ADFinlayson

My initial thought looking at the pic was Khaya mahogany. There is nothing about Tali in the wood-database but I found some useful info here: http://www.tropicaltimber.info/specie/tali-erythrophleum-suaveolens/#lower-content

This is not a definitive answer but it might narrow it down a bit because brown/orange are not common in guitar wiring. All the brands I know of have been ruled out according to the charts below. https://guitarelectronics.com/guitar-wiring-resources/humbucker-wire-color-codes/ https://madhatterguitarproducts.com/pages/mad-hatter-solderless-tone-shaping-system-wiring-sheets-references

Cheers! I asked a friend of mine who is a tattoo artist to come up with a design for me, and although he agreed, he went a bit quiet so I came up with the design myself, Not having done any art since GCSE at school, I'm a bit out of practice. So got various ideas from google images, and traced over my iPad screen with tracing paper, which worked surprisingly well providing I didn't actually touch the screen with anything other than the pencil. Great minds think alike, what you described is what I did last night - cut the horn area on the bandsaw and the far end of the V leaving the straight edges around the area that needs to be clamped. On one side anyway, I'm still gluing the laminates for the lower side of the body. Then I think I'll see if I can scrounge a jig saw to cut the rest once the glue up is done because I don't fancy holding the whole guitar up to the bandsaw.

Thanks dude. The workmate belong to my Dad, he's been nagging for it back for months Good luck with your V. Be sure to post about your progress!

Do you mean something like a duplicarver? I would have thought you need a small round nosed bit like one of these to get around all the contours. I use one of these and a larger one to route PRS style pot recesses and very little sanding is required afterwards https://www.toolstop.co.uk/trend-router-cutter-c056ax1-2tc-radius-9-5mm-radius-x-32mm-cut-x-80mm-shank-diameter-1-2-p70301?gclid=Cj0KCQiAh9njBRCYARIsALJhQkEHFD45WxvRhl5r0cf5Egqlo937i8Uw0gpDtF62gdAGgfnVLAhKPmwaAkHyEALw_wcB

Why is coil-splitting not a good idea?

So I went with the crazy stripy option, mainly because I had a shedload of 1" walnut leftover. Laminations in progress but you get the jist! it's a slow process because I'm only glueing up one at a time, leaving it clamped for an hour before glueing the next one in, being careful to get consistent grain direction. A.) because I want it to look good B.) Because I want to skim over both the wings in the thickness planer once I'm done glueing. At this point I'm in a bit of a predicament, Do I rough cut the shape before glueing the wings on or not? Roughing out the shape will be difficult once the wings are attached to the neck, especially around the end of the fretboard. But roughing out the shape will make clamping the wings on particularly difficult I've been working on my tester with some success. Using a heavy coat of cellulose sealer brushed over the stain, sanded back with 320, then a few coats of minwax wipe-on poly, first 2 coats I scuff-sanded back with 600, then 3rd coat I scuffed with 1200 before wiping on and wiping off a final coat. Then buffed for a few minutes with a rag and some t-cut I'm really happy with how the tester has come out and reckon I should be able to get much better results if I apply more coats, thinned down. Finally, some delusions of grandeur. This is what I'm attempting for the inlay; the brief was a skull and/or a fist. So I'm doing a hand holding a skull growing out of a tree. I'm a but further along with the pieces than pictured, I've got about 60% of the tree cut out into bitesize chunks. I'm using white mop for the skull and walnut for the branches/hand. The walnut is incredibly brittle at inlay thickness (2mm) so I'm cutting out the pieces for each fret to prevent breaks (although there have been many) and I figured would be easier to inlay smaller pieces too. This isn't a done deal, I might decide that I've bitten off more than I can chew yet, but will make that call between finishing cutting out the branches and starting to cut the MOP. Wish me luck.

I read your tutorial before doing my tester (Can't work out how to imbed a video so here's a terrible gif ), it was very useful and I'm planning to do this finishing technique on my ziricote guitar and the flying V when it gets there. Kudos!

They're great, I've got a Triton thickness planer. Which I'm getting a lot of use of for the stripy V. I used to take a lot of work down to the timber hard and pay a couple of quid each time to get them to do it. The Triton was £260 so won't take long to pay for itself, especially good for laminated necks etc. I run them though then just skim over with my no7 to get a good glueing surface. Only places to be really careful and where I've been caught out previously - Make sure you understand the grain direction of the piece you're pulling through and understand which way the cutters cut on your planer or you are likely to get tear out. Finally, the more figured the work piece is, the more your planer is likely to ruin it. A nice flamed top is totally not to go through a planer. The only real bummer about my planer is the max cutting width of 317mm so I can't get 1-piece bodies or pre-gled bodies through it, I still have to go to the yard for that. But I can thickness before glueing and be careful to make sure the piece are flat when gluing to avoid having to use a machine after. Mine will go down to 7mm, so when I want to thickness a fretboard, I stick it to a bit of mdf and run it through so I can get down a little thinner. I wouldn't use the planer to go to 2-3mm for a headplate. Something hard like ebony might be OK, but it's risky. When I make headplates from offcuts, I either just use a hand plane, or in the past I've use the router on a little makeshift sled.

I'm experimenting with minwax wipe on poly at the moment on top of some brush on cellulose sanding sealer and getting really good results. The smell of poly isn't too bad at all, but the cellulose sealer I used is seriously strong stuff. You can apply the poly straight on to bare wood and bin off the sealer if you're going for a natural finish (and depending on the wood), but not if you've stained the top as the process of wiping the poly on will remove a lot of the stain, unless thats what you want to go for. I would be happy to use the poly in the house if I had no other choice but the sealer is an out in the garage with all the doors open job.

I normally put the bridge pup 20-25mm from the bridge/scale line but it is subjective, don’t forget to take pickup rings into account if you’re using them, you should place the neck pickup cavity a few mm away from the end of the neck tenon

We will have to call this guitar LeVi

Forgot to mention I’ve also been working on testers. I started of with crimson stains but they were proving to be a bit crap, just not concentrated enough to colour wood well. So I abandoned them for some Liberon waterbased concentrates that I mixed with water. First a coat of black, sanded back then a heavy blue coat. Really happy with this, it’s the colour I wish I got on build #5

Managed to get a couple of hours in over the last few days. Ive glued the cap on and drilled through to the truss rod successfully, I always find it a tad scary blindly drilling and hoping I find a truss rod without drilling straight through the headstock then I opened it up a bit with a gouge. Truss rod works, all good. then i did a bit of shaping on the headstock, first off thicknessing it on my spindle sander with a block clamped to the bed so that I could make it exactly 15mm thick all round. The I rough shaped the design in the spindle sander and started hand filing the mistache, still needs a bit of work, sides neee taking down so it looks a little less batman, but that’s a job for tomorrow along with drilling machine head holes. Nut fits nice and snug too

You have that wrong, most prs even the basses have set necks, it’s only they bolt on range or CE that arent. No I do make the neck first, then I make the body and neck pocket. That way the neck is ready to test fit as soon as I’ve routed the pocket. If you are making a prs style guitar, my advice would be to just get some prs templates and some cheap wood and have a go. You will learn a lot more from your hands than 3D software can ever teach you

If your body is 44.5mm and your neck is 30mm (12+18) you can afford to add another 4mm to the tenon leaving 10.5mm under the tenon. I would recommend glueing the neck because a good glue joint is always going to be stronger than a bold on. Consider that drilling holes removed wood therefore removes strength but a glue joint is stronger than the wood itself so 2 pieces of wood become one stronger piece. All that being said, your 3D work is a lot more precise than I’m used to, I normally just make it up as i go really, I make the neck first with an oversized heal, then I make the body and route a pocket and shave the heel down to get the right fit. But just to confirm, there is plenty there in your design for a good glue joint on a set neck

If you're carving around contours, a kidney scraper is a must IMO

I cut the mop for build #6 on my band saw so I expect you will be fine. Worst case scenario you could rout the binding channels before inlaying and file the inlays flush with the channel wall before applying the binding. The smart thing to do though would be to inlay a scrap bit of mop into a bit of scrap wood and stick the router through and see what happens.

nooo, remove the fretboard. As long as you've used wood glue it will come away easily with water, heat and patience. I successfully unset a neck myself a few months ago with just my girlfriends hair dryer and a squirty-bottle of water. When you reset the fretboard, dry clamp it first in position then drill a couple of 2mm holes at each end in the fret slots and and stick cocktail sticks in as locator pins, worked for me 100% of the time and they're hidden by the fret crowns.

Oi, I'm building my first neck-through V. You've stolen my thunder Sounds cool though from the description and I'm looking forward to seeing it. Do post details of your progress because it will be interesting to see how different our methods are.

Here's my entry then, my 5th build that I completed recently for friend of a friend Luke. I've dubbed it The Eye of Sauron due to the beetle tract that appeared on the back after thicknessing. He's a big LOTR fan so seemed appropriate. Got some good use out of wood on this on; the kahya neck laminates came from offcuts of the mk2 and the top, the neck, inlays, binding and control cover all came out of one plank of maple, the rest of which I'm using on the flying V build, which is also going to be blue, sisters Since he picked it up a few weeks ago, he hasn't wanted to play anything else which astonished me as he is the store manager of an instrument chain (PMT UK) and owns 14 other guitars. Apologies for the amateur photography. Spec - 1 piece carved African mahogany body - 2-piece flame maple cap with faux binding - carved flamed maple control cover - laminated flamed maple and African mahogany neck - Ebony headstock with flamed maple inlay - Ebony fretboard with flamed maple trapeze inlays and grain-matched truss rod cover - Ebony and flamed maple binding - 24 medium jumbo nick-silver frets - 43mm Graphtech tusq nut - oiled blue burst finish - Mini Grover Rotomatic 3x3 tuners - Graphtech Resomax bridge with tusq saddles and Gotoh tailpiece - Dimarzio Liquifire bass, SuperDistortion trebble pickups - Switchcraft 3-way toggle switch - CTS push-pull volume with treble bleed - CTS push-pull tone, both pickups can be coil-tapped individually - Ebony lampshade control knobs. And I went to watch it play it's first show last night, which was a big thing for me Cheers Ash

I don't see anything wrong with that technique for putting in the radius, certainly works if you don't have a specific radius block. You just have to check the radius often. Starting off with a hand plane certainly speeds up the process though.

I've had lots of chip outs when cutting slots on my first couple of guitars when I freehanded them. I've learnt to prevent this buy sawing from the edge in to the middle of the fretboard on the initial cuts, even if you're going against the cut of the saw, just to get that initial mark in then just joint the two edges by reducing the cut angle. What also really helps is making a vertical notch just down the edge of the board at the slot with a marking knife, if gives the saw something to catch onto vertically and helps prevent the saw wondering or snagging and chipping.

I've got a 24 fret Mira and a 22 fret Paul's guitar, which I stare at regularly when trying to figure this stuff out. Both the Mira and the Paul's start curving up to the heel at fret 17 and the taper finishes at fret 19, which means the heel on the 22 models are longer in comparison to the neck. This is potentially just design thing but people do say that the bigger/longer the tenon, the better the sustain and tuning stability. But on this one I made earlier. The heel taper starts at the 19th and finishes at the 21st (actually down to a whoopsie with the band saw) but it sustains just fine and is more accessible at the dusty end. So I don't really think it matters This isn't the best pic in the world but it does show you how high the fretboard/pickup is from the body, there isn't a huge amount of room here.

You need to make/buy a template for your neck and neck pocket, then stick the template to the top once you've done your angle into the top, Then when you route the pocket, the bottom of the pocket will be parallel with top and you break angle is done.