ADFinlayson

I feel like I got a fair bit done on this one today. Was woken up at an ungodly hour by the tiny human so I got my headstock taper shaped, truss rod access drilled and fretboard glued on before porridge Then tonight I got the clamps off and got it trimmed and routed flush. Then I got the pickup cavities routed once I’d confirmed the location of the end of the fretboard I could route the pickup cavities. then I got the break angle planed into the top of the body. Body I started, I drew a pencil line along the tenon at the top of the body, compared that line to the fretboard with the protractor which told me that the break angle in the bottom of the pocket is 4.5° which is too much for me, the bridge was too high in its previous iteration. So I stuck a 6mm sheet of ply at the bridge position and planed down the front. Drew a new pencil line which was 2.5° against the fretboard which is more like it, 2.5° is plenty for a tom or wraparound bridge if the fretboard sits 1mm up from the body. I don’t really want to route the bottom of the pocket again as there isn’t that much wood there so I’m thinking of putting an angle into the bottom of the tenon to undo the other 2° so i need to plane a 1° angle between the pickup routes, then I need to blend the new flat area into the existing carve, once I’ve got the body finalised, I can trim down the tenon. Starting to look like a guitar again

Well observed sir. The blank is about 20mm wider than required and one side looked a bit more quarter sawn than the other so I moved everything over a bit. got the neck and headstock shape roughed out this eve then routed the taper, the glue up for the cap was good and I really like the look of ebony on Ovangkol, I was contemplating going for flamed maple on the headstock and staining to match the body but I’m glad I’m matching the fretboard. Neck fits in the tenon after a bit of fettling with a scraper, it’s a very tight fit but I don’t want to fettle any more until I’ve routed the pickup cavity. I’ve also got to plane a break angle into the top, which I’ll do once I’ve got the fretboard on.

I did it with a hand drill on my first build out of necessity - get 2 straight blocks of wood, place one in front and one to the side of the drill and use them to reference square - keep them close enough so that your drill knocks them out of the way when you get in far enough, drill the outer Es all the way through, then drill the 4 inner holes half way through. On the back, divide the distance between the 2 outer holes by 5 and mark 4 holes between then drill through until your holes meet in the middle.

I like it though the inlay along the body is a bit loud for me - I'd have stopped at the 24th. You could have the white line carrying on over the truss rod and have another wave where the PRS sig normally is though, that would look I'd have the headstock ebony to match the board too. Cool idea

Suppler came up good with a replacement blank and ibe started working on it. This wood is so hard that it laughed at my bandsaw, took well over an hour to rough out. Go the headstock angle planed to 11° and routed the truss rod channel. This wood is also a nightmare to plane Got a Gabon ebony fretboard and headstock cap for this one. I thicknessed the cap down to 2mm and got it stuck on tonight Annoyingly the cap was a bit on the small side so I had to get it perfectly centred against the neck with locator pins so there is enough material to cover the headstock shape

If you want to reduce the weight, you could always use your perspex router sled and a couple of blocks and reduce the overall height of the body before you glue the top on. If as you said the body is 2" thick without the cap, you could quite easily reduce that by 20mm, still leaving you 30mm + the cap and it should be a nice weight. I did the same thing last week on my ovangkol lp build, it was surprisingly easy to skim off the top, even with my extremely crude thicknessing sled.

Thought you'd fallen off the radar since they switched off the Crimson forum. build is looking good mate and glad you're still posting. I'm working with some ovangkol again myself, it's a nightmare

good job on the resaw, I've done that myself on a couple of builds recently, I made myself a kerfing plane out of a cheap tenon saw and some oak offcuts, I recommend doing the same, it will prevent the little hickups and give you a much better bookmatch result as you can get through the whole thing without having multiple cuts.

It was only £40 too

Yep, f-hole or not, this guitar will still be playing metal and tuned to drop C

Well the supplier hasn't called me back, but I've had a notification from parcel2go to say there is wood coming, I guess that means they've begrudgingly sent another blank out. So no harm no foul. Onwards, glue up with a proper success, so was routing the new neck pocket. I had to use a bottom bearing flush trim bit to route along the original pocket of ovangkol which I was expecting to be a bit sketchy given the top is carved already, but it went good. Just need a neck for it now! Going to wait until the neck is made before doing pickup routes, to make sure I get the neck pup correct relative to the end of the fretboard. I saw a video on youtube where someone blocked off an f-hole prior to finishing so I decided to whip the tape out, I want to stain the sides of the f-hole anyway so made sense not to block it off yet. Wiped a bit of white spirit over to see what it's going to like like, and it's going to look fookin' awesome And another happy outcome - We're under 6lb now so I don't think it's going to end up unbearably heavy after all Pretty much done on this now until I can make a neck, just got to make a control cover for the 3-way, provide I can find an ovangkol offcut that the dog hasn't eaten

I was wondering what the point of your crazy under-top neck tenon was, now I understand! Both of these are looking slick, but the rosewood is my favourite. Have you decided what colour these are going to be yet?

It's 7mm in the centre, slightly less on the carved edges problem down to a min of 5mm before the edges start. I've done a little more chambering since that last pic. but I never really saw any change on the scales. And it doesn't matter now because the top is glued on Couple of thinks I've done which was either really smart of really dumb.. 1. I put a light coat of danish oil in the hollow under the f hole, well rubbed in and excess rubbed away 2. I taped off the underside of the f-hole because I thought I would want to cover it up when I come to spray with sealer, but couldn't think how I would go about taping it off afterwards. Clamping was a pain, I couldn't use wooded cauls because both the top and the back are carved, I couldn't use a lot of clamping pressure around the f-hole either. So I cut up some roll of cork (I use to protect base of what I'm working on and it helps prevent the work from slipping while carving) into square and used them just to protect the wood from the clamps. Will get the clamps off tonight and see what it looks like. Neck building for this one has been put on hold, I got a blank on Wednesday but it turns out to have several splits so I can't use it for a neck, hoping the supplier is going to sort it out. In the meantime, I'll be going back on with the V.

Fair bit of routing done this evening, it looks like a dogs dinner but that serves me right for being too lazy to make a template, so I freehanded it all. I’ve removed a lot of material, as much as I feel comfortable taking away. It’s still just over 6lb combined with the top, which is heavier than I’d like, but I’m hoping I can get it to not much more than 9lb with the hardware

I hear you! I am currently sporting a splinter inside a blister too

I've used both approaches and have decided that it's much easier to glue a veneer blank onto a headstock blank and shape the two layers at the same time. I Agree with Norris, it's a PITA sometimes to sand out the glue squeeze out properly without altering the final shape; especially important if you're staining the headstock prior to finishing as the tiniest remnants of glue will stop stain taking to the wood.

A 1/2" no5 sweep gouge is all you need to carve a guitar top, then you can hit it with a random orbital sander to finalise the shape, or use thumb planes/scrapers. There are good chinese thumb planes on ebay for about £25 but an orbital is a lot faster. There is also a really good budget random orbital, the Titan one from screwfix for about £50, but I'd recommend getting a soft pad for it.

I cut the f-hole with edge tools, gouges and chisels and a couple of jewellers files for the really awkward areas (after carving the body). I would have had to have made an f-hole template to use a router and would have to have bought special dremel router bits (and a dremel for that matter) to have routed it, also cutting the hole after carving with a router and a template might be a logistical nightmare. I thought about doing the F-hole prior to carving, but then it becomes a delicate area to carve. All the router bits mentioned above came from eBay

With gouges, I recommend scouring ebay for used vintage ones. I've found good quality new gouges from the likes of Ashley Iles are serious money, and the new cheap ones are just awful (I bought a set for £15 on ebay and threw them away a few weeks later), but you can get good quality old Marples gouges for very little money

BigD's videos on youtube are great, especially when you get to staining and finishing, the Crimson videos are great too but I would order by oldest first and watch those, the newer stuff is a bit click baity and not as informative. Before I attempted my first build, I watched Ben's 25 hour series and clarity build series - there is enough info in those to get you through the first build. The other series I watched which I think was my favourite of all, was Freddy's Frets - Building Les Pauls series. My first build was a set neck, carve top Custom 24/Mira design, but solid and I only carved it with rasps as that's all I had, but you should be able to put a nice back carve in the top with the angle grinder. Your video is tempting me to get one, I like carving by hand and done a lot of it lately but I can't remember a day where I haven't cut myself

Flippin' good inlay work there Norris!

I have an 18-month-old so I can relate. God knows how I have time to make guitars!

Oh yes, there was a fair bit of blood while shaping the back of the f hole. I think it’s an omen, the guitar going to be red

So tonight I drew out where I want my channels and started hollowing out the body with forstner bits, that was at least until my hand drill over heated. I’m really going to have to invest in a decent drill press. Notice I’ve drilled through where a toggle switch will go. The plan is to route all the way through from the top, I can’t route from the underside because it’s curved and won’t hold a template, so I’m going to do the larger route all the way through then glue in some pieces to hold the control cover. So I carried on with the top. I’ve been working on thinning out the underside of the f-hole, it looks better and makes the hollow underneath look deaper which I’ll need as it’s only a slim body. So that’s that for now, I’m hoping the drill isn’t dead so I can finish hogging out the material tomorrow. Ovangkol is a real nightmare, which is funny because I’ve got nneck to build out of it

Hi David, I think there are a few from the crimson forum that joined up here. It’s a good place to be, lots of knowledge!