ADFinlayson

I did look for an odd numbered step drill actually, to no avail. Didn't think of imperial, but I've got a 17mm bit now - that I will probably never use again

I’ve filled all the voids in the top and the back of the headstock with black epoxy and it seems to be taking an age to dry, either it’s the cold weather or I didn’t get the mix right. So in the meantime, I’ve been worrying about these tuners. They require a 14mm hole for the shaft and 17mm hole for the bushing. Can’t find a 17mm Brad bit anywhere but I have got a 16mm flat bit that has a point and I’ve managed to find a 17mm hss bit which I’m hoping to use to fettle the hole up to size. Tried on a test piece and it worked, bushing went in fine. The procrastination guitar is coming on too. Got the neck blank roughed our and the cap is flat, glued and routed to shape, Got to route the pot recesses the carve. It’s going to be another semi hollow les Paul type build like the red one, only mahogany instead of Ovangkol, ziricote board and it will be purple, oh and the chap wants a monkey at the 12th fret

You're doing a lot of worrying about nothing IMO - I've glued many fretboards with titebond and never had issues with water in the glue causing any bowing. Bowing, if at all is normally caused from hammering in frets. If you're really worried, get yourself a dual action truss rod and you don't need to worry about introducing a bow. The biggest concern I would have about glueing a pre radiused and slotted board is that it's going on straight and that even pressure can be applied over the radius.

the subtle stain really works with that piece. You know, if you upload your photos to photos.google.com instead of photobucket, you won't get any annoying watermarks on your pics, there is no cost or storage limit to google photos and there is a really good phone app app that makes it easy to put your photos into albums for your builds

I think you're right, I'm definitely going to have to get the ruler out on the wood and draw some lines along the taper, just awkward because it's so damn long. But I've got this procrastination game down to a fine art. by starting a new guitar

why not just level it off with a hand plane? have you got a no7? that's all i used to get my bench flat.

So my ears are on and planed flush, joints came out really well But I decided to to stick some pheobe to the back with a contrast veneer between to match the top - for strength as much as anything, I doubt it will be that visible under the tuners. Like the top, I'm going to have to flood the voids with eboxy, but I think I'll get the shape finalised first and tape round the sides. One thing I've just found which is very annoying, the Bongo plans I have are totally inaccurate. The plan that has the exact tuner positions is not the same scale as the drawing of the headstock, seems to be printed at a different scale even though it's on the same sheet of paper So I'm going to have to manually figure out where to drill the tuner positions. If anyone has some ideas on how best to achieve this, I'd be very grateful for the advice. I want to get the tuner holes drilled and screw the bridge into the neck through so I can be sure that the taper of the neck is right now that I've found the plans aren't accurate, hopefully that way I can make adjustments if needed.

haha, mine went through a narky phase about a year ago because I was "spending all my time in the garage", and I would usually notice her switch off when I talked about guitars (to be fair, that's all the time). But now that I charge labour, she's a lot more interested

She's more informed than my other half, she just said "oooh shiny" but I'll take that

Yep, the two DCs have taken a bit of a back foot for a week or so. I was getting worried that I'm going to be getting behind on the commission builds. I appear to have inherited my fathers gene of starting a job before finishing another. The other body you see it just a prototype I'm working on here and there so I can prove that I can build a guitar with a trem before I start working on another customer build with a trem. Got my top jointed and glued up along with the headstock ears. My shooting board isn't big enough for a bass body, rather than making a larger one that I'm rarely going to use, I decided to rough out the shape first so there was less of a joint to work on. It was quite difficult to get the joint right with all the weird figuring. But it seems to have come out ok, bit hairy at the very top but that will be cut away for the fretboard anyway. You can see there are a lot of spots where the glue splurged up through the holes when I glue the veneers on. That's going to need a fair bit of cleaning up and I think I'm going to have to flood it all with epoxy.

Good bit of progress over the last couple of days. Fretboard is glued on and trimmed flush with the taper, I've cut the nut slot (I'm using a graphtech 42mm nut) which slots in nicely, not as snug as i'd like but I think, worst case I could squeeze a slither of veneer in there with it. I opted to cut the slot prior to radius as I figured it would be easier to keep the bottom flat. I've also cut the excess off and shaped the ramp on the bobbin sander, there's a truss rod in there somewhere Cut out the rest of the shape on the band saw, it's a nice light bass at the moment Came up with a design for the headstock (the bongo headstock just doesn't work with the billy body design). It's, i guess a half-way house between music man and fender - I'm trying to keep it as short as possible for balance but maintain the tuner positions of the bongo. (the bottom one will be facing in). I'm putting a contrast veneer between the top and the body. The veneer sheet isn't wide enough to do it in one, so I figured the easiest way to glue it together would be to glue a sheet to the underside of both halves of the top and then joint them together and glue all on to the top as one. Had some wood hanging around to use as a veneer press I've got some headstock ears jointed and ready to be glued on. I've also marked out the plank fo the body so I'm going to start chopping that up tomorrow. This one's coming on quite quickly, Hopefully when I see Snuffy tomorrow, he will tell me what he want's me to inlay, I think that is going to be the part that slows down this project. Oh yeah, I got a new tool this week Not a particularly expensive one, but a vast improvement on the hand drill and my dads mortice machine. It turns out there is a little engineering shop around the corner from me that I didn't know existed, it's like Alladins cave, every imperial drill but I've never been able to find along with every other odd and sod I could need for making jigs etc. I went in for a drill bit and came out with a drill big enough to do string through ferrules

Yep, beautiful. Every time I see work like this, it makes me want to have a go at acoustic building.

I can't morally disagree with that statement, on either part. Cut my tapers out tonight, I've obviously underestimated my ability to setup my bandsaw properly because it was a doddle with a new 1/2" blade, went through quickly and quietly, though it was awkward pushing a > 1m, 2" thick plank through with no support on the other side. Got enough surplus to make a 2-piece guitar neck The next part I was particularly worried about was planing it all nice and square with the no7. But that also turned out to be a doddle - Used my favourite little block plane to knock off the really high spots then made good with the jointer plane. I was expecting these jobs to take me all evening but I had the whole lot done in about an hour. So I can think about glueing the fretboard on next. According to the bongo plans I have, the fretboard is 3mm thick and the entire neck being 15mm thick at the first fret, I can't believe that to be true so I'm going to measure snuffy's bongo at the weekend. But I'm thinking that I'm going to plane the board down to 5mm and stick it in, then go for a 19-20mm neck. Here's the fretboard and massive hunk of limba for the body and here's the golden pheobe top, left side has some white spirit on it, looks reminiscent of the burl on @ScottR's crazy scroll in places More fun tomorrow

Ah dude that's a huge help, I guess I should be ok then, my headstock has the potential to be quite short with the high tuner on the other side. It's getting topped so I can do some chambering and I guess I can go quite thin if it's a neck through. Love the red one

ha, I will leave it to him to do the demoing, my only bass trick is an abysmal rendition of Larry Graham's pow

I'm not I'm also not really feeling the bongo headstock shape against the body design, I'm hoping I can convince him to go for something a bit more like the attitude but with the 4th tuner on the underside. While I've got your attention @Andyjr1515, what's a good target weight to be shooting for here? all bases are heavy to me so not sure what I should do about chambering.

I've finally started my first bass build, which I've put off for the best part of 6 months - Rightly so I think as it's my most nerve-racking building to date. It's a combination of 2 designs - neck taper/shape and tuner positions of a Musicman bongo 4 and the body shape of the Billy Sheahan attitude 3, but with neck-through constructions. No templates available for either designs so I'm working entirely off a diy plan and measurements taken from the musicman site, plus I drew around his attitude bass body, but I think he want's some bongo style carving in the attitude shape (will figure that one out later) I've got a 1 piece black limber neck-through blank and another plank of limba to make up the body. The body will have a golden phoebe top and I'll use some extra pheobe I've got to make control covers, possibly a headstock veneer too and Macassar ebony board. He's got an abs bridge, hipshot tuners (3+1) but the bass tuner has the d-tune thing that his attitude bass has, dingwall pickups that I guess needs a preamp and battery compartment, I guess I'll just make sure the control cavity is a good size and figure out the wiring near the time. Inlays are still up in the air, he want's something skull related, so I guess I'll come up with something along the lines of Ollie's V. Anyhoo, last night I transferred the plan onto the neck blank and routed the truss rod channel. Got a bigger blade on my band saw and all set up ready to cut the tapers tonight. I haven't got a functioning straight edge that I can route the whole taper with so I think I'm going to have to try and get down to the lines with the no7 once it's roughed out. Wish me luck.

I hear you, my toddler turned 2 last weekend, though I'm quite certain the terrible twos started about 4 months ago. Gorgeous looking build, I think I like that back most of all, though the f=hole is very pretty!

I would be feeling quite smug if that was my build, fantastic work

That's unfortunate, it might be worth screwing a block to each end of the sled so that it can't call off the track.

I think you should be fine - You know where those thin spots are and can therefore be careful, especially when installing frets. I suppose you could add some bracing if you're worried, but acoustic tops are also very thin and delicate too.

There are some parts I really don't like about guitar building - I don't much enjoy anything to do with slotting fretboards, hammering or levelling frets. I don't much enjoying preparing blanks, resawing a billet of wood with a hand saw is no fun at all, in fact I'm still aching from bookmatching some walnut at the weekend. But, I do like having done all those things. Now that my finishing has taken a big leap in quality, my favourite stage is seeing a the figure pop with a coat of lacquer on it. But honestly I really enjoy the whole process in making a functional piece of art, and all the small jobs that I don't enjoy soon get forgotten when it's got strings on it.

There are so many options for darkening up mahogany. You could use a water-based or alcohol based dye, you could use artist oil paint thinned with mineral spirits, a dark grain-filler or just use a tinted finish, any of the above (apart from the grain filler) could be used to tint poly, oil, lacquer etc. But all of the above aside, every piece of wood is different, so you should always do testers on your off cuts, find something you like then finish your guitar.

That's good to know, you have confirmed my suspicion that I don't currently have a lot of use for a scroll saw I've finished fretting the two, used nickel silver wire on the ebony and stainless steel on the rosewood. Rosewood was a real pita, glad I ran out of fret wire

Here’s the next episode, finished off the inlays https://youtu.be/1cZGlbNJ9Fs