ADFinlayson

I have these jewellers files: https://www.screwfix.com/p/magnusson-needle-file-set-5-3-pieces/4474v I used them to do the awkward areas in the f-hole. I also use them to shape my inlays and even did my first fret job with them - Not bad for £7! They're getting a bit tired now but I've had them or 18 months and got 8 builds out of them.

I drilled out most of the material, then I got my gouges as sharp as possible then gently cut slithers of maple away until I got to the the line, I used jewellers files in really tight areas. When designing your F-hole, you will make your life a lot easier if you make the top and bottom ends round so you can drill them straight out. It's also a lot easier to carve prior to cutting the f-hole as there is a lot less material to get rid of for the f-hole.

Looks great, I would like to see a closeup of that binding that gave you so much stick

Yep I bought a G&W one and it was no good, I really struggled to find one so I ended up Download a 335 plan and modding the shape in illustrator. If you want to use a template then stick the plan to some ply and make one, but I found that it’s really not difficult to cut it by hand after sticking the print out to the top.

It looks like a tight fit at the bottom but not a tight fit at the top which would mean either the tenon or the walls of the neck pocket are not perfectly square. In an ideal world you would have a snug fit all over as the glue is not there to fill gaps (unless you use a gap filling glue). But how strong is the joint? if you apply pressure to the back of the neck, does it move at all? If it doesn't then I would not worry too much - I've got away with worse neck joints than that on my first couple of builds. If the body was not already finished, I would jam a bit of filler in there and finish over the top of it, but anything you do with the body already finished will be visible. Walk away and call it done.

would help if you provide some pics

I'm planning a couple of Gibbo DC style builds myself, just finished making templates and I've been experimenting with finish. This is a mix of Ronseal oil-based varnish, alcohol stain and thinned slightly with whitespirit over a black oil-based grain-filler. Really happy with how it looks considering it's just 2 coats applied with a stiff brush. The only trouble with it is that Ronseal, even thinned, takes a good 12 hours to dry enough to level sand between coats. I'm planning to try a TV yellow type colour too although I think that will take a lot more coats. Also planning to try tinting brush on lacquer

Wow, love the look of that DC @Andyjr1515 Did you do a build thread for it?

indeed, I honestly thought the burst was sprayed.

Stop it, you're making the rest of us look bad.

Thanks chaps, some photos and final spec of my baby below. Spec Top wood: Carved Ziricote 18mm body: 1-piece black limba 29mm Control cover: black limba Neck: 1-piece blank limba, 20mm D from nut to 17th fret headstock: Ziricote with white mop inlay fretboard: Ziricote, MOP 2-headed snake thing inlay plus 2mm white mop dots scale: 25" Frets: 24 medium jumbo nickel silver Finish: - Body: natural satin poly clear coat - Neck: Danish oil Bridge: PRS adjustable stoptail Tuners: Sperzel trim lock 3x3 chrome/gold Nut: Graphtec, 43mm Pickups: PRS 57/08 neck, HFS bridge pickup selection: 3-way toggle + individual coil splits Controls: 1 vol w/treble bleed, 1 tone and switchcraft toggle, ebony lampshades, ivory style pickup rings and switch-tip Weight: 8 lb 4oz

So the new body is coming on quite nicely. Got myself a 115mm angle grinder and some 80 grit flap discs to save time. Amazed at just how much faster it is - although extremely noisey and sooo much dust, definitely an outside summer job. Note that he's asked for the toggle switch to be up on the horn - this aided my decision to remake the body. I've come to the conclusion that the reason the router ate the last one, is because my triton router is knackered - I got myself a new, much better quality router bit and routed some test pieces and the exact same thing happened! The plunge feature doesn't work properly and the top screw has become "notchy" so turning it will do nothing, then all of a sudden it will jump a couple of mm in depth and eat wood, it's doing that even with a small bit. So I moved over to my big Ryobi router which has a silky smooth plunge. Annoyingly though, it doesn't go slow enough to prevent burn on my big round nose router bits. So I've got a lot of sanding to do in the recesses. My triton router has failed in other ways now too, the speed adjustment wheel is now stuck on 2 and can't be adjusted and the depth stop is no longer trust worthy, not impressed for a 6 month old router that gets occasional use. So it's going back for a warranty repair. Upon carving, I've decided this piece of wood is amazing, the rising dark spots from the base of the body, to me, look like rising flames, ash from a bonfire. So I'm trying to convince Luke that blue is not the correct colour for this guitar - A yellow/orange burst or a dragon burst would look much better. Something like this... Other suggestions welcome!

I'm not a fan of the blow torch idea - may end up cracking end grain. The poor filler is not a good idea either IMO because it will inhibit the blue stain taking to the wood later. If I was doing this, I would stain it black first, sand it back so the stain is in the grain only, then stain blue. If you then apply a heavy first coat of oil and sand it into the body with wet and dry paper, it will slurry up and fill the grain for you. You can do the same technique with wipe on poly to fill the grain if you wanted a harder finish.

Here's a spec for a Schaller vintage style trem, if you look on their site they have specs for all their bridges, same with Gotoh etc https://schaller.info/media/pdf/43/5e/9e/TZ_1305.pdf

Both rosewood and mahogany have open grain pours so you will want to use a grain filler or sanding sealer before poly, in the case of sealer the poly will never go inside the grain so I can't see how (tonally) it would matter. If it was me, I would tape off the top of the fretboard and seal and poly over the side of the fretboard when you coat the neck, otherwise you'll end up with a ridge where the finish finishes

Looks awesome, that Yew will make a very interesting body and kudos for making your own bridge!

Thanks for all the positive comments, probably the worst demo video of all time, but I managed to briefly capture Ollie playing on it in the studio last night

Nice work, I wonder did he ever contact Martin directly? I'd have thought for a £3,000 guitar to fail like that within 18 months, you'd expect them to step in and do some work on it. Dealer obviously behaved appallingly too - If a car goes wrong just out of warranty, they normally at least try and put in a goodwill repair with the makers. I watched a recent video on youtube with a 5 year old PRS that the chap had bought second hand, the ebony board and shrunk significantly and the frets sprouted through the lacquer. He sent it off to them for a quote and 4 months later, they sent it back, refinished the whole guitar and didn't charge him a penny. I know not all companies are the same, but when you spend that money on an instrument, you expect it to be a heirloom, not a two year replacement

Thanks for all the advice, although I know I could fill the area. I'd already decided it's going to have a new body for a few reasons, I want it to be the best it can be, he's already paid more than enough to cover the cost of the new body and the refin and I expect when he sees the final result he'll throw some more money at it. This build has already opened a couple of doors in terms of new build prospects. I just want everything I do now to look as professional as possible so can start charging properly for the work. Couple of lessons learnt from this experience - Bought a new, much higher quality router bit to do the pot recesses in future and glued the new top with titebond 2 (instead of 1), will also won't be using titebond 1 for neck lams in future, though I expect titebond 3 would be better. Oh yeah, he's decided he wants the toggle switch on the upper horn like the mcarty model as he's used to his gibbos so I've had to make the body slightly thicker to accommodate a switch there, 20mm cap and 30mm mahogany body. I still need to suss out if I will be able to incorporate the carve into the back.

So after Mondays catastrophe where my router ate a pot recess. I'm building a new body for the guitar. The issue I'm worried about is unsetting the neck from the old body - The neck is made up up of 5 maple/mahogany lams, glued together with Titebond I. The neck is also glued into the body with Titebond I with the same glue used to stick on the fretboard and it's binding. Any suggestions on how to safely unset the neck without delaminating the neck from itself? I was thinking about placing a clamp on the heal to keep some lateral pressure on the lams while heating up the pocket but the heal is a bit on the small side. My fallback option is to just bandsaw the body off and scrape off excess glue/wood but I'd like to avoid completely wasting the body if poss. Cheers Ash

yeah I've told him now anyway. This top is much better though, quarter sawn I think, so no annoying growth rings all over it that don't take stain. Should be a lot stronger too. Also much nicer flame on this one.

So today was a particularly bad day in the world of Ash’s guitars. After my daughter helped me sand the top - she did a fantastic job i had a go at rerouting the pot recesses and catastrophe struck. Massive irreparable tearout i could in theory fix this with wood filler, but that will mean the area won’t take stain and a solid colour isn’t an option. So I jointed and glued a new top tonight, I haven’t decided whether to plane this top off the body or to remake the whole body with a view to reuse this one with a solid finish. havent told the owner yet, im tempted to just see if he notices

I’ve just had the realisation that white spirit will no doubt remove the oil paint from the grain. Duh

I previously stained by rubbing in thinned oiled paints. Then after a couple of weeks I finished it with crimson finishing oil, this time I was planning to used water based stain, sealer then clear lacquer. So the waterbased dye definitely isn’t going to soak into any grain that contains oil paint. However I’m planning to finish it in blue again, so I’m wondering if I can get away with it. @Bizman62 I don’t think bleach could help, the issue isn’t that the grain is blue, the issue is that the grain is full. If I bleached it, I would have full grain that is pale but won’t accept stain.

They look like they might do but they’re on .com, I’m thinking about routing new recesses as these ones were done by hand with a gouge etc, router will do a neater job now that I have the knowhow. Need to think about logistics - need to go deeper and depth of the cap around the pots could be an issue. Sanding is proving painful. There are some areas which are lightly stained blue/grey, no matter how much I take away with the scrapers, that colour remains. There are also areas where I can see flecks of blue in the grain, again no matter how much I sand or scrape, they just won’t die. I’m tempted to spot stain an area and see how it looks