ADFinlayson

yeah true, and don't get me wrong, if I had a dremel, a base for it and small router bits then I would go down the router/jig route for the blade switch. But we're talking about a £200 outlay for a blade switch or half an hour with a scalpel and a chisel. One of the main reasons I'm in favour of hand tools at the moment is mainly down to the space I've got to work with. My garage is starting to get seriously cluttered, I need to spend a hole weekend just sorting that out. A job that I know I need to do, but when weighing up the options, tidy garage and build another tool wall or carry on building this guitar, it's hard to tidy the garage

Carve is getting there. I still need to round off the edges on the pot recesses and put in a bit of a back carve around the edge of the body which I'll do with the orbital sander. You can see I've had a bit of a mare with pilot holes - fortunately I can plug them with dowel and redrill, I've got a few mm to play with on each one and I need to move the pilot holes from the two coiltap switches (between the volume and tone recesses slightly closer to each other. I've done the recesses for the pots with a 1 3/4" bowl router bit but I'll just use a countersink to do the smaller recesses before drilling the final holes.

Thanks chaps, I'm finishing the carve at the moment. Hoping to get it blasted with the random orbital this evening, then I'll post some pics of the finished carve, I can't wait to see it myself

I had one of these since the summer. It's a god-send to be honest, especially for making templates and thicknessing headstocks. Those are jobs that I used to spend hours doing with hand files that are now 5 minute jobs.

I would still be inclined to hand cut it. I remember a similar quandary when I needed to cut a blade switch slot into a carved top. I asked for advice one of the the facebook groups and advice was heavily in favour of using a template and a dremel router, but it wasn't an option given that I didn't have the required tools. So I did it by hand but I did a practice one first on some scrap maple. Turned out much better than I could have. I treated it like an inlay, cutting the outline with a scalpel then carefully removing material with a chisel. Then I routed the underside of to give a clean finish with no tear out. No reason why you couldn't use the same technique.

that is true but I don't fancy making all those bobbin clamps, I'm thinking a vacuum bag might be worth the investment

When I’m doing faux binding (prs style) I don’t mask anything off, I am careful at the edge not to spill too much over, however once I’m done staining, I scrape round the edge carefully with a fresh razor blade to get the perfect solid line. Try not to scrape against the grain as it will leave a rough edge, but said edges can be gently knock back with 600 grit. That works for me anyway

I've been doing a bit of research into this as I want to tackle at the very least a semi hollow this year. I figured if you're putting an F hole into a flat top like a thinline tele, it would be fairly straight forward to use a router table, put the template on the top, drill through a section into middle to get the bit through and use the smallest router bit you can find with a top bearing. Then use jewellers files to get in to the tight stops the bit wont reach, or better still a sharp bladed tool like a knife or scalpel to cut the sharp edges. I've got a set of miniature scrapers from Crimson Guitars that would fit in the tight spots. With a carve top, which is what I'm more interested in. I think the best option is to carve the top first, off the guitar, Cut the f hole with a coping saw, files, blades etc. But I'm sure glueing and clamping an already carved arch top would be it's own challenge.

This was my homemade fretbender, it took 5 minutes to make from ply offcuts and doubles up as a control cavity template I did a couple of fret-jobs with it quite successfully but have since got a proper job for xmas.

I would take a look at how a les paul is wired, because the principle is the same just with an extra pickup and I guess probably 5-way blade instead of a toggle - Instead of wiring 3 pickups into a switch then switch to a volume, you wire each pickup to it's volume, then the 3 volumes are wired to the switch. It would be cool to use a push/pull for your humbucker tone so you can switch the guitar from HSS to SSS.

Nice work, love the finish on that tele, every time I see one of these it makes me think I should have a go building a semi hollow myself.

A bit more progress over the xmas break, I've got my 2 headed snake in and sanded smooth, though I need to do some detail work, which will involve scraping away the MOP and filling in with dust and superglue. I've shaped the headstock into my signature dinky moustache, I really like this shape and do it on all of the guitars for me, but appreciate it's not everyones cup of tea as the machine heads can dwarf the headstock a bit so on builds for friends I tend to make it a bit taller past the D and G strings. Since I got myself a triton spindle sander, I've been thicknessing the headstock by clamping a block of oak 15mm away from the spindle which helps me get a consistent 15mm all along the headstock. Previously I used to spend an age shaping the profile with files so I love that power tool as it makes it a 5 minute job. The break angle is passable but I'm not totally happy with the height of the fretboard from the body, I'm thinking I might shave 1 - 2mm from the bottom of the heal, otherwise I think the pickup ring might look a bit silly up against the end of the fretboard. I carved the neck tonight too, I love this two tone look the limba has, Dylan is impressed too. I had a go with magnets this time which was good fun, took a little while to get the grain matching done on that slither of limba that I cut of the body blank a few weeks back. I cut out the shape I wanted first, then drew around it on some mdf before roughing out and shaping the female version on the aforementioned spindle sander to make a routing template, I did the same with a smaller version to make the inner cavity route. Once my route was done, I used some pin nails, tapped them in to the body, cut the heads off so they were only just sticking out and pressed the cover down into position, that created a mark where I could drill and glue in the magnets, worked like a charm I am however a bit concerned about the cover warping so I'm tempted to glue on some braces for it like you would an acoustic top. The grain match isn't perfect, but then I don't think it could be with the crazy non-uniform figure. I've done a belly carve on this one, the idea was that the sapwood would follow the contour of the carve round which I have sort of achieved although not as pronounced as I'd like, I'd have to make the carve deeper to make it more obvious. @mistermikev these are the magnets I used, £6 on amazon prime for a pack of 50 (much cheaper than good quality screws!) https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008U9RVHS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I need to get back to carving but I'm waiting on the arrival of the collect/shank adaptor for my router. I've got a dish router bit which I'm going to use to create the PRS style pot recesses - in the past I've done the recesses with a forstner bit, a gouge and a scraper but it's a massive pain in the arse to get uniform consistent shapes when doing it by hand. Annoyingly the seller didn't state that it was an 8mm collet so it doesn't fit my router. I need to route these first while I still have a flat top so I can clapt the router down flat, then I can carve up to them. The guitar (with machine heads on) currently weighs just shy of 8lb and I'm hoping that I can shave another 1lb off the weight of the wood given that the ziricote is the heaviest part and theres a lot of carving still to do. So I'm hoping with pickups in to not be much over 8.5lb otherwise we're in for a heavy guitar, that I'll regret not chambering. Cheers Ash

Not sure what's going on with the forum, I see to be unable to embed photos, here goes again

I've been working on this on and of since October for my friend Luke. It's a custom 24 style guitar but he's a big les paul fan so there are a few gibson style elements including 12" radius, tunomatic and tail piece and some trapeze inlays. It was my first serious effort at hand-cutting inlays. It's a 5 piece flamed maple/kyaha laminated neck, 1 piece khaya body then a 2 piece carved maple top, ebony fretboard and headstock cap with flamed maple inlays and maple/ebony binding. I got a 2m plank of flamed maple cheap on ebay so I made it all out of that, it means the top isn't bookmatched because the plank was 22mm thick but that was a sacrifice I was happy to make. I used the same plank to make the neck laminates and inlays, and it was my first attempt at making my own binding strips instead of buying in. The ebony binding came from a couple of slithers I cut of the board before slotting it. It has a demarzio liquifire and super distortion, grover mini locking tuners, and graphtec tusq bridge and gotoh tailpiece (graphtec tailpieces are apparently out of stock for the forseable) 3 way switch craft toggle and 2 cts push pulls for volume and tone. I had a bit of a nightmare getting push pulls to work in this guitar due to lack of depth on the body, in order to fit the control cover over them, I'm going to have to carve the inside of it, luckily I can do this because it's 8mm thick and carved to the body contour (the back fo the body is also carved to mirror the top. But it's the first guitar I've made to include an "arch top" control cover Anyway, the push-pulls were a PITA, but they were worth the effort because it means we can coiltap the pickups individually for extra tones - Personally I often use the combo of bridge humbucker and neck single coil, it's one of my fave tones. To colour the top, I went over the whole thing with black water based dye, sanded it back to bring out the figure, then once more with black to blend in the burst. Then I mixed blue artist oil paint with mineral spirits and gave it one coat of blue, then after a week or so of drying time, I mixed more blue paint with Crimson guitars penetrating oil to give it a coat of tinted blue oil finish. Once that first coat was dry, I scraped back the 'faux binding' with a scalpel blade and then oiled the back and sides so there was no colour bleed - I like this method because there is no painters tape involved! The finish isn't really there yet, the top and the body needs a bit of work so I am at some point going to take it apart again and give it a very fine sand and several coats of oil and buff. I wanted to get it all together to A) make sure I could get the push-pulls in and working properly and get luke over to have a play on it and make sure he's happy with the neck carve. One of these days, I will find an order of doing things that actually works and doesnt involve me doing the same job twice Cheers Ash

So I've been having my first proper go at inlaying MOP. First impressions are that wood is a lot easier Starting off with my headstock logo, I found cutting it with my coping saw to be quite tricky so I cheated and did the larger cuts on the band saw, then the coping saw where I had no other choice and finished off with my little jewellers files. It's very easy to file especially being only 1.5mm thick, however it's not much fun standing there for an hour or so with a respirator on, nasty stuff! I made a black glue by mixing some Araldite with a little bit of black paint powder I had kicking around. This worked really well, now I know that I can get any other colour of this paint (cheap stuff from amazon prime) to tint whatever colour I need. This is the result once I'd filed and scraped it all back and cleaned it up with a drop of white spirit. Well pleased! So with the roaring success of the headstock logo, a shape I've inlayed 5 times now - I decided to level up.. This two-headed snake thing is taken from some Aztec art. I traced the image in illustrator and shortened it by cutting out two of the hoops so that I could fit it in parallel with the frets at the 12th. The design takes up 2 frets so I layed it out on the fretboard and cut it along the 12th fret to make 2 separate inlays. I have a 2mm piece of mop large enough to do it all in one but I figured it would be easier cutting it out of 2 pieces, easier to inlay as 2 separates and also removes the issue of having to saw through the mop at the fret slot where I've already bound the fretboard. I'm not very happy with the right hand eye, so I've since plugged it with a 2mm white mop dot and I'll redrill it once it's inlayed. My dad needed his pillar drill back so I was using a hand drill which I managed to slip with while I was drilling that hole. Also, the files I've got aren't small enough to get between the teeth so I'm inlaying the basic shape and will put in the finer details with the dremel or some sharp chisels once it's all in. Still up in the air what I'm going to do with the other fret markers but this guitar is definitely turning into a labour of love.

A bit more process over the last few days. I've routed the neck pocket, got a good fit and confirmed the break angle is correct with the bridge. Stuck on the binding and trimmed it flush with the neck, gave it another going over with the radius block, cleaned fret slots out etc and Installed some 2mm white MOP side dots. I still haven't figured out exactly what I'm going to do regarding inlay, I've got mop blanks so will do my logo on the headstock and there will at least be something custom at the 12th. I was originally thinking something viking themed, maybe a shield, but I thought it might be cool to do something Aztec/Mayan related given the top is Central American. Continuing to carve the top while I'm thinking about it. Carving this top isn't too bad, the wood is seriously hard and I have to hone the gouge on my strop about every 5 mins or so to keep the edge but I'm getting through it, it only likes being chipped in one direction too so I'm having to be extra careful when nearing the final dimension not to tear out. The 18mm top weighs more than the 30mm limba body so this is doing some serious weight reduction too!

Looks amazing, love that top.

I had a fret that I didn't get seated properly on my second build and had to remove it, resaw and put put another in because I had binding and installed them with super glue, I got a fair bit of chipout even though I filed back the fretslot prior to pressing them in. Glad I did, could have been a lot worse if I didn't file the slots.

The split is tiny, but it's there, I think I can get away with dust and glue, providing the body doesn't cup anymore. I think I've got no choice but to just go with it. That's Dylan the dog, he's a Working Cocker, though the's never done a days work in his life, unless you count eating my offcuts. He's also a known photo-bomber.

Good advice thanks, It's not the Ziricote that's causing me trouble it's the limba that's on the move and my main point of concern. Re finish, I noticed exactly what you describe when I was cleaning the top down with mineral spirits, it went almost black. I was planning to use a wipe-on gloss polly on this one, which I will definitely be testing on some offcuts first.

Need some help... After saying that I had a good joint on my top, I have found that the body has cupped since being thickness and the joint on the top has opened up slightly - only ever so slightly and the cupping is also very slight (fraction of a mm if that). I was thinking that I could fill any opening in the top with dust and wood glue to hide it, as the wood is so dark and I'm not going to stain it, this seams plausible, but I'm worried about the potential of further cupping. The joint between the top and body is good all round (see pics) but instead of the top holding the body, it seems that the body is pulling the top apart Any advice on how to proceed welcome!

Bit more progress, glued my fretboard on last night, trimmed excess and routed flush with the neck. Nothing about my clamping is elegant. Also this morning I routed the fretboard with a rebate bit to make a 1.5mm channel for the binding strips. Also this morning, I took the limba body down to the timber yard so they could thickness it for me, with specific instructions to joint the back then remove thickness from the front. The theory being that the grain structure on that back stays as close as possible to that of the 15mm slither I cut off last week. When I got back I jointed and glued the top. I said I was going to try using a router to do the jointing, but having looked at bookmatched, the supplier must have run the top over a jointer before bookmatching because the joint was pretty good, so I ran over the joints with the no7 and got it pretty much perfect with little effort, when I held it up to the light I wasnt able to see anything through the joint so I thought I'd just crack on and glue it up. I expect given how dark the top is, that even if the joint wasnt perfect, it wouldnt be as visible as a bad joint on something like maple or ash. I'm hoping to get the top roughed out and fretslots cut over the rest of the weekend

Thanks, where are you based?

Not a huge amount of progress on my build, but some. I've drilled access for the truss rod and flattened the headstock cap where it meats the fretboard so there is a level spot for the nut (just needs tidying up with a scraper), routed the shaft of the neck to final shape and marked out fret slots. I've also made some ziricote binding strips for the neck by jointing the edge of the fretboard prior to cutting to length, cutting off a 2mm slither then repeating. That gives me 2 good glueing surfaces on my binding and saves on waste. Next step will be to glue the fretboard on, route it flush with the neck then route again to create a rebate for the binding. I leave fret slotting until after this point because there is a lot less wood to saw through and it only takes about 30 mins to cut the slots with my hand saw. Obviously the downside is that I can't use a mitre box to cut the slots at this point, not that I own one anyway Hopefully, if I have time tomorrow morning, I'll take my limba body down to the timber yard and get them to thickness it for me, I'd also like to get the bookmatch for the ziricote top done and glued. My last effort to joint a 2 piece top didn't turn out as well as I'd of liked, fortunately this finish is dark so the line between the top pieces isn't that obvious. On this one, I thought I'd have a go at using a router to do the main part of the jointing and a sanding beam and see if that produces better results, I definitely need more practice and jointing with hand planes though. The only thing I can think of at this point that is going to let the build down, is that the headstock cap is not sawn the same way as the fretboard or top, I was unable to find anything exactly the same, however the headstock cap figure is consistent with what both the side of the freboard binding and the end of the top will look like so I'm hoping it will all tie in..

I agree, I like to base my instruments on something (usually prs in my case because I'm a fan boy) and it makes building a lot easier using pre-made templates but I think a certain amount of creative license is a must, otherwise I might as well just go out any buy another guitar instead. That being said, now that I know a thing or two about building them, I'd struggle to justify going out and buying another