ADFinlayson

On 10/13/2022 at 4:58 PM, Crusader said:

You're getting me all fired up, loving that piece of Ash. My Tele build has stagnated for too long and I gotta get back into it

By the way I had never used one of them jacks before either and a 22mm bit was the go

Well this comment has served well to remind me to actually update this thread. We're rockin!

My usual approach to polishing now is to use the stewmac medium (brown) hard compound on my buffer after wet sanding, then I use Chemical Guys 36 then 38 polishes on separate mops, but it just didn't look right being all shiny with aged hardware, so I went back down to chemical guys 34 which seems to give a slightly finer polish than the Stewnac medium.

I do like this aged hardware, the bridge is the aged Gotoh "in tune", the tuners the aged Stewmac set and the rest of the hardware came from Charles Guitars in the UK. The only trouble IMO is that the screws that came with the Charles hardware are too aged, they're pretty much covered in rust. The screws on the guard in the above pic are new nickel screws which don't look right so I lightly sanded the top of them and left them in a tub of salt and malt vinegar for a few hours which worked quite nicely, I'll get some pics of that when I'm in the shop later.

Essentially I am trying to make it look aged without making it look relic.

He wanted it to be an Esquire but said he didn't want the switch so I've just wired it up like a Junior with 250k pots.

Looking great. I use Danish oil on my necks all the time and sand in the slurry coat like that, but I've never thought to warm the oil up first, I'll give that a try. Thanks for the tip.

On 9/8/2022 at 1:43 PM, komodo said:

Only semi-related but while we're at it... a couple days ago I tried to twist the spray nozzle on my pressure washer while I was using it to orient the spray pattern. Of course I know  how much pressure is there, but still don't really equate it with a table saw blade or anything. Sort of like how a weed eater/string trimmer can bounce off your shoe so you don't have that fear of death, but still wonder if it could cut your arm off.

Turns out that a pressure washer can quite efficiently (and quickly) leave a large jagged wound, like a drunken squirrel may have done.

I imagine that must feel like a cut and a burn at the same time, ouchy

3 minutes ago, komodo said:

Any tips for inlaying into maple? At some point, I'll be putting something into the roasted pieces I have and am acutely aware that I won't have the ebony/CA fill trick to fall back on.

Yeah, the ebony dust + CA trick is the bedrock of my guitar building ability. I spent a good hour cutting out that inlay piece, even with the dremel. Checking and rescoring with a scalpel regularly and used a super fine router bit in the corners - I don't think I could get it any more precise with a modelling chisel either. 

I did have some bigger than usual gaps around the inlay. This is by far the smallest version of my logo I've done so it was awkward to cut out and inlay, I used some dust from this neck blank mixed with the some titebond to make filler. I mixed it really dry so there isn't much glue in it which got the colour really close to the neck wood. 

Here's how it's looking at the moment. I've done some levelling on the body, I had a bit of blush too which I hopefully sanded out. It's really wet in England at the mo, I'm managing to keep the shop to 50% humidity with the dehumidifier on 24/7. Trouble is as soon as I switch the booth extraction on, all that dry air is sucked out of the shop, fresh air comes in from outside and it get's up to 60% in not a lot of time.

So I'm waiting on some anti-bloom thinners before I spray anymore on the body.

I made up some shader for the neck with some yellow, a dash of brown and a dash of pink and sprayed it on conservatively, and it's had a couple of coats of clear over the top.

Lastly, once I had a few coats of clear over the white, I decided to tap in the ferrules which was a total swine to do, these are the flush fit ones and there isn't any overlap to hide any chip out, I did have to touch up a couple of areas with some white lacquer on a cocktail stick to hide tiny imperfects after knocking them in. I did this so that I could spray over them and re protect the area after knocking them in with the lacquer remelting. I think infuture it would be easier to just install them before finishing and try to tape them off. I did do a bit of research but never found out how Fender do it.

easy to do, I had a few stitches last year from trying to catch a chisel, at least you know it's sharp enough for woodworking.

Forgot to add the video of me spraying it

I like a bit of inlay work, but there is nothing enjoyable about inlaying ebony into maple! Hopefully a bit of amber might help to mask the filler a bit, but I doubt it.

That is the smallest version of my logo I've attempted to inlay, anything bigger looked silly on this headstock, in fact I don't think my logo suits tele headstocks at all. Annoyingly the one place it does seem to work nicely is exactly where the string tree needs to go. 

This is the second logo too because the first one broke so many times that I think it would actually be categorised as a chemical product.

35 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

Yet another example of the old guitars (or their remakes) were/are individuals - despite templates they most likely didn't want to dump a perfect piece of wood just because there's a deep scratch or hidden knot, they just reshaped the body in the fly. Something that the purists should remember when asking for exact measurements of original guitars!

That is quite possible, but the other pissabolity is that G&W changed the shape to avoid copyright. I don't have enough experience with Telecasters to prove either theory

Here's one for Mike. I've had a couple of nice Fenders in for setups lately. A blonde custom shop strat from 2012, came looking new but has seen some use.

and this, I'm told is a Chris fleming 55 relic tele. It belongs to the chap that winds my pickups and he's been after a similar build with 1 pickup and a rosewood board. So I took this one to pieces and took all the dimensions I could. The body shape is actually quite different to my G&W tele templates!

So I started with this bit of swampash from Stewmac

once rough shaped got it down to 7 15oz and I did warn him it might be a bit heavier than his CF tele

I still had 3mm of thickness tot take off and all the routes to do, which resulted in getting it down to 4 7oz which felt like a nice weight.

Skip forward a few steps because I forgot to take photos and we have a swampash body moderately figured birdeye from a blank I got on the cheap a few years ago, and an indian rosewood board

He was complaining about high action or unplayable buzz and choking out on his CF tele - I improved it a lot with some spot levelling but the 7.25" radius is always going to be hampering lead work IMO, so we went for a 12" radius on the neck. 

I didn't route this body to the template. I drew around the existing tele to get the shape as close as possible. Aged parts going from this, tuners and gotoh intune bridge from stewmac and the rest are all ages parts from Charles Guitars

You may notice the fretboard is a bit thicker than what you would expect to see. he wanted just SS frets in it so I decided to keep the board a bit thicker than I see on most fenders, although I wasn't actually able to tell from these custom shop examples because they were both one-piece necks. Also. getting the rosewood dust out of the maple on the neck is a real PITA!

Getting on to finalising everything. A lot of people say that when you're starting out building, the tele is the easiest design to start with. But I think these have maintained the world record for the most awkward 6 holes that any man has had to drill since the 1950s. 

I'm using the fender style flush fit ferrules so no tearout is acceptable.

Also first time using this kind of jack plate. I thought it would be a nightmare and I'd have to go out and buy a specific size forstner for a one-off hole but happy days, 22mm bit fit nicely.

On to finishing. I'm using Northwest guitars nitrocellulose because that is the only place I could find a suitable white. I doubt this stuff is compatible with the Morrels pre-cat cellulose that I normally use so I also got a tin of their clear gloss which is a 250ml tin which they claim is enough for 4 tele bodies and they recommend thinning 50/50. Both points are complete horseshit. After colour and 6 coats of clear on top of it. I did a light sand with 600 and went through it in seconds.

So I had to sand the back off and do it again. Not a bad thing because in hindsight, it was just a bit too transparent. This is where it's at now.

the 250ml tin that can cover 4 guitars is now empty... Fortunately a friend of mine that uses NW guitar lacquer said he only uses their colours and uses Dartfords lacquer which is compatible and available in 1L and 5L tins, and he's convinced it's the same lacquer but rebranded for NW Guitars. The larger quantity means it's significantly cheaper too which is good because £10 for 250ml is not cool.

It's now had 3 coats of 70/30 lacquer/thinner on top of the colour and it's building up a nice gloss so I'm much happier with it. Now I need to crack on and get my logo inlayed in the headstock and get some lacquer in the neck.

4 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

Guess it's Southern Europe, or something in the transport. I just ordered a spare part from Portugal and they apologized for potential delays. It departed from Lisboa on Monday evening, departed from Porto late Tuesday evening and is now in transit somewhere in the Netherlands. Looking forward to get it next week before Wednesday which isn't too bad.

Not only the buffer, you seem to do a nice job yourself! The pinstripe is simply classy, almost aristocrat.

It often takes weeks when they transport anything over land from southern europe, I normally go with the cheaper option which is lorry all they way here and it does take an absolute age for goods to get to Calais. The thing with the likes of Maderas Barber, Madinter and G&W though is it often takes them weeks just to pack and dispatch the products. I know people harp on about brexit and the extra border checks, but an extra few hours at Dover is nothing when it takes them a fortnight to do a 15 hour drive with no border checks

Anyway thank you, yeah the pinstripe is cool and I'll be doing it again for sure. Not only do I like the look but it also masks a dodgy glue joint should one occur  

I stuck some all in one swirl remover on my spare buff which did a masterful job and everything is now super shiny and she is getting used to her new shoes. It's tuned to drop B with 12-60 gauge strings so I think it's technically a bass. 

6 hours ago, mistermikev said:

right on.  that is an item on my "when I've got too much money hanging round" list lol.  looks like it makes for some great results tho.  keep doin' what yer doin'!

yeah it's great, my only gripe with it is the amount of space it requires and space around it to work safely so I've got it on casters which are a bit giddy so I end up wheeling it out and clamping the base to the leg of my workbench. Apart from that rather picky niggle, it's a massive time saver.

13 minutes ago, mistermikev said:

noice.  looking pretty good.  that buffer seems to do quite a nice job.  

yeah it's a real time saver, at least it would if I was better at locating scratches!

That is some impressive drilling!

So I'm out of walnut which is annoying, I'm waiting for a delivery from Maderas and thought, seeing as the mould is empty and the side bender is still out... why not? 

I've got some african mahogany backs and sides sets that were dirt cheap, something like £5/pair of sides, same for backs and I have plenty of the same for making neck, and the end blocks etc So I thought I'd try another one as I am still yet to actually bend a set of sides with my DIY Fox bender. 

And they came out absolutely flawless - no waviness, flat spots or tears and fitted the mould perfectly. Woohoo.

I followed the advice of @Dave Higham and made a small modification to the bending machine, the hooks made a huge difference when it came to taking the sides out.

I don't have any kerfed linings so I thought I'd try doing solid linings. I thicknessed another side down to 2.2mm, cut it down into 18mm strips, taped them together and bent them. I dry fitted them with pegs and marked down where they need to be cut to get them to fit in with the end blocks.

Obviously 2.2mm linings is not enough of a glue surface so I planned to add another layer but first I thought I would interlock the side braces. I cut some quarter inch strips out of the leftover side and notched the linings so the braces with go all the way through.

Then I glued in the next layer of linings

so all in I have 6.6mm of glueing surface which is a hair under what the kerfed linings I was using would give me but I am already convinced that this is far superior. It's very difficult to get it in and out of the mould but that is because the shape is almost identical and there is absolutely no flex, I think it will break before it bends.

Here's the back glued up.

My thinking is to keep this one dead simple, magohany top and back, spruce bracing, no bevels, and I think tortoise shell binding and rosette would look cool. I've got some Aged Olympic white lacquer for a tele build I'm working on so it might look cool with a TV white style finish with dark grain if I can manage to do a tidy job of taping/scraping the binding/rosette.

I have been continuing on down the rabbit hole with the moderate success of #1.

I wrote #2422 for the serial on this one but it occurred to me after I closed the box that this is #25, that might cause some confusion for a luthier one day. So spruce braces this time and sticking with the thin ebony bridge plate. 

I forgot to take a photo but I drew around the inside of the solid brace of the arm contour on the underside then used that as a reference to  sand in the shape of the soundboard before sticking it on

Had to do a thorough job cleaning up the squeeze out here so I could glue some binding around the edge of the arm bevel.

I glued both the top and the back on this time while it was still in the form to try and help mitigate the deformity of the last one. although this one actually seems to hold it's shape outside the mould unlike no1.

Then I did the end graft out a of a piece of walnut. I chose walnut for my binding etc as it's much easier to bend than ebony, and still quite dark so hoping it would look good against the limba under finish and allow me to hide any woes.

Then I routed the binding channel in the top

This mean my smooth shape was no long smooth where it met the rebate so I tidied those up with a chisel and a sanding stick to get a nice transition again

once I did that, I glued in my sacrificial inner binding piece and rerouted that area of the channel 

Then I got to work on the actual binding, I cut it down on the sander between the two transitions so that it would bend around the extremely awkward curve.

The I carved the arm contour, the idea is that both of these pieces of binding are carved away with the bevel and are hidden by the veneer.

I left the veneer and the bevel with titebond on them for 1 hour as per the Driftwood Guitars tutorial then ironed the veneer on.

I sanded the walnut veneer down to .8mm which I now realise was two thick

It looks great but alas I managed to get some very visible glue lines in places and there is a small patch where I sanded through.

I then realised that there is a slight hump in the transition as it goes back up towards the strap button which meant that my carve isn't completely even and that was causing the glue line and the sand through - the veneer doesn't finish exactly where the spruce starts 

So I need to sand the veneer off, tweak the carve and do it again.

12 hours ago, Nicco said:

Btw, fantastic looking guitar, Ash.

Thanks Nicco

12 hours ago, Prostheta said:

I'm certain we're not breaking any sort of new ground here, and there will be many people who have already spent lifetimes on this very same subject....which being thankful to them means we haven't done (or need to do) so yet  

The constraint or unknown in this mill of factors is always going to be the wood; you can determine ideal values for certain characteristics but you only have the choice of woods (or alternative materials, composites, modified materials, etc.) that are real. It may well be that one factor within all of this undermines the potential usage of a range or all others. The one that springs to mind might be dissimilar materials have differing movement ratios in response to humidity.

If or when I ever build an acoustic, I have 100% certainty that I will be relying on an existing body of experience to guide my arm to lay the first arrow into the target. I doubt that I could go my own route without first having a feel for the "established norm"!

This all being said, "Mahoganies" tend to be on the softer end of the scale than most hardwoods anyway. At least, true Mahoganies within the genus Swietenia. Alternative "African Mahoganies" (all still within the higher family Meliaceae) have more variability in terms of weight and elasticity. Sapele is the heavyweight of the lot, and I do like the airy lightness of Khaya Ivorensis/Senegalensis. I digress into wood nerdoidness....

I actually can't remember if I used legit or african mahogany for the braces, it might have been a mix of both that I got out of the offcuts bin. At any rate, all the african mahogany I have used has been quite soft and I've found the difference between the two to be negligible in terms of hardness, and workability. The only difference I've ever notices is that the Honduras stuff tends to look a little more on the pink side and african more yellow/orange.

26 minutes ago, mistermikev said:

I never could make thumb picks work for me... have had some for years but I can't get used to how far away from the thumb the picking action is.  I spose I could cut one down... but just using fingers feels natural to me at this point.  I had no idea you were into that sort of thing - good for you. 

afa picks... I prefer stubby which is super thick... altho if playing acoustic I like the dava picks because they are thick and if you hold them at the tip they are rigid but if you hold them at the base they are good for strumming.  it's all good.  picks are such a personal choice thing.

how far from the thumb the picking action is... exactly that. 

Thanks man, I am absolutely not a steel string acoustic player, I've never owned one but enjoying playing it. I took classical lessons as a kid which is where the finger picking comes from but I've pretty much solely played metal in drop C for 20 years 

On 8/20/2022 at 2:44 PM, Andyjr1515 said:

That sounds lovely!  (Nice playing too, although don't tell Ash - it will go to his head!)

Great balance and nice bass reponse - particularly impressive for the style of acoustic!  I reckon you got your top thickness and bracing carves just about spot on

 

Thanks Andy, yes I was impressed with the amount of bass, I was surprised because all the research said mahogany braces are a no no. The top is quite thin so is the back so I've only got 10 gauge strings on it which will probably be affecting tone. I was pleased to know that the amount of lacquer I would normally spray on an electric hasn't hampered the sound either. 

On 8/20/2022 at 1:17 PM, mistermikev said:

sounds pretty good.  lot of bass.  some nice playing too.  look at you and your right hand style.  nice work.

Thanks Mike, re picking, I do a lot of hybrid picking when I play guitar but as I've been playing this acoustic over the last few days I've noticed holding a pick is tying up my index finger so I've just got myself a couple of thumb picks, but wow those things are weird, way bigger and thicker than my usual 1mm black Dunlops so will def take a bit of getting used too, I'm tempted to try filing/thinning them down a bit. 

I've made myself a crude neck clamping jig. Bit of cork to pad the sides and I'm coping I can screw the edges down while screwing the bridge down to the inside.

and sprayed some lacquer. It's be way too hot this last week, hasn't cooled down over night either so the workshop has stayed between 25-30ºC which has been a pain for spraying, there is a fine line between orange peel and runs. 

Then wet sanded with 600 and 1000

Followed by medium buff

Then carefully scored round the tape with a scalpel and pulled the tape. Took quite a bit of time to get rid of that orange hairline

And now the bridge is glued in 

So far so good but I've got a nasty feeling that my neck has got out of alignment between me testing it with the outer strings on and taping everything off for paint. Will see what it looks like tomorrow.

Another little update from last night's activities - I wasn't a big fan of my bridge design so I took the pointy bits off, then I sanded the underside of the bridge to match the body.

Then I used some aquacoat to do a couple of coats of grainfiller on the back, sides and the walnut rosette, sanded the first coat back with 240, then sanded the second back with 320.

Then I reassembled and taped around the neck and the bridge, to make an outline that I could follow to tape off the fretboard area and the bridge area

You can see I taped just inside the outline by a couple of hairs, the idea is I am going to route a teeny tiny rebate on the underside of the bridge so that joint looks seamless.

Then I sprayed a couple of thin coats at lunch time.

Issues you may spot -  You can see just how misshapen it is around the end block, ebony binding and spruce is a nightmare and I've really struggled to get the dust out which is noticeable. The centre seam is a good few mm off the centre line of the bridge so the strings are a good few mm to one side of the sound hole So at this point I'm not too concerned about what it looks like, I just want to get to the end and take the lessons from #1 on to the next one