ADFinlayson

Wood glue is always the option for glueing wood to wood. If you pre bend the binding to the shape of the body before hand you will be fine to just tape it on. And if any breaks are going to happen they will happen pre glue up. Also don’t forget that dark woods like rosewood/ebony are quite forgiving when it comes to dust and glue fillers so you can fill any gaps just you would with acetone/binding putty with plastic binding 

17 minutes ago, ScottR said:

If you find a little bit of rattle later, don't sweat it. Adding a bit of tension to the rod will take care of it. Not so much to actually move the neck, but enough that it snugs itself against both the bottom of the channel and the fretboard will stop any rattle.

SR

This

1 hour ago, HSlash said:

Useful, thank you! But would it matter if I had the truss rod with the flat facing down? It seems to be a more snug fit that way, without any rattle. I'll think about access later

Honestly I don't know, but whenever I've had a loose fitting truss rod before, I've put a strip of veneer down the side of it (not even glued) and that's solved the problem. It's always handy to have a roll on veneer hanging around!

That's a really good thread. Love the workshop, functional yet cosy, just needs a little wood burner in the corner. 

There is another member on mylespaul, Canadian chap and he has a youtube channel, Freddys Frets, where he builds a load of 59' les pauls, I think the series is called Building Les Pauls, really informative with lots of detail. He's just started a new series where he's building a batch of double cuts which I'm looking forward to.

28 minutes ago, HSlash said:

Me again! I've started actual work on my materials, and I have a question about the truss rod (its probably stupid)...

I'm using https://www.stewmac.com/Materials_and_Supplies/Truss_Rods/StewMac_Red_Low_Profile_Truss_Rod.html

And I was wondering which way to insert the truss rod? Should the circular bit at the top be facing up towards the fretboard, or facing down away from it? I'm not sure whether it would matter at all, as its dual action.

 

Also, how long do people usually make the access slot ?

I've attached a picture with it in the upward position

I normally place the truss rod so the roundover is facing down and the flat is facing up, that way the nut itself is recessed and not flush with the top of the headstock. The size of the access hole depends on the design of headstock you are doing, if you're doing a strat style headstock where there is no angle then I don't think it really matters as you will remove the material almost up to the nut anyway but if you're doing an angled headstock, you need to make sure there is enough room to get your allen wrench in there. But I tend not to make access at this stage, I just drill through to the truss rod with a hss bit once my headstock angle is done

@pshupe this has turned out to be a real beauty! If it plays half as good as it looks then you've done a cracking job.

I've had a request to build a firebird later this year and will no doubt be referring back to your build thread throughout. 

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

15 hours ago, GCmtb said:

That inlay design is looking great, the hand coming out of the tree flows really well.

As for the body I'd say you should cut out the shape of the wings just around the neck, where you won't be able to access easily once the wings are glued on, but leave the more accessible further out sections of the wings un-cut to at leave some area to get some clamps solidly. If that makes any sense...

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.

17 hours ago, browser5031 said:

Brand new member marveling at your build skill!  I am getting ready to build a V myself but with a bolt on neck.  You are amazing with your hand tool skill.  Liked the photos of the Black and Decker Workmate you use, I inherited my Grandfather's, who brought it from the UK to the USA in the 70's.

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

On 2/21/2019 at 10:25 PM, mistermikev said:

honestly soldering is not hard... I would go that way either way because those clips are the equiv of transistor standoffs... one good jolt away from problems imo. i was about to tell you coil splitting is not a good idea but I guess that model is a 3 coil emg... so you should be good there.  cheers

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.

On 2/25/2019 at 5:21 PM, Andyjr1515 said:

Back to @ADFinlayson 's post above, in terms of smellier options than the fairly odour-free Osmo, yes - you can wipe on standard polyurethane varnish.  I did a tutorial a while back on the subject:

 

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 

1 hour ago, ScottR said:

That looks like a pair of blue jeans.

SR

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.