ADFinlayson

Thanks Biz, I had a look through those - Some suppliers I'm not familiar with there. As usual it's a job to tell what the colours are going to look like when they actually arrive. That's the problem with this, if the white balance on the camera is just a hair off, they look a totally difference colour.

Hehe yeah, I am on my way to having a plethora of plastic parts now too.

A non-vote counts as a vote cast, a spoiled ballot if you will. Well Andy get's my vote, again. Some people really need to stop hogging all the bloody talent.

Well I haven't had the best time with this one. Got a couple more coats of clear on it, all good expect a little bit peely, Finally got the pickups for it delivered today so this evening I did a test fit, and I stupidly didn't route the p90 channel correctly, I routed it with a bearing bit as usual, but I forgot to come back with a 1/4" straight bit to get that tight radius in the corners, so the bastard pickup doesn't fit. So I thicknesses some offcuts I had and made a template, pieces flush against the sides of the route then routed in the corners with the 1/4" straight bit. I was half expecting this to go horribly wrong, either, the masking tape and super glue or accelerator might ruin the lacquer, or I might just trash it with the router. I got lucky, very. Pickup now fits quite nicely, But the next thing to hack me off was that my humbucker ring does not match my p90 and I'm really struggling to find a decent match. The pickup ring is a Hosco Light Cream which is almost a perfect match to PRS Ivory pockup rings, the OX4 P90 which is Cream, I spoke to Mark and he said he get's his pickup covers from Crazyparts.de which is where I get the ebony parts for previous builds. He said they do a "Gibson" humbucker ring, but they're insanely expensive and they don't match the Gibson P90 cover they do - I looked myself and one hundred effing euros for pickup rings! However the switch tip (Switchcraft) is a perfect match to the P90. So I wondered if I could get a closer match elsewhere, Nothing. Annoying because I really like the Hosco Light Cream coloured pickup ring, it's a perfect match for my bone nut blanks and I have some ABS binding the same colour. The more I look at this with pickups in situ, the more I'm thinking black p90 and pickup ring would suit it better now anyway, but I still want to get matching cream/bone coloured parts. Really annoying that nothing plastic is the same. So if anyone knows where I could get that vintage cream look in a pickup ring, let me know! We've gone from super mild over xmas and NY to frosty mornings so I think that will be it for spraying finishes for a few days.

I'm finding that my tolerances are naturally reducing with age. Got some stain on it. I'm trying to produce a sight silvery grey and I've found that my black stains tend to have a hue to them when rubbed back heavily - My Crimson waterbased black looks redish when sanded back, my black Liberon concentrate looks bluish, the black leather dye is ok but I've barely got any left after tinting my lacquer with it and I want to save it for the burst on this one. So for this I used some Carbon Black Powder which I got from amazon and diluted it in acetone. That gave me a very dark grey which I rubbed back with acetone so there was no sanding involved. I have got some light spots around the pots where I obviously overdid the rub back. I need to try and darken those bit's up a touch before I spray some sealer on it. This is it dried over night, then I just rubbed it with some white spirit to make it look wet again.

Oh I intend to at least double it's weight with lacquer before I level any of it. I have sprayed a second burst since this one, really liking bursts

Welcome. The best way to learn is by doing, so I would recommend getting the template for the guitar you want to build and just get stuck in. You don't need all the jigs or a workshop full of tools - You can do most of it with a hobby saw, plunge router and a hand drill. Take your time and remember Rembrandt's first painting wasn't a masterpiece.

Thanks Mike, I think the next one will have to be yellow, I think I need to pay more attention to what the sander is doing too for a more even job. I could also really do with a better sander. She's had a brown burst and a coat of clear to seal it all in. Need to sand the binding back again to tidy it up. Then it needs all the clear, but I've just run out of lacquer

Made some progress on finish for this one. Got the body sanded up to 220 then applied some sanding sealer - I use chestnut cellulose sanding sealer which comes in a tin for brushing/spraying (if thinned) or a rattle can. For the last couple of builds I have been flipping the body upside down and just wiping on some thinner sealer. I find this works really well for 2 purposes. 1.) it stops grain filler from getting on to the maple 2.) the sealer soaks into the side of the maple so it also helps to prevent stain from the top seeping down into the edge. I apply 1 coat, then sand with 320 to smooth it out after min 30 mins, then I repeat. With the back and sides sealed, As per my testers, I wet the top with a rag to raise the grain and stained it purple - Alcohol based Angelus leather dye. Then after it had a good 30 mins to dry, I sanded it back to practically nothing Then I wet the top again and went at it with the water based Crimson Guitars yellow waterbased dye. I do like this colour combo and I think if this top had a more consistent figuring through out, I probably would have left it like this, but I decided to press on with the rose. This bought back a touch of the purple which didn't happen in either of my testers, not sure why because that didn't happen in any of my testers and I'm pretty sure I followed all the previous steps. But pushing on, I cut the binding with 120 grit sander paper once rose had dried. You can really see the purple here although the camera seemed to make it look more purple than it was. Then I taped the neck pocket it off and sprayed 5 mist coats of sanding sealer (the Chestnut sealer rattle can) As I did this those purple spots gradually darkened up again (hurray) This is it after sealer I've just glued the neck in, then I'll need to grain fill the back, sides and neck Then I'm going to attempt my second burst - nothing crazy, just a little bit of shadow on the edges.

Yes I had forgotten you pretty much live in Arctic conditions. I don't think my kind could survive in those temperatures. That bottle of Scotch should certainly warm you up though.

Looks like this is going to be a cool build, I've made a few guitars with that maple from magic_wood, it comes up nice

I dunno, it was fairly floody, had to make sure I got good coverage with the purple. then went over it again with neutral so definitely introduced a lot of liquid. Then I did flood it quite heavily with yellow to get good coverage over the purple. I'm pretty careful usually though because I don't want dye to run off the sides, no amount of tape will protect the sides from that. p.s Merry Christmas @Bizman62, I hope Santa brought you some tools.

Doing some stain testers for this one. Grabbed an offcut out of bin. This piece has some amazing figure and it’s from a nearly 4m board which I’ve got 7 tops out of awaiting resawing, I hope they come out as good as this one. Went over it with a damp rag to raise the grain, stained it purple with angelus leather dye, I wiped the excess off when gave it a wipe over with neutral to A.) pull a bit of the colour out, B.) get the colour more even. then I sanded it back with 120 to practically nothing, then 240, leaving only purple in the curl, then went over it with yellow crimson water based stain, again getting the surface damp first to aid dye penetration. I’ve heard so many people say alcohol and water based don’t mixed but that clearly isn’t quite right - purple + yellow = brown and this has given me a very dark brown in the soft bits and bright yellow everywhere else. I don’t think I’ve ever pulled off that amount of contrast before. Makes me think of an angry wasp. then looking at the figure if this piece I’m thinking tiger. So after letting it dry an hour, I went over it with angelus light rose (another alcohol based dye) liking this a lot so thought I’d try and see if I can recreate it on another piece. Managed to dig out an actual offcut from the special build and followed the same steps. so purple sanded back to nothing. The yellow, although I realised after I forgot to damp the wood down prior to the purple and yellows so that might reduce penetration and there for contrast (need to do it again to be sure) still looking pretty strong. Then the more of the light rose. I think this could look bloody good with some lacquer on it. And I’m really looking forward to using those other tops, I don’t think I’ve had any maple with such big curl in it

The last couple of days have a bit of a learning curve - After seeing the guitar, Duncan said he would like the top to be darker. No way I'm sanding it all off and starting again on the stain so I said I would darken the top up a bit with lacquer. So I gave the guitar 2 coats of clear then I mixed up some fairly thin lacquer with some angelus dye, didn't have any brown so I used some yellow, a dash or red and a dash of black and played around until I had a decent shade. The trouble with my syphon gun is that it requires so much paint in the tank in order to operate, so seeing as I had so much mixed up, I thought screw it, I will tint the mahog as well. So I taped off just the binding - bastard job, but the extra thin stewmac tape I got helped out a lot. Taping was not fun, peeling the tape off however was rather satisfying. Then I had to clean my one and only gun up and spray a coat of clear to protect it all. And the back Very happy with the front, not quite so much on the back, should have either gone with the grain or both, instead of just side to side. But Duncan liked it, he then asked if it could be darker around the edges That was yesterday, today I got the brown back out and did another coat on the back, up and down to try and even out the colour. Then I added some more black, taped off the sides and sprayed my first burst. Over the moon with how that came out, I think it might have been beginners luck. I did however not do as good a job of taping off as I should have done, and I got a bit of black spill on to the binding and even on to the mahogany, and in sanding that off, I went into my brown tint on the sides. So I decided to give the top another couple of clear coats for protection, then after xmas I'll sand the back and sides back and do another brown tint. I've got a bit of orange peel but no way I'm doing anything about that until I've got about another tone of clear on top.

I suppose that would work, trouble is I'm not that precise in how I work - I normally carve the top (and that carve can vary from one instrument to the next) then pilot hole for my pots then drill out the waste using a 30mm forstner (big enough to fit the pots in) leaving 5mm depth for the pots to poke through so that drilling depth is different for each pot because of the carve, so I normally just work my way down to correct depth for each one, checking often. I also like to sand the back of the body prior to doing my routes because my cheap sander has a habit of sinking the edges. But I like to do said sanding after carving the top because it all gets knocked about a bit when I'm going at it with a mallet and gouge.

Got a veneer cut out and stuck in to the underside of the pocket with titebond, I picked the underside for 2 reasons. 1 - less visible to the player and 2- smaller area to to enlarge so also less visible. The neck pocket is at perfect tightness now, so I won't have to do too many dry fits and work it loose.

Neck on this one is carved and sanded to 80 grit. I know it looks exactly like the back of the Special build, I promise it's not, although I did pinch the control covers off it because I couldn't be bothered to make any more today. It annoyingly sits a bit loose in the pocket now that I've shaped and sanded it so I'm going to have to stick a bit of mahogany veneer in the pocket to get a tight fit, that hasn't happened to me a in a while. I also routed for the covers today and installed some threaded brass inserts and hardened steel hex head machine screws. It's a real faff to do this because the holes for the cover need to match band on with the holes for the inserts, and they need to be drilled perfectly plumb for the screws to go in properly, drilling plumb on a drill press with a carve top is awkward too, I had to shim the underside in places to stop the body sinking at the thinner carved areas.

I converted to Mirka sand paper a while ago, I think that comes from your neck of woods actually. I think it's the best balance of quality, durability and price - the proflex stuff comes in 50m rolls from Ironmongery Direct and I use 80, 120, 240 and 320 . Get's expensive if you need to buy several grits at once but I'm pretty sure the 320 roll is going to outlive me. Haven't really had issues with this paper gumming up when sanding bare wood, but I don't go any higher than 320. I do use a Mirka Mirlon pad as well though but only for skuffing up finish if I haven't sprayed for a couple of days and want to do another coat.

A little while since I touched this one, today I got the routes done and the cave finished, and spent 3 hours getting the top and sides sanded to 80 grits. This maple is lovely but it's an absolute bastard to sand, it just turns to fluff with heavy grits. Still got a little of bit of work to do, especially round the edge where I was obviously pressing too hard with the sandpaper. Neck needs carving next.

Thanks chaps. Yes I do like a bewdog, my only gripe with it is that it costs more than most beers with about 2/3 of the quantity. Jumped the gun a bit and missed a phew photo opportunities, Got all the back routing done, you can probably see that I routed the switch cavity incorrectly and glued in some little nubbins. Actually I foolishly started the router at depth inside the cavity and almost lost this bit of wood. routing the outer cavity and gluing in the extra pieces was the save. Oh I sanded the back with the orbinal sander (80 and 120) prior to doing the outer route on the control cavity so there was a bit more surface for the sander to ride on. My sander is cheap and cumbersome and doing it after can be a bit sketchy. I used a 1/4" washer and drew around the body on the neck tenon to get my line to carve to. Once the neck is glued in I will round all those edges over on the tenon. I Cut the control covers out of ebony, the main cavity wasn't too bad, I roughed it out on the band saw and used a hand plane on the shooting board to get the straight edges right and the bobbin sander to do the corners. The round one for the switch cavity though, absolute bastard to shape. Inlay done, the gap between the two pieces is not perfectly even which is annoying, but only really noticeable on close inspection so I'll pay more attention to that if I do it again. I do like the 2 piece design though. Had an offcut from the headstock veneer so I used that for the truss rod cover so the grain matches up nicely, though it does still need sanding. Decided to go for a bridge hum and neck p90 in the end. Ox4 pickups are winding a set for me, 4 conductor on the humbucker so I will put a coil split on one of the tones. I decide the 2.8º break angle was just a hair too steep so I kept the tenon a couple of mm oversized and was able to tweak the break angle by sanding the bottom of it with sand paper stuck to my slab of marble. I don't know how well you can see it in the photo but the bottom of the fretboard just kisses the maple at the very front then rises up from there, and a straight edge sat on the frets sits a couple of mm above the bridge. I haven't got anyway of measuring angle now, I'm guessing 2.6-2.7º A few hours of sanding to do next week,

I seem to be steaming ahead with this one, 4mm pearl dot, 2mm pearl side dots and 57110 fret wire. Imacculate fret job too, they went in well and I didn't twat the fretboard once. Then I go to wick in a bit of fine super glue in the fret ends and end up getting it all over the fretboard, seams I'm doomed to that fate with my fret jobs. I'm using top-locking kluson tuners, so I drilled 1/4" holes all the way through the headstock as per the measurement of the tuners, then used the step drill from the top to get them up to 8mm, then drilled again with the 8.5 to enlarge. The bushings measure 8.8mm at the widest measurement so I will need to ream the tops out to get them in. Then once my holes were located I got to work on the headstock inlay. Annoyingly didn't have any of pieces of pearl left that were big enough to do my local in one piece so thought I would try a 2 piece logo, Looks kinda cool, don't know if I'm sold on it as a forever logo. I added the line to follow the curve on and used a piece of black veneer bent around on of the pieces to space them out and black superglue to stick them together. I've scratch the outline on the headstock and will get it inlayed tomorrow when I've had less beer. It's my birthday so I've had steak and several Brewdogs.

Well I couldn't put it down and did a bit more on it this evening. Trimmed my ebony veneer down to just oversize using using a piece of wood clamp to the bandsaw table to prevent it getting shredding, an error I've made before. Then I used the headstock angle offcut to true up the edge and get it to the right angle Then I clamped down a fretboard blank in the correct spot and a nut blank so I could get the correct position for the veneer to stick it down. Then a few steps I forgot to photograph. Got the neck taper routed and headstock shaped, and neck pocket routed. My fretboard blank was rough sawn so I thought I would a nice face and edge on the jointer but I had no end of trouble with it. when I ran the face through, it just seemed to chatter at the very front and take no material at all from the middle resulting in a bow. So I gave up and ran it through the sander. I had no trouble getting the face of the neck blank flat so there is clearly nothing wrong with the planer, must be just user error. It's getting there anyway, I left it with a fretboard glue up in progress. I paid myself for all the hard work with a Oxford Gold.

I think I've drilled a few too many holes for it to be a Junior maybe the next one could be a Junior. I certainly like the sound of halving the electronics bill.

But he's playing a super strat

I've been working up some templates for a singlecut build I've been wanting to do. Up to now I've just been using PRS Singlecut templates but I wanted to come up with my own shape. I've gone with the Gibson overall shape, but used the PRS horn with an Patrick Eggle inspired shape around the pocket. Slightly more modern headstock shape, 24 frets and 24.65" scale instead of my usual 25" I used the drum sander to taper a 2.8º angle on the neck pocket without having to worry about shimming the template on a flat top build. I had an underling for the afternoon on Saturday so I thought that would be a good excuse to start a new build. I was very conservative when it came to him using power tools, but I did let him do a bit of template shaping with the bobbin sander, Then once I'd roughed out the top and back, I let him do the glue up. This is where we left it. Then on Sunday I did some routing and drilled some holes. And started working on the neck blank. First time using the planer (jointer) to get the headstock angle right. Slightly more scary but way faster and more precise than a hand plane. Going headstock first seems to be the safest and easiest to control the blank against the fence, big it does give a rougher cut given that it's cutting up hill. So I did a few passes forward then one final pass backwards for silky smooth finish. Routed the truss rod channel then used the mini plane to take that extra hair of material for the truss rod nut, love this little tool. Finally I roughed out the neck and headstock shape and used a couple off offcuts to make ears. Not sure where I'm going with this one, I'm thinking I'd like to try my hand at a burst, also I think P90s would be cool, don't have a guitar with p90s but I do like em. Should be doing a bit more on it over xmas, with any luck Santa will get me a 24.65" slotting template.