ADFinlayson

that sounds like more trouble than it's worth, in theory all I need to use is have a straight edge running down the centre 3mm off the centre line and use a 6mm bearing bit off that. Or use one of these round collet things (I cant remember what they're called) and offset the straight edge half the diameter of that away from the centre line. If none of that is possible, I'm sure it wont take that long to do it with a chisel.

Can't do that, the centre laminate of the neck is tapered so the contrast strips follow the taper of the neck.

Forgot to mention, the guy it's for is every specifically wanting a PRS 24 neck on it, so I'm going to use that neck template as a routing template to route the neck taper, then I'm planning to stick a feather edge to it to make the headstock and body carry on that taper.

Not exactly expert opinion but I'm working on the laminates for my first through at the moment. This drawing is not accurate or to scale but it gives an idea of how I'm approaching it. You can see the taper of the neck is going to start at the end of the headstock and go all the way through to the body, this design makes sense for me because the plan is to taper the laminates also so all the laminates are in a sort of V and it save faffing around with an angle where the neck joins the body wings. The dashed line indicates the blanks that I'm going to glue and cut off after glue up because clamping a V will be a pain other wise. One floor I've found in this plan is that the neck will be tapered from the off so I won't have a square edge to run a fence for a truss channel, so I'm going to have to make a truss rod template of some kind or another. But that's the basic concept.

After looking at it many times over the lat couple of days... I've ordered more dots I've just opened an exciting parcel for my build that came in the post today too; PRS HFS pickup to go in the bridge, PRS volume, tone, rings and strap buttons and a graphtec 43mm nut. I suppose I better get it finished

That's is my favourite wiring/switching you've got there. I've gone with the same on most of my builds. I tried out black winters recently, they did nothing for me at all. I play metal but desire a hint of vintage fatness from my neck pups. Recently I've used a demarzio liquifire in the neck, I can highly recommend that pickup and you'll be able to coiltap it without too much volume loss. I've also tried out the holcomb signiture duncans recently - They are seriously high gain if you're looking for a metal sound but the bridge pickup is just a bit thin and meh. The neck pickup on the other hand is really something else, sounds amazing when both tapped or humbucking, but there is a bit more volume loss than the liquifire.

Back to fretboard inlays last night, I think I've just about successfully hidden the poorly located eye socket eye-socket by filing down a bit of mop blank and filling with mop dust and superglue. I was going to just have a 12th inlay and forgo anything else, but I tend to get lost up the dusty end if I don't have something on the fretboard, so I used up the last of my 2mm mop dots. I really like these, they're subtle but enough. The only trouble is that I think it looks a bit weird with only having dots from 15th onwards, so I think I'll have to order some more and inlay the rest.

I'm a patreon supporter but don't have access to the patreon content section. Do I need to do anything to gain access?

Not a huge amount of progress on this one, I've been adding nightly coats of oil to #5 with the addition of daddy-day-care this weekend - mrs has to work every other weekend now which has put a dent in my garage time. I have managed to do some experimenting with grainfiller on some limba offcuts though. Really happy with how black grainfiller came out, especially on the sapwood after a coat of poly so I decided to go with it. So I sanded it all back with the random orbital and a soft pad to 220, painted it with an oil-based grain filler and sanded it back to 220 the following day. Really happy with that. Back onto the inlay this week

That's interesting, I've seen several youtubers say that the point of a through neck and what gives them their "improved sustain" which is obviously very subjective; is the lack of a lateral glue joint between the peg and the bridge to inhibit vibration. So I guess if the glue joint on the scarf makes no difference, then a set-neck theoretically would sound no different either. I've got a through-neck bass build coming up, a scarf joint at the headstock will save a bit of £ on wood.

"Badly made, great pickups" that's my niche. Get your own

It doesn't matter if your truss rod channel isn't perfect, it's hardly visible. The blue PRS rep I've been working on has a little zig-zag in the truss channel where I forgot to lock off the router. It looked like a dogs dinner before the fretboard went on Looking good though, I'm really liking the looking of sapele/maple contrast strips.

Looks awesome, I love that scarf joint, but doesn't the scarf joint negate the benefit of a neck-through?

That's a 5 minute job compared to hand cutting them in the first place. I detest cutting fret slots, but I don't have a table saw so have no choice. But I've got it down to a process now. I mark them out on the blank with a blade, stick the fretboard on, trim it flush, route the binding channel then cut slots. That way there is only about 50% of the wood to saw through compared to slotting a blank I also find that using a hand plane to start the radius saves a lot of sanding.

Got my carve all finalised and test fitted some cheap pots I have kicking around after drilling holes for them - I've found, after ruining some pots in the past, it's better to have some electronics for test fitting than run the risk of trashing the pots for final assembly. Had to make the cavity slightly deeper in places. Generally really happy with it, just a couple of issues: 1) you can just about make out in the first pic, the plug from the hole I miss-drilled previously by the toggle next to the volume - not ideal but I figured that seeing the plug up close would annoy me less than have the switch in a weird place. I'm pretty sure I can spot stain it anyway which should make it practically invisible. In an ideal world, I would have made ziricote plugs, but I don't have a plug cutter smaller enough, I did try a 3mm leather punch but it failed miserably. 2) using a countersink to make the recesses for toggle switches wasn't a great idea because it's not big enough nor have I been able to find any larger countersink bits online. So I'm going to see if I can fined a 1/2" round headed router bit to do the job a little better. Lots of sanding to do now, then I want to fill the grain prior to glue up so I don't get glue in the grain around the neck pocket, so I'll be experimenting wit a couple of grainfillers. For now, it's back to the snake inlay

Yep, on most of my guitars, I've started with a flat body shaped to a template, then I just draw with chalk where I want to carve and just crack, I usually carve the back too

Welcome, I would suggest buying yourself some decent PRS routing templates and just make your own neck, thats how I started last year (no prior woodworking experience). Neck building is not that difficult if you take your time and research the steps. If you're worried about damaging that blank, just get yourself some cheap sapele or meranti etc and build a prototype. The most intimidating part about neck building I found was cutting fret slots, if that's the case then just order yourself a pre-slotted fretboard. Back to PRS vs Strat, be aware that you would have to modify the PRS body design at the heal significantly to accomodate a strat neck and it might not look very PRS'y afterwards. You could get yourself some strat templates and just build a strat body, but there is no guarantee that the template for the neck pock is going to be an exact fit with your existing neck. Good luck and welcome to the obsession

Looking good, I wish I could build a guitar for £300. I usually get a bit carried away and spend that on just the pickups then I think during each build I end up spending that again on new tools. I wonder if I will ever go to the point where I have enough tools

Big fan of that, nice work

I'm new to the forum and clearly a bit naive, are members granted a finite amount of likes?

If you're planning to use plastic binding, use Acetone. If you're planning to use wood binding, wood glue is by far the best thing for glueing wood to wood, but prebend the binding first so your tape has far less work to do on holding the binding in place.

I used a dish/bowl router bit this time, in the past I used a forstner bit then carved the roundover with gouges, but that method is a PITA and very difficult to get a good result. This way was a 5 min job with the plunge router and will require much less sanding. Note that I plunged the recesses before carving the top so i could plunge on a flat surface.

There you go, I've liked it for you

Actually he was whining to go in for his dinner,

Yeah, I built a second bench for the same reason, lack of workable space on the existing bench, but now both benches are full and there is still no room to work other than on my workmate