ADFinlayson

I hope you don't tear my youtube videos apart like that

in his defence, I was going to sand in a radius with a radius beam but nut of my radius beams are wide enough! My initial thought was to use a hand plane but I want to orient the grain in the same direction of the fretboard and the idea of planing across the grain makes me shudder.

Interesting video that, I learnt stuff so thanks for sharing!

yes there was some anger, some strong expletive use and various articles thrown around the workshop

One final thing, the above saga with dropping the bass has taught me one thing - nitrocellulose is flipping easy to fix!

Wow I didn't realise how long it's been since I updated this thread. I clearly need to get on and finish some projects. I got the billy bongo all levelled off with 600 and sanded the blend at the neck heel and the headstock (the body and headstock are lacquered but they're going to blend into oil on the neck). Sanding the blend was a real pita and I had to reapply some grainfiller to get it looking seemless, I've now given it a last thin coat of lacquer, but before I did that I had a catastrophe... I hung the guitar on the hook, turned round to pick up the gun and the guitar was not on the hook, it fell 1' and the tip off the headstock bounced on the stone flags below. As I turned round I caught it on the rebound but it took a couple of minor scrapes on the body too. I got really lucky as the damage was only in the lacquer. So I fixed the issues with some sanding, drop filling of neat lacquer and more sanding before doing some more lacquer, decided to give it a couple of coats given what had happened. But I decided that day I was not in the right frame of mind to be touching guitars any more that day. I'm really lucky that happenned to the bass and not any of the guitars I'm working on - the moustache headstock would definitely not take the kind of abuse. Anyway, back to the blend - I decided that taping off the neck shaft is not the best way to do the blend, a bit of technique with the spray gun has produced much better results with far less work. I don't know I realise sooner that the spray blends naturally anyway I'll leave this one another week or so then start sanding at 2000, I can wet sand up to 7000 with what I've got then hand buff. I've sanded the purple lp up to 1200 all over too but I've got that gut feeling that there isn't a lot of lacquer left and I'm worried about sanding through when I go up the grits, so I'm going to give it another fine coat to be on the safe side. Picks to follow when the weather is better. I'm having real trouble when it comes to spraying at the moment. We've had the weather for it but the builders behind us are kicking up so much dust that I can't spray, when they've not been there we've had high winds and today it's much cooler and wet

Damn that's looking pretty, what micro mesh are you using Scott?

Nice to see someone else with the same tools, I've got that same metre rule, tenon saw and mini screwfix f clamps. Goes to show you don't need the worlds best tools to get good results

There is nothing sloppy looking about that bud, pretty f$%kin' awesome!

I have had a few flamey ebony boards though nothing as special as that one - It tends to be African ebony I've found that has the figure, I've never seen anything other than jet black from my Indian ebony boards. Mine usually come rough sawn so it's pot luck. But I hope that has made the quilt/ebony decision easier for you, as it's a no brainer Looking forward to seeing this one develop.

I always forget just how much tighter a drop of glue makes the joint. I may have looked calm on camera but I was swearing inside.

So we got this earlier this week. A chap my dad knows sadly lost his dad last year and was clearing out his workshop. Apparently he was a joiner and bought this in 2002 when he retired for £3000 with all the extras, but sadly developed Alzheimer's shortly after so it's been sat gathering dust and rust for years. I was a bit dubious because it requires a lot of floor space, so my dad suggested we go halves and stick it in his workshop. "You'll inherit it when I'm pushing up daisys anyway" were his words. So he stripped it all dow, cleaned and oiled all the components and bought it back to it's former glory. I had first go with this flat sawn curly neck blank, it was badly twisted and bowed so probably not the easiest piece to try out, but the planer works amazingly well, 18 year old plane blades didn't cause any tear out on flamed maple! So I got it all squared off and ripped it down the middle on it's table saw (it's a planer thicknesser, table saw and spindle moulder, each with their own didicated motors) to make a 2 piece quarter sawn neck blank While I was doing all that, my dad started banging on about their antique mahogany bed that he restored before my brother and I were born, then walked off and and came back with 4 great big mahogany legs that he's been keeping quiet about! Reckons they've been air drying in his lumber pile (lumber pile that I wasn't told about either) for 40 years, so I came away with 4 free and perfectly quarter sawn genuine mahogany neck blanks it's funny how even after all the years, your parents always come up with occasional ways to surprise you. Anyway, A D Finlayson Guitars has just expanded into a second workshop 3 miles from HQ and Dad has been promoted to Rough mill operative which should speed up my builds a bit. I'm planning to get a .5mm blade so that I can use it to cut fret slots. Here are a couple of the mahog blanks

Well this is a tough month, I love Andy's SG and normally it would be no contest for my vote when he enters a build. But I felt that Shatners headless missed out last time and deserves a bit of recognition, it's a really nice looking axe and building a guitar out of wenge is a pain in the arse. Kudos

I chose those jars carefully While not originally intended, that is pretty much how the videos have been coming out as I can't help myself from waffling on and according to youtube analytics, people tend to stick with the waffling and skip passed the footage where I'm just working in realtime. I did some research on youtube intros - Apparently just having your logo floating about is a waste of time but using the intro to describe briefly what your video/channel is about is much more enticing for viewers to continue watching. I'll have to see how the audience retention figures stack up against earlier videos to know if it works or not. The marketing team are doing well, the camera man and presenter need a kick up the arse though.

The twins are coming on nicely, I got the necks glued in this week and most of the sanding done. Need to get the bridges installed next then on to finishing. I've also been experimenting with my own coloured grainer filler this week. A combination of pumice powder, linseed oil, lacquer and leather dye. Latest episode

Is that the same as a skip tooth blade? varying height and spacing of blades I think, Those are what I get from Axminster, they're supposedly much better at getting the dust out of the cut and produce a cleaner cut with less burning, It's a combination table saw, 250mm planer, thicknesser, spindle moulder (I think you cats call that a shaper) and extractor, not that I ever use a spindle moulder. Each part has it's own dedicated motor so it's pretty much as beastly as you can get on single phase power. My Dad and I went halves on it because he want's a spindle moulder and we've set it up in his workshop as I don't have the room so it's a win win for me. It's got a decent cross cut sled so I'm hoping if I get the right blade, I'll be able to cut fret slots on it. I figured it currently takes me about an hour or so to cut fret slots by hand, well I'll be able to take my blanks over to my folks, do all my jointing and fret slotting, have a coffee and still be home by the time I'd have cut them by hand

I'm not great with the bandsaw in general and resawing is no exception. I've only got a 10" bandsaw anyway so I never resaw anything taller than a 3" neck blank with it. A 1/2" over a 1/4" does make a significant difference although I expect a lot of it is down to switching over to a brand new sharp blade and fact that you've just recalibrated the saw with a blade changover probably has something to do with it too. Today I'm having a beastly new machine delivered so I'm looking forward to cutting neck lams on a table saw instead of my little band saw

you can make a pocket template to fit your existing neck quite easily - clamp the neck heel to a sheet of mdf, then stick down some pieces of mdf around it, fitting snuggly, then remove the neck and route the inside area where the neck was clamped using the other mff pieces as a guitar and you have a template.

Welcome to the forum. As far as I'm aware, the music man headstock is not angled so there is no joint, it's more like a strat headstock where it just slopes down. I have no idea how you would model that but it's by far the easiest kind of neck design to make, in fact there are music man templates available to use when it comes to building. There are a few UK based members on here. @Andyjr1515 and @Norris have just finished builds for other people, but you might have to wait 3 years for a guitar by Norris

Latest episode on neck carving

I did this with a carve top last year. I made a guitar out of ovangkol and it weighed 13lb so I unset the neck, planed the top off, hollowed out the body and stuck another carved maple top on it. Ultimately you just need to remove the amount of thickness of your new top from the body and stick it on, refinish etc.

I get through my daily reaction quota almost daily, perhaps my standards are just too low.

I've run out of reactions after reacting to your banter, so I'll just say this. Phwaaaar

You could open a factory with that kind of turn around

If I was approaching that I'd cut something like a 3mm binding channel, glue up some 3 ply binding white/black/white and stick that to some more ebony binding to make the lines, could probably mitre the right angles.of the 3 ply to do the perpendicular bits. I don't think it would be that difficult to do, just quite time consuming, especially to get those right angles inlayed nicely. It's a really nice inlay idea.