ADFinlayson

TBH I can't tell from the footage if there are gaps or not. I also can't work out if you've already tapered the fretboard or not? If not, I'd say to get that done and then reassess. You've had that fretboard a while, it could have cupped in which case the bad joint will only be along the edges, it could be the neck wasn't flat or it could just be that you don't have enough clamps. A bad joint is not ideal but it's not the end of the world, you can hide it with binding but obviously you will need to get that joint right. If you decide not to bind, you can just fill with ebony dust and superglue and it will be invisible. For next time, do a dry clamp then drill a couple of locator pins to keep it square thus killing two birds. I use 2mm cocktail sticks from the supermarket and drill into the fret slots. You've also got your thickness planer now - I put my fretboards through the planer just before I glue them to get them to a perfect 6mm, then I take the little planer marks off with a cabinet scraper.

Show us a picture of the gap, it might be ok. If it's just a visual thing then it will go away when you stick your binding on.

Yep, i love everything about this guitar except for the shape and colour. I had a bc rich v when I was 17, that’s enough v for me

Very helpful bud, thank you! After sealing, I decided I'm pretty happy with it after all, so I've started putting some poly over it. At this point, the walnut went POP I dropped a bollock though because the control cover has more flaming than the headstock There is a hard edge at the start of the heel, so I'm planning to tidy up the edge along the sids where the maple laminate is and have that line as the start of the oiled neck which will hopefully look seamless.

I think the green is down to the brown coat - There is obviously some yellow in it. It does also look a bit purple in some light, no idea why!

No mate, the walnut/maple veneers will be natural and I think the control cover looks better natural as it will never be see at the same time as the top.

Progress on the V then. I ended up putting strings on to finish off the carve to get it right: Even with the heel I routed in, there was still too much meat at the dusty end so I put in a bit of a ramp to make access better I got the neck to 20mm thickness with a D shape from the nut to the 15th fret, then it slopes gradually to the start of the of the heel at the 19th. Sanded everything to 320 then put down a brown base colour after reading several posts saying brown is better than black for highlighting figure. This highlighted a few scratches I didn't see before and a couple of gouge marks that I missed, so I did a lot more sanding. But if it was my guitar, it would be staying this colour - I think it ties in really nicely with the walnut. Then after knocking it back again with 320, I went for a coat of blue. I used crimson stains here because the Liberon blue looks more green than blue. There are a few places where the grain won't take stain, I'm starting to think that this is just a trait of flat sawn maple as I never had this issue with the red one or the wenge/sycamore lp (both quarter sawn tops) Then did a bit of a burst too highlight the carved areas which looks almost green in places Need to knock it back some more with wire wool to help the blend. I don't know that I'm super happy with it though I expect Ollie will love it anyway so I started scraping back the binding. I'll see what it looks like while the sealer is wet and decide whether to crack on or sand it back and have another go.

You can do your own wiring in the UK, but it has to be inspected, signed off and ultimately taken responsibility for by a qualified electrician so it's not common to do ones own DIY electrics, however my dad was an electrician so I've been enjoying free labour in that regard I don't know about the rest of the world, but electricians are terrible at making good here though, especially when they aren't getting paid.

Lol I doubt I will enter many more guitars in GOTM this year, I've already entered 3.

Tearout tends not to be a problem when skimming the top with a router, so it's a good way to thickness a plank. You will probably find that it won't go through your thicknesser. The widest cutting hobby thicknesser on the market is the Triton with a max cut of 317mm, but the PRS body shape is 340mm (this is the bane of my life too) and there is a huge jump in cost between those that wont fit a whole body and ones that will sadly.

You still have the option of making the body thinner, with your router sled. You could get it down to a good weight given how hollow it is. I was thinking the other day, you mentioned your concern about the side being too thin - well just glue in some pieces along the sides to give more of a glueing surface, think of how an acoustic is constructed.

Yes metal can be bent, but it's a lot more likely to pop out.

yep, I did it last night - I put the bridge and tuners and a set of strings on the V while I finalised the carve so I could get the feel right.

I used this technique before removing the frets on a lacquered maple Hondo neck at the weekend. There was plenty of lacquer where the frets met the fretboard so it's obviously not a technique they used back in the 80s, I guess they just lacquered over the frets then just levelled and crowned, which would probably end up with a neater result when the frets have been painted a solid colour.

Grain filler will be a better option for wenge, the grain is so open that it should be filled instead of sealed to give you a nice level surface for the finish . clear or black filler would do, not sure about how open the palmwood is but at a guess I would grain fill that the same as the wenge given how dark it is, then once that's done, I'd use a sanding sealer on the cap once you've got it stained. BTW dude, on paper this guitar sounds stunning, I'm tempted to get some palmwood for a neck of my own.

I've never seen any ebony fretboards with nitro over them before, could be cool but it's certainly not necessary given how hard ebony is. For inlay, I'd have thought sheet aluminum would be the perfect material, it's light, easy to cut and looks nice brushed or sanded to a higher sheen. In terms of budget, you don't need a particularly large piece if you cut each fret separately but it will probs need to be at least 2mm thick for the prism to be inlayed deep enough when taking into account the radius of the fretboard. Another option would be aluminum powder+glue because those thinnest parts of the wave will be feckin' awkward to cut for both the pieces and the cavities.

haha, wait until you get 6 or 7 guitars in mate, the supportiveness may gain some sour undertones, in some cases may kick back like maple on a router. I make sure all jobs are done before I step foot in the garage, then regular application of wine and flowers with lunches out most weekends is just about keeping mine on side.

Weird, I start the curve of the neck inside the fretboard edge on my builds, I find it makes for a more comfortable feeling neck. But if the edge of your fretboard is sharp, I guess just going over that edge carefully with a scraper would knock and sharpness off. I see what you mean where the fretboard goes from straight to curved at the 16th, I wouldn't worry about that though, @ScottR gave me some fantastic advice the other day - some thing along the lines of. I know you can't unsee that, but to everyone else it looks perfectly normal. So Joe Bloggs guitarist will never even notice it.

that's a good idea, I might cut out some tine foil or something similar

You're right as usual, I might offer up an ebony truss rod and see how it all ties in.

Had a decorator in this weekend, meaning the mrs and toddler made themselves scarce and I had a whole weekend of garage and guitars My buddy Tom came round and we/I fretted his Hondo bass. He wanted shot of the lacquer so we got the old frets pulled, sanded down and new frets in and bevelled - installing jumbo SS bass fretwire was like trying to install iron girders. I need to get a notched straight edge for bass, then I'll finish the job for him. There are lots of dents in the lacquer on the back of the neck so once I've finished sanding that down, I'm hoping a damp towel and a soldering iron will decompress them a bit, but it's a 40 year old bass so they have probably been there for years and might be there for good. This was quite successful for my first refret, kinda glad that my first attempt was on something that didn't cost the earth, thought we may be refretting his '97 Warwick Streamer after. On to the job in hand - Frets are also in the V. Went for nickel silver on these purely because I had a roll leftover but I expect I'll me sticking to SS from now on. Now that I can see it all in context, I'm not that happy with the logo and I'm tempted to inlay a smaller version in MOP inside the ebony to give it an outline. Will decide on that further down the road! Next up, got the neck carved, started off with a blend from neck to body but there was too much meat on the heel for the last few frets to be comfortable. He wanted the same feel as a cu24 so I got the router out to make it more like a PRS tenon. Just got tidying up to do now, annoyingly there is not enough space to get the roundover bit in there so I'm having to do that with a file. Feels lovely though, Walnut it a joy to carve!

it sounds like the frets are sticking out now that you recarved? that's not biggy. Just stick the some painters tape (not masking tape) along the end side of the fretboard to cover up the fret ends, then go over them with a file - that will protect the wood and you will see the ret ends disappear, you might need to do a new fret end dressing job, you might not.

If it was me and the blank was big enough, I’d just go down to the local timber yard and get them to run it over their jointer. Depending where the bow is, you could potentially lose a lot of it when you cut out your headstock angle and get the rest of the top fave level with a hand plane. Bottom face doesn’t matter too much as it’s carved away anyway. The action of routing along a template will get the sides square with the top face if there is any twist. It’s easier to plane the top flat after routing the taper as there will be a lot less wood to plane flat. But generally, the bigger the blank is, the more options you have. But you should do all you can to get blank flat first if you can. whater you do, give it some time to settle down once you taken material away to make sure it doesn’t move again.

Can you show pic of the fretboard? I’m struggling to understand what the problem is here

Badass!