ADFinlayson

I'm up for it, aren't you way up in the frozen north of England? Might be worth arranging something half way

Given that you have epoxy/gold leaf inlays, why don't you gold leaf your logo and lacquer over it?

that neck is cool

FYI, I filmed the whole process so far, condensed about 8 hours of carving, routing etc down to about 40 mines. Didn't include the catastrophe but will no doubt have enough cockups for a bloopers episode at the end of the series.

I think it will be staining that makes it appear it does, I will keep my fingers crossed Forgetting about life is what it's all about I might see if I can find some better quality blades for them, the only gripe with them now is that they don't hold an edge forever, but for about £30 for 3 planes, I can't complain. I have been strolling through ebay today, looking for insulation for my new workshop it wasn't therapy through, the price of building materials is depressing!

Nice one Lumberjack, couldn't lose to a nicer axe! Feel free to share your process for the epic stain job

Looking good. Masking tape on the back fo the inlay and on the backer, few tiny drops of super glue will be plenty to hold it down, then when you go to remove, twist don't lift

Nice one Jeff! very well deserved though I think your kraken inlay was also more than worthy of GOTY!

Been pretty streeeeeessed out over the last year or so - Nightmare neighbours, covid lockdowns, work situation and house move (most of which is still on going), and it recently occurred to me that I haven't made a guitar for myself in nearly 2 years (the last one was the ziricote prs type). So I figured it was about time I made myself something tasty. I got this billet a good 18 months ago, it was actually a freebie as I ordered a couple of tops from that chap in Bosnia (sells on facebook) and there was a random lump of wood in the box - I thought he'd just put it in there to pack out the box and put it down as scrap until I ran my plane over one face, turned out to be one important looking bit of wood! So I took it down the timber yard about 6 months later and had them resaw it for me, ran it through the drum sander when I got home and stuck it in the pile for a year. But now it's time.. So we've got Bosnian quilt, black walnut body, bosnian curly (ish) walnut neck, and some nice black indian ebony. Jointed, glued her up, cut her out and let her sit for a couple of days. I drew around my Mira which is essentially the shape of a traditional Gibbo double cut, so with a carve top it will probably come out looking something a bit like a Santana and/or P J Eggle Macon. Had an absolute catastrophe during carving... Totally my fault (I mean this wood hates me and the grain goes everywhere) I was using too heavy a mallet and I just kept going when the wood told me to stop, dumb arse. Some therapy this is turning out to be right? bit of titebond, a bandaid and some moral support from Mike Ve really clean break, very lucky, back on with carving. This is it roughed out, using the shadows as much as I can to see al the divots/uneven spots etc. I used my scary router method to do the pot recesses, you can see that I got quite lot of router burn, I ran the router a bit quicker than last time I did this to prevent it eating the wood. but they came out nicely with a scraper followed by 120 grit. really important to blow the dust off often while doing this or the burnt wood dust works it's way into the grain and it just stains the area. After about 6 hours of carving over a couple of sessions and many blisters, it occurred to me to get rid off all the sharp edges (apart from important one) on my cheap thumb planes. So I used my fret end file and some sand paper to smooth them out, oh the difference. I can't believe I've carved 4 guitars (fonts and backs) without thinking to do this. So this is where we're at now. Still got some smoothing out to do. You can probably tell but I've positioned those little nasties so the top two are hidden by the bridge pickup and the other one will hopefully be replaced wit an f-hole (hopefully). That's it for now, I've got to box all my stuff up and be gone from this place imminently. Hopefully it won't be more than a couple of weeks before my next therapy session, because I fancy the therapist.

Your workshop looks epic

At first glance I thought it might be a spalt/resign pour with a flamed veneer underneath because it looks so 3d however, after seeing other photos I reckon it's just a really well done partial stain up to the black spalt lines because you can clearly see the same flaming running from the middle all through the spalty stuff and up by the lower horn and access cutaway it looks a lot like it's one piece of wood. However they did it it's very clever, although I think PRS just look a bit weird with spalt burl tops More pics here: https://wildwestguitars.com/electric/prs-private-stock-8129-custom-24-l-flame-spalted-maple-flame-neck-and-board-faded-aquamarine

My Jan entry is David's CU24 that I finished just after xmas. This was a budget build, top and neck were sold as "3a", body is "B grade" mahogany Spec - Body: european curly maple, african mahogany - Neck, curly maple, indian ebony, pinstripe ebony/maple binding, abalone celtic style inlay and dots - Parts, Vol, tone, 3 way toggle and coil split (neck only), Wilkinson humbuckers, gotoh wraparound and vanson locking tuners - Finish, stained royal blue with Angelus dyes on the top and neck, natural back and high gloss lacquer Build thread: and finally some noodling

it's pretty straight forward once you've got your outer holes of the slot drilled, I take a metal ruler and scalpel between the holes then use a 2mm model chisel to carefully remove what's in between. I tend to do it before routing the area to final depth though to ensure a tidy underside. Build is looking fantastic btw

Yes it is as much about the tools to hand as preference. I own a table saw now, so as soon has the hosco table saw blades become available again (I don't think the stewmac blade will fit my saw), I'll be switching my process

On my first couple of builds, I used a fret slot template like that. I cut the slots freehand too, I used a mechanical pencil and the little plastic nib that the lead pokes out of was about the right size to fit perfectly in the notches, maybe try a different pencil.

If I had a £1 for every mistake I made twice, I'd have at least enough for parts for a new build

If some frets aren't in the right place then some frets will sound out of tune, if the slots are on the notches and they're perpendicular to your centre line, they will be spot on.

Looking forward to seeing that

This is my order of operations: 1. Route neck shape/profile 2. Get fretboard blank down to correct thickness 3. Stick fretboard blank to neck 4. Use neck as template and route fretboard flush with neck 5. Radius fretboard 6. Cut fretslots 7. Inlay work 8. Install frets 9. Carve neck I've done this stuff in various orders but I've done it this way for my last 5 or 6 builds and it's the order my most comfortable with because it mitigates risk of the fretboard not gluing on straight, cutting slots is way easier because there is far less wood to saw and I won't have to come back after radius to make the slots deeper, an uncarved flat bottom to the neck makes it easier to put frets in - I always find a carved neck wants to move around under the hammer or fret press.

I always tend to start at fret 1 and work my way up because as @curtisa says, inaccuracy becomes more noticeable as you go up the fretboard - as the gap between the frets becomes smaller so does the margin for error, and I find once I've done a couple, I get more into the swing of it. I don't really like miter boxes for exact work because it's more difficult to see the work. As in my video I shared with you before, I find I'm much more accurate if I make a little nick with the saw on each end of the line, then join them up freehand. You can definitely fill in bad slots with superglue and rosewood dust - I did that on my first fretboard. With ebony that will be totally invisible, it will be noticeable on rosewood, but if your slot is only .5mm off then your mistake would probably be hidden under jumbo fretwire anyway. Smoke and mirrors baby.

Is that oak you're using for the neck too? Looks lovely

Depends how thick the board is currently vs when youv'e got it at final dimensions, the impact the radius has and the size of your frets. You will very likely have to come back and make the slots slightly deeper at the edges after radius anyway. I would suggest you get the board to final thickenss (5-6mm is a good depth), then slot the board about 0.5mm deeper than the height of your fret tangs. It's a bit scary first time round, but you will soon come to realise that it's easy just time consuming to hand cut slots. That's why I now do it freehand after the board is at final shape - I don't have to resaw slots after radius and there is a lot less sawing to do when the board is already tapered to final dimensions.

That makes a lot of sense, I'm still very new to this and haven't really figured out who my target audience is yet. Just a bit frustrating that I've got nearly 500 followers on my facebook page and not one of them wants to buy my guitar

Well I've listed my first For sale guitar (instead of usual commissions) on reverb, ebay, my facebook page, handmate page guitar page on fb, and I still haven't sold it

It's an expensive game! How many of the 36 did you sell?