ADFinlayson

Ah that's so annoying, screw a hook in where the strap button goes and hang it up in your office. I do that for 2 reason, 1. for protection, 2. I get to look at it regularly and spot all the finish flaws.

I don't know much but I do know this - My mother said less is more when I came home with my first tattoo. My Mrs said less is more the first time I bought a new guitar during her tenure. Neither are true.

Less is not more, more is more

Have you tried Madinter? They're a stewmac reseller based in Spain. I got my stewmac buffer from them a few months ago because stewmac didn't have one in stock. They don't have everything that stewmac sells but might be a few of the things you need. https://www.madinter.com/en/stewmac-en.html

I posted a thread recently regarding stewmac, I'm in UK and took out Stewmax, it's around £28/year and you get free worldwide shipping, as many orders as you want and no minimum order cost. Not sure what the import tax situation is like where you are, but here if your order+ shipping is < £135, you pay no import tax. So a lot of items work out considerably cheaper than buying from Europe, even parts. Gotoh tuners etc are upto £15 cheaper than the likes of Thomann, and obviously the tools that you can only get from stewmac don't come with the massive shipping and import cost.

Another stunner, nice one Scott

The toolbox has feet. I did also see somewhere that when you're drying wet wood, it often wants to split at the ends - which is why we paint/wax the ends, but apparently ( i don't know how much truth there is to this) that the splits only ever travel as far as the sticks, therefore it's wise to start the sticks as close to the ends as possible. My maple boards are around 10% so I'm not too concerned about splitting, but worth trying out with wetter wood.

Ooh nice I've never seen anyone direct mount wide ranges before. A friend I'm building for was talking about them and I told him no starting to look really good - adding the fretboard to the equation has really made the top look good, especially with the exposed neckthrough, love it.

pretty much how I do it! I got a couple of curly maple boards the other week and stacked them in the same way once once they were resawn. I do think it's quite important to have the sticks all at the same dimensions too for even weight distribution. This lot currently has a heavy tool box stuck on top of it.

Sorted out the scratches and restained, got most of the patchy areas out so hopefully it should look ok and sanded in the natural binding A lot of people tend to tape the sides off and seal etc to help prevent bleed. I haven't done that. I just roll the edge over with 120, then tidy up with 240 and 320, then spray sealer. I had a couple of instances where the first and second coat caused a tiny bit of run on the end grain around the horns, but if they are sanded back early enough, more sealer can be applied and it doesn't bleed anymore. This is after a few coats of cellulose sealer, I need to denib and spray a few more coats, then the neck will be ready to go on.

Looking awesome

Ha 7th down was the most important one too!

Been feeling a bit rundown the last couple of days (the usual winter lurgy) so haven't done much this weekend but did make a bit of progress last week. Got the control covers finished Fitted the neck and cut the tenon down - dry fit Did a load of sanding on the body, I used a damp tea towel and the iron first which raised all the bumps and scratches on the mahog before sanding, works really well! then I wiped on a load of thinned down cellulose sanding sealer on the back and sides, sanded it back a couple of times. About 3 coats all in all. Brought out the figure on the edge nicely, I don't normally seal before grainfiller but I thought i'd give it a try this time. A) To prevent the grain filler staining the wood - getting it out of the maple edge can be an absolute bastard. B). helps to prevent stain on the top bleeding into the maple edge, also a bastard. Then I did wax on, wax off a few times with the black grain filler. That stuff needs at least 24 hours to dry so I shaped the headstock, Then on to staining, I started off with a light brown water based Liberon stain. Found a tone of scratches so sanded it all back and did it again. and then a couple of coats of Angelus green. This isn't bringing out the best of the figure in this wood, but I've done multiple testers and Duncan was very specific about what he wanted. Although it does still have a lot of chatoyance so it should look pretty cool, It will darken up quite a bit once I've got sealer on it but I've spotted yet a couple more scratches I've missed so I'm going to have to fix those and go over it again.

Have you tried going over it with a hair dryer? gently warming it up can get rid of some if not all of the milky hazing.

Amazing!

Not an original but I did pick that t and a couple of others up when I saw them on the legacy of the beast tour, it was Bruces 60th Birthday and Nicko had us all sing happy birthday. Best live show I've seen - They had a different set for every song, full size spit for aces high and a lot of the time he was running around with a flame thrower. I should have taken some pics but I was too busy head banging

Looks fantastic, how many more are you going to get out of that table? For my 3rd build, I made a singlecut from solid ovangkol, weighed 13lb before I even put finish on it.

The area around the toggle switch is quite small and to fit a regular lp style cover plate would be a risky route and by the time I've done the roundover, there won't be much material there which will be more difficult when it comes to levelling the finish with increased risk of sanding through so I thought I'd go rogue with the control cover.

Thanks mate, it's going to be a set neck so I don't want to want to do anything that might hinder the glue joint. I don't think it's going to require drastic measures anyway.

Modest bit of progress on this one. Got some routes done and test fitted pots and switch. I've got a fair few marks and dents on the back that I need to steam out, It's a big area so I think I'll try the iron and a damp towel rather than the soldering iron method, then I'll blast the back with the orbital to tidy it up. I'll do that before routing the cavities for the cover plates or doing the end roundover to reduce risk of the sander going over the end and messing up the lines. I decided ti put a bit of a recess in for the switch, I like the look and it insures that the switch has a flat surface to sit in Pickup routes also done although I need to route deeper for the posts. I used a much smaller router bit to finalise the shape than the 1/2" bit I normally use, I think it looks a lot neater and gives a bit more wiggle room for the pickups, nothing more annoying that getting to the last hurdle and realising the pickups don't fit properly (A mistake I've made many times). You can see no figure around the edges, that is because I've finalised the shape/sanding around the edge but I've left the very middle because I don't want to lose my centre line just yet - 1 piece top means no centre seam to work to. The neck pocket is not as tight as I would like now that I've routed the pickup cavity. It's that awkward point where it's not loose enough to warrant putting in a veneer but there is just a tiny bit of play. I'm hoping that an f-clamp to pinch the horns in will make it just tight enough when glueing up. Failing that I'll put it somewhere humid for an hour prior to gluing up to swell the neck pocket slightly.

Yes I've got a few tricks I can use, vacuum, tack cloth and mineral spirits. Hopefully with those 3 it will clean up. I was sanding at 11pm and didn't really want to crack out the vacuum and upset the neighbours. I will say one thing though - The lack of end grain is bliss.

Well now that I've got the materials I needed, no excuse not to get back on with the walnut build, and I've learnt that scraping binding flush is my least favourite part of the build so far. probably because I had 2.3mm binding and a 2mm binding channel so there was a fair bit to scrape off. Got it all flush though then made some ebony dust to fill the gaps, That created even more of a superglue mess on the top and the back so. I spent about 4 hours on and off tonight scraping, filling and sanding. This is sanded at 80 and 120, I made the mistake of getting the top, back and sides to final thickness with 80 on the drum sander so there was quite a lot of work to do. You might be able to see a little dark spot near the heel area below. That's where I dropped it on the bend when I wasn't paying attention, that's the only bit that didn't come out with the soldering iron so I'm just going with it. The other thing that you might just be able to see in this pic is just how thin the binding is at the heel, not have a jig to keep the channel parallel with the sides definitely shows - it's about 1mm thick at the front and 2mm everywhere else, not very noticeable on the top but very on the back. The top I was concerned about with the amount of glue around the edges, bit more work to do although it has cleaned up pretty well. keeping the ebony dust out of it while sanding is proving difficult though I think I probably need to get on with making the bridge now, but I also really need to get on with a couple of electrics or people are going to start asking where their guitars are at.

You should be mate, looks bloody good. Just don't drop it again

Don't seem to be able to see any of the photos on your last update mate.

I've done a bit more in the acoustic department. Finished shaping the braces on the limba build. Though I have since taking this pic brought down the xbrace at the end of the treble side, nothing to do with tap tone, it just looked ridiculous Bender MK 1 is now an officially working prototype with the missing section of ebony binding in it. Though there are a couple of modifications I need to make. I also realised after the fact that my top metal slat should probably be between the binding and the heat blanket, it's probably not doing a lot there other than looking shiny. I made a grid of holes at 1" centres so I have options for mounting the hooks but these cheap springs I got are far to whippy - they do hold those end blocks down but barely, so I need to get some better springs. I absolutely need to do something like what @Dave Higham mentioned above, I was hunting around to see if I had anything suitable but I don't and I'm inpatient so I bent one of the ebony binding strips anyway. Bent absolutely fine but when I brought the press screw back up I could see the bottom slat was putting a lot of pressure on the binding at the waist, this might not be that much of an issue for sides but for a tiny bit of binding... I brought the screw all the way up and held the centre down and I released the ends but then I heard it go clink right at the waste. No biggy it was a clean break and I just superglued it back together. Bent this at 120ºC (according to the gauge), left the heat on for 5 mins then took it out 2 hours later. this is it after superglue resuscitation Then glued on to the back. The bend was clearly much better than results I was getting by hand because I was able to tape it down quite easily then wick in some thin superglue where for the previous pieces I had to put medium CA in the channels and hold the superglue in place whilst applying accelerator to fully bond the binding and my skin to the channel. So addressing the pinning down of the bottom slat. I don't want to buy a roll of pvc coated wire, but I did see toolstation has galvanised staples which look like they would do the job. 3mm thick and 30mm long so I'll grab some of those. Apart from the above quirks, the bending machine and blanket work really well. Looking forward to trying out a proper side bend with it but I think that will have to wait until the limba build is out of the mould.