ADFinlayson

Thanks Jay, I liked having done binding a lot more than I liked doing binding. Lately I've been wiping a bit of Danish oil on ebony fretboards which I think works well, I'll probably do that on this one. I don't know whether it will look dirty over time or even if the strings will mar the inlay as aluminium is a fairly soft metal, it's all experimental. The other build is another one I'm working on alongside, they're very similar builds apart from body shape. Build thread here:

Started this for my friend Tom a while ago, it had a bit of a hiatus because changed his mind about 5 times then went quiet on me, then I packed up and moved, in fact he was my 3rd comission so it's been on the cards for about 2 years. Specs to be - European quilt maple top - African mahogany neck and body - African ebony fretboard and peghead - 24.75 scale - 24 frets I'm missing a few pics but here is some of the progress. That was as far as I got on it last year, according to iCloud these were taken in November. I want to get some lacquer on these two before the weather turns cold again so cracking on now. I decided I'd have ago at headstock binding as I haven't done that before. routing was fairly scary and made more difficult having already glued the fretboard on. I got a small amount of tearout but not so much that I couldn't hide with ebony dust and glue later. I used a 1.5mm bearing on the makita trimmer and had that in router table (workmate with a router insert). I made some binding strips from offcuts from a particularly curly maple neck blank I used on another build, ran them through the drum sander until they were a hair over 1.5mm. and had a go at bending them on the iron. Bending the binding was nice and easy with the iron at 280ºC and plenty of water, then I taped them in place until they cool down to hopefully hold their shape, required a lot of patience! The awkward part though was cutting mitres. I spent a long time sharpening a couple of chisels and I think I've got them sharper than they've ever been. you can see the bottom corner of the headstock in the photo below, the aforementioned tearout - I wasn't going to do any climb cutting holding the headstock so it was just the router but turning the wrong way into end grain. I might try wiping some teak oil around the edges before trying this in future, I've heard some classical builders do that before routing their binding channels to protest the soundboard, apparently it works well because it penetrates into the grain deeper than a lot of oils. Worth a try! Anyway, brushed on a modest amount of titebond then taped the strips down with binding tape. Then I trimmed everything flush with the top of the ebony Getting that angle right with the fretboard binding channel was an absolute bastard Then I filled the gaps with ebony dust and thin CA glue After a tidy up on the top, every happy with it. The headstock still isn't thicknessed so I'll tidy up the sides once that is done. On to inlays, used aluminium for the first time. I thought I'd try it for a few reasons, it's not brittle like wood and this design is a quite thin in places, it's much cheaper than shell and this inlay is quite bit, it's hard and shiny when sanded smooth online the plastic pearl like materials. I turned it over and clamped the inlay into a radius beam so it would take on the radius of the fretboard Used the dremel and a couple of router bits to make the channel and glued it in with black superglue, then dropped a load of ebony dust over it. Recut slots and gave it a sand, I'll give it another going over once the binding is on. And the headstock logo I really liked working with ali, I used some 1mm sheet for headstock logo and 2mm sheet for fretboard inlay to account for the radius. It was about £4/sheet on ebay which is enough for about 10 guitars. I also like how it would confirm to the shape of the cavity with a little bit of persuasion I think it will be my goto inlay material for a while unless someone asks for something else. Fretboard binding and fretting next.

lol my 15th build has flaws, get used to flaws!

Looks great Armaan, hell of a first build.

Good job on the workshop. I had my garage door out a few months ago and replaced it with a stud wall, could not get shiplap anywhere and had to settle with tongue and grove featherboard which also cost a small fortune. In contrast with the weather, it's been too hot to do anything in the workshop over the last week.

Yes certainly is my preferred method, a lot harder to screw up than with power tools too

I went and get myself a cheap bench grinder from Screwfix which I'm very impressed with - I'm sure it's only a cheap stone that won't last long but it's very quiet and very smooth. I switched it off, went and made a coffee and it was still spinning why I got back I got a flat bit online. I'm trying to avoid using amazon where possible but it was the only place I could get hold of a 40mm flat bit which I thought was odd. Ground the bit into a radius on one side by eye, then I drew round it and used that as a reference to shape the other side. Tried it out on a bit of scrap and it worked really well. The only trouble was that I was getting a bit of tear out at the front and back - where end grain appears. So I sharpened it as best I could on my oil stone, essentially just took the burr that the grinder made on the back. Then did a second test, also this time extra slow, next to no pressure and got a much better result, end grain a bit rough but nothing a bit of 120 wouldn't sort out. I'm liking this method - much safer than a router, I can do it after carving and I can angle them if I want to by angling the table on the drill. I also got the pocket routed This is a nice bit of maple, hard to see from all angles but the flame stretches then entire width and perfectly perpendicular to the centre line. The only thing that's proving to be a real pain re centre line is that it's a 1 piece top and body so I don't have any seam to help me if I lose centre, so I have to keep redrawing it when I do something like carve the top or route the pocket. Carving with thumb planes is quite nice though, the grain direction is nice and predictable with no centre seam to throw me off.

I have never played one so I can't really speak on them however I did a lot of searching youtube when he asked for the guitar, couldn't find a bad word said about it.

See now I have completely the opposite opinion to you here, there is something really weird about symmetry in body shapes to my eyes, like the 335 etc, the lower horn always looks longer than the top horn, I wonder if it's just because I'm so used to seeing a slightly offset shape.

A bit more work on the SG, routed the pot recess with my new router. the old Ryobi I've been using has been problematic for a little while, the speed adjustment is iffy, I had to tape over it to stop the router speeding up during use and when the speed adjuster wheel gets to the very top, it switches off, I've also broken the dust extraction port for it when makes a right old mess. So I get the Tred T11E the other day and wow, such a good router, such a smooth plunge, nice and powerful at 2.5HP and it doesn't have the annoying deadman switch, so I used it to route a couple of pot recesses which was a lot less sketchy than with the previous router, I assumed due to the higher torque. It's also a lot quieter which is nice on the ears. I'm pretty short of time at the moment so I opted to get the angle grinder out this time and rouged the shape in, then 20 mins later I moved on to thumb planes to get the curves right. It's hard to justify using gouges some times when the angle grinder can get the rough work done so quickly. I didn't bother recessing the pots on the outside, I knew I would carve through them anyway and not sure I could safely plunge deep enough without the router eating the top so I think I'm going to grind a flat bit down into a curve and do them afterwards, I've seen a couple of used bench grinders on line so I think I'll see if I can go and pick something up at the weekend, and I think I'll get the break angle sorted before I perfect the carve.

Started this one at the tail end of last year, or early this year.. (That region of time is all a bit of a blur thanks to not being allowed to leave home) in the old garage for my friend Duncan. He's a big Big Country fan being a Scott of a certain age and wants something inspired by what Stuart Adamson used to play for a 60th present to self: I gave my usual it will be inspired by but not a replica response which he was cool with and we came up with this mockup. The thing is pretty much just a les paul with 2 spiky, symmetrical horns and it's a bit narrower at just over 12" wide according to the limited research I could do - there isn't a huge amount of information on them, certainly no templates. I mean why would there be, it looks horrible. The inlay is inspired by the Big country logo with a sort of negative of the original sg2000 inlay design, then he wants dots for the rest of the markers. The original is all white abs binding like a les paul custom but we're going for natural binding on the bod, maple binding on the fretboard plain old ebony on the headstock with my usual moustache shape. I got a couple of extra nice Bosnian maple billets for him to pick from which the mockup is based on and he said he didn't like the seam/chevron style figure (to be fair, most of the SG2000 aren't even figured maple) so I was scratching my head on how best to achieve what we both wanted to make and almost to the day Mike messaged me to tell me about his latest score, and after just a tiny bit of begging, he sent me a couple of one piece curly maple carve tops because he's an awesome dude. This was the lesser of the two tops, because you know (Luthier dibs) According to google photos, I created this album in Oct 2020, so I guess that's when I made a start on it and roughed out the top and an African mahogany body blank - I've taken to drawing around the templates with a 1/4" washer and cutting roughly to that line so I can glue pieces up oversized where possible to prevent glue dribbling into open grain at final dimensions. It's slightly more effort routing the final shape being thicker but easier on sanding which is my least favourite thing. BTW, I used illustrator to trace a pic of the body and printout out the design, transferred it on to mdf to make the template. No pics but I routed a channel in the mahog from switch to control cavity before glue up. At least I hope I did... I guess we'll fine out. Glued up and routed and did a bit of work on the neck blank (actually looks quite tidy for me). This is my first time using genuine mahogany - one of the old bed posts my dad gave me last year. That was as far as I got before packing it all up and moving. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, I routed out the neck shape and stuck the fretboard on. I rescued this fretboard from a dodgy glue up on Matts tele build (still unfinished) but I was able to reuse it here - the shorter scale and only 22 frets made that possible, Indian ebony is expensive so glad it wasn't wasted after all. It's a hair too narrow for the neck but that doesn't matter because it's getting a binding channel anyway. Then today I got the mahogany down to correct thickness. I've been getting rather blumpy with these lockdowns so opted for manual instead of the drum sander and got a sweat on. This is a new (to me) stanley no6 from ebay and an absolute joy to use compared to my cheap Amazon Basics and Faithful planes. I'm on a mission to replace them all for Stanleys when they come up at a decent price. Next up will be carving

So far

I don't like the look of it tbh, I like that fact that it's more secure than a regular strap though, or at least it looks it.

Far too subjective a question that has fully grown ass men throwing things at each other. Bit like football.

Shaping up to be another stunner Scott (I would expect nothing less from you). Looking forward to seeing that carved.

Mods always pick my least attractive guitar photo for GOTM, what's with that.

Thanks guys! yes carved the top in the old shop, did the rest in the new one. I have 3 others I need to plough on with as soon as I get back from a weekend away, Currently feeling a bit burnt out after that silly competition.

when I've found low spots in my clear after spraying a few coats, I just give it a scuff, wipe on some grainfiller, wipe off the excess and spray again. Problems gone.

ooooh that's fookin' sexy, I'm glad I'm not entering anything in GGBO next month

No mate, the winner is chosen by public vote which sucks. The top 10 are shortlisted to go to a panel of judges. There are a couple of entrants with 500-600 votes, but even with my 1500 subscribers I can't even seem to muster 200 votes so I'm not getting shortlisted. Mevermind.

Voting on the GGBO competition has started. Do me a favour and vote for it here, I'm up against some really talented builders and teenage girls with friends: https://greatguitarbuildoff.com/products/ash-finlayson Click on the heart icon next to my name to vote. Here's a final build video with some noodling

Thanks chaps!

wick in a few drops of water then a few drops of titebond and clamp it up. You could inlay a bow tie, probably not necessary. Is this the heel end of the neck? if so you've got a good excuse to make it a set neck and have no worries

I do like that bit of maple you're got for your neck, nice shimmer in the middle

Thanks bud, I'll keep those pointers in mind on the next one