked off the corners so you'd always be cutting the shortest possible stretch.

I thought I already had posted a sketch about the sawing order, but apparently not:

 

Thats the technique I used.  Not sure whats going on... Oh well.

4 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

that's unfortunate, when I've done this I've used the cheapest crappiest saw from b&q but it has quite a wide kerf, which means wasting more wood but it stays true. If that gouge is right in the middle, could you get away with putting it on the top so the glue up hides it? I guess you could stick your body template on top, draw round it and see if it appears at the edges. Worst case scenario, you could make the body a bit thinner or put a contrasting veneer between the top and body woods.

My saws kerf is about double the blade thickness, my line is straight on the edge of the board but the blade flexes in the middle and makes a curved cut. There is probably something off in my technique.

The total thickness should end up being around 2” when the guitar is done so it’s really not too big of a deal. I was planing on having it 2 1/4” though. 

Pretty frustrating day, I spent two hours hand sanding then this happened. 

pretty much ruined the thin cutoff...

The blade was wobbling like crazy so I also ended up getting a pretty big gash in the body as well which means it’s a Brit thinner than I was planning. I think it will still be fine but I may end up with a slightly thinner guitar than I was originally thinking.

Ended up using my leveling jig to level it down to 1 3/8”. There is still a bit of a gouge but I’m gonna see how it looks once the guitar is a bit farther along.

1 hour ago, Urumiko said:

My fave thing so far is that it looks from the pics like someones turned their dining room in to a workshop... wife be damned! lol...

HAHA! Nope, pics are in our garage/workshop. 

I want to keep the wife happy! She is supportive and I want to keep it that way! 

No pictures but I sawed for about an hour and got 1/4 of the way through. Haha!

The blade was starting to wonder off even with the deep kerf. I think the blade is flexing when I push it. Not sure what to do about that.

I need one of these!

On 5/16/2019 at 4:45 AM, ADFinlayson said:

My initial thought when I did that was that it's an awful lot of effort for a control cover. If you can keep it flat over time then you could use it as a drop top, but my 15mm slither of limber I cut free cupped significantly anyway (wasn't dry enough) so my choice was use it for a cover or bin it. But IMO having perfectly grain matched control covers looks that little bit more boutique.

I guess you could make your wenge one first and decide if you like it or not. 

I'm going to use magnets to hold the cover in place and if I was able to get the grain matched up just right it would look pretty awesome. I just hate to cut a whole in the middle of that big piece of figured Makore.

On 5/16/2019 at 12:18 PM, Bizman62 said:

I was going to say "do both" but that might save a larger piece of wood for something more spectacular.

Yah, ruining the big piece of Makore is where I'm struggling!

19 hours ago, Jdogg said:

Wenge is rarely, if ever, unacceptable in my opinion.....

 

I'm pretty sure it would look awesome, maybe just not as awesome as a grain matched cover. 

14 hours ago, mistermikev said:

would seem a shame to waste such a big and pretty piece of wood for just a few ctrl cavities.  I think as long as you tie it in by matching with something else... it'll look good, possibly even better.

My thoughts exactly... but it would look so cool if I pulled it off!

7 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

Have you got enough walnut left for a control cover? That would look badass 

I'm pretty sure I will. A flamed walnut would look pretty cool!

Looks great man! Inlay is one of the things I’m most scared of!

23 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

Yep that looks good, essentially that is what I do only with a hand kerfing plane. If you make the side you're cutting the underside, you've got some real nice grain-matching control covers there

I can’t make up my mind on wether I want to attempt to match up the control cover using the Makore or just make a high contrast cover using Wenge (same material as neck). 

Heck yah! Awesome playing too!

I went by my dads house to borrow his table saw. 

Probably took out 2 hours of hand sawing! Also I now have a nice deep kerf to help guid the saw blade. Two more hours of hand sanding and I should have two pieces of wood!

I wish I had used this method for book matching the top, it would have been much quicker and resulted in a thicker flatter top.

1 hour ago, ADFinlayson said:

Table saw is a really good idea, I tend to bookmatch my timber with a kerfing plane then a hand saw but I'm seriously considering a table saw for this very reason, would take a lot of the hard work out if you can cut a few inches into each end first. I'm thinking that a good quality tall fence would be paramount though.

What is that top piece, is that more claro? It's gorgeous 

I took that photo a while ago, it’s the same piece I used for the top. It’s amazing how different it looks in different light!

2 hours ago, mistermikev said:

def some nice looking wood there.  I can't imagine hand sawing that much stock myself but then I try to avoid doing anything w hand tools - just not my bag.  turned out pretty good for you b4 so... sounds like you got this.  can't wait to see it done... also wood envy every time i see that walnut.

That’s where I’m different! I would rather spend an hour pushing a saw or sandpaper back and forth than spend an hour setting up a machine to do the same thing.

Family stuff has kept me busy so I haven’t been able to spend much time in the shop.

i did get the top sanded down to 220 and ready to glue.

I used double sided tape to hold the sandpaper to a stewmac beam.

Next step is taking my 1 7/8” body down to 1 1/5”. I plan on using a table saw to put in a kerf and then hand sawing the rest.

The bottom piece is the body blank. It is Makore with some figure.

I dont know... I like the sharp corners on the headstock. They kind of tie into the body. I'm with bizman on copying the upper horn. 

1 hour ago, ADFinlayson said:

I wouldn’t do any more thicknessing then, rough cut it and stick it to the body, then you will know what you’re working with in terms of depth and where you’re going to carve. I did the same thing when I bookmatched my own top on the neckthrough V, I tidied up all the saw marks with a plane then random orbital when it was close to size and there was a lot less work involved. 

Sounds like a plan.

1 hour ago, ADFinlayson said:

Looks like a good joint to me. I take it you're carving the top so all those saw marks should disappear? how thick is it currently? Lovely bit of wood that!

Yah, I’m gonna be attempting a carve. It’s currently 11/16 to 3/4 at most parts, if I cut it down to get rid of the saw marks it will be about 5/8. I hope that will be thick enough. I’m wanting to leave 3/16 around the edge in place of binding.

A got my router sled done and sanded the top a bit more. This is dry!

Took an orbital to the top just to check my joint. Not to bad...

1 hour ago, mistermikev said:

just throwing this out there... I built my jig using steel rails and bolts/nuts from home depot + two layers of mdf.  The nice thing about this jig is you can adjust the height at the four corners... which makes it work to give you the taper on the back of the neck, or any other taper you need.  it also is nice for allowing you to do thinner or thicker jobs.  not all that hard to build either... drill four holes in steel rails, drill 4 holes at corners of a piece of mdf.  then I just built an mdf slat to go across it... two L rails to keep the router in place, and two pieces of mdf to keep the router on the steel rails.

lots of other good ideas and all have their benefits afa ease of setup, simplicity, complexity and usefulness so I'd suggest having a look at some threads to find the one that will work best for you.

Steel is good! This build is getting expensive though! For now I am going to have to stick to MDF. 

I’m actually planing on using a jig like this for leveling the top. @ADFinlayson

How did you enjoy using it?

2 hours ago, mistermikev said:

have yet to do a multilam myself but there is def one in my future.  afa tops... I've had good luck cutting both sides at the sm time with a router... lot less work anyway.  not sure what one does with multilam.  run it through the planer?  I am not sure I would do that with figured wood.  I guess that leaves my router planer... would be a lot of work to plane down several boards for a multilam.  If it means hand sanding the whole way... I just as soon not do multilams!  I think I'm going to have to buy a jointer b4 I do that!

I think I need to make some sort of jig so I can use a router on the neck lams. 

Probably the next shop day needs to be spent making router jigs.

3 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

The good thing about the darker woods like walnut, wenge etc is that they're a bit more forgiving on your glue joints. tops like maple are impossible to stain well if you've got a gap that's full of glue. But I'm convinced that this top will look epic and I'm pretty jealous that I haven't got a bit of wood like that!

Here’s to hoping! 

I got that wood at Hunski hardwoods, they had a good selection of figured walnut. Not to expensive either.

I sure hope it looks good sanded. After all the time it took to get that joint on walnut I’m not looking forward to all the sanding required to do the multi lam neck in wenge! 

So after about 2 hours of planing and sanding and measuring I finally got the top joint flat. I used the Stew Mac sanding beam to get the final dimension flat. I found that using new sandpaper and low pressure worked best.