ADFinlayson

Oi, I'm building my first neck-through V. You've stolen my thunder

Sounds cool though from the description and I'm looking forward to seeing it. Do post details of your progress because it will be interesting to see how different our methods are.

Here's my entry then, my 5th build that I completed recently for friend of a friend Luke. I've dubbed it The Eye of Sauron due to the beetle tract that appeared on the back after thicknessing. He's a big LOTR fan so seemed appropriate. Got some good use out of wood on this on; the kahya neck laminates came from offcuts of the mk2 and the top, the neck, inlays, binding and control cover all came out of one plank of maple, the rest of which I'm using on the flying V build, which is also going to be blue, sisters  

Since he picked it up a few weeks ago, he hasn't wanted to play anything else which astonished me as he is the store manager of an instrument chain (PMT UK) and owns 14 other guitars.

Apologies for the amateur photography. 

Spec

- 1 piece carved African mahogany body
- 2-piece flame maple cap with faux binding
- carved flamed maple control cover
- laminated flamed maple and African mahogany neck
- Ebony headstock with flamed maple inlay
- Ebony fretboard with flamed maple trapeze inlays and grain-matched truss rod cover
- Ebony and flamed maple binding
- 24 medium jumbo nick-silver frets
- 43mm Graphtech tusq nut
- oiled blue burst finish
- Mini Grover Rotomatic 3x3 tuners
- Graphtech Resomax bridge with tusq saddles and Gotoh tailpiece
- Dimarzio Liquifire bass, SuperDistortion trebble pickups
- Switchcraft 3-way toggle switch
- CTS push-pull volume with treble bleed
- CTS push-pull tone, both pickups can be coil-tapped individually
- Ebony lampshade control knobs.

And I went to watch it play it's first show last night, which was a big thing for me

Cheers
Ash

I don't see anything wrong with that technique for putting in the radius, certainly works if you don't have a specific radius block. You just have to check the radius often. Starting off with a hand plane certainly speeds up the process though.

I've had lots of chip outs when cutting slots on my first couple of guitars when I freehanded them. I've learnt to prevent this buy sawing from the edge in to the middle of the fretboard on the initial cuts, even if you're going against the cut of the saw, just to get that initial mark in then just joint the two edges by reducing the cut angle. What also really helps is making a vertical notch just down the edge of the board at the slot with a marking knife, if gives the saw something to catch onto vertically and helps prevent the saw wondering or snagging and chipping.

I've got a 24 fret Mira and a 22 fret Paul's guitar, which I stare at regularly when trying to figure this stuff out. Both the Mira and the Paul's start curving up to the heel at fret 17 and the taper finishes at fret 19, which means the heel on the 22 models are longer in comparison to the neck. This is potentially just design thing but people do say that the bigger/longer the tenon, the better the sustain and tuning stability. 

But on this one I made earlier. The heel taper starts at the 19th and finishes at the 21st (actually down to a whoopsie with the band saw) but it sustains just fine and is more accessible at the dusty end.  So I don't really think it matters 

This isn't the best pic in the world but it does show you how high the fretboard/pickup is from the body, there isn't a huge amount of room here.

You need to make/buy a template for your neck and neck pocket, then stick the template to the top once you've done your angle into the top, Then when you route the pocket, the bottom of the pocket will be parallel with top and you break angle is done.

Yeah so your bridge is 11mm + 2mm for a bit of adjustment:

13mm - 6mm = 7mm block of wood at the bidge (scale line) position, then just plane down the front of the body with a jointer plane and the will angle the front of the guitar. 

I think this pic demonstrates the concept better

The other thing you could do is us a potractor rule (I think that's what they're called, a protractor with a rule attached to it), offer that up to the block of wood and that will tell you how many degrees you need and you could then put that into the neck heel and keep the top totally flat, the downside of that is that your fretboard won't be parallel with the top of the body and might look weird.

21 minutes ago, ScottR said:

Leo Fender designed his guitars to be economically made from readily available materials. Necks come from 1" thick blanks. That's why there is no neck angle and no headstock angle, just a half inch drop and string trees. The 3mm gap comes from height of the bridge and the fact of zero neck angle. That is how high the strings need to be be playable with that bridge. The fretboard has to sit 3mm proud of the body to achieve that proper string height. It could also be achieved with the addition of some neck angle....but Fenders are flat.

SR

The fretboard is also very thin on most fenders so it sits a little higher - as above, fretboard wood is much more expensive than neck wood so they would be able to get more fretboards out of a billet by saving 2mm on each fretboard. If you look at Les pauls, the fretboard is at least 2mm thicker and sits flush on the body. 

But I would always make the heel oversized if you can, it's much easier to fettle it down to the right height with a plane than it is to stick another piece on because it's too short.

My first guitar was built on the budget side. I didn't set a budget but I tried to keep it as cheap as possible. Sapele form the local timber yard, £30 for 2-piece body blanks, £9 for the neck blank. £8 chinese tuners, £15 tunomatic,  that sort of thing. You can also get premium pickups on the cheap if you're prepared to buy second hand (no reason why not to) A lot of people will buy a brand new gibson and put the pickups straight on ebay, 

I'm of the opinion that wood has such a small affect on the tone of a solid guitar, that buying cheap wood is really only an aesthetic compromise, and you can always upgrade pickups/hardware later if you want better sounds of it.

I've made a few guitars with 10º headstock angle and it's fine, but the last few guitars have been 11º which I think is the perfect balance of string tension vs strength whilst not requiring insanely thick neck blanks.

This is how I do neck angle. The actual angle doesn't matter a jot, just get a block of wood that is the hight of the bridge + 2mm - height of fretboard and frets, stick it at the position of the scale line and plane down the front. Then when you want to route your neck pocket, leave the block there and stick the template down. The floor of your neck pocket will sit at the correct angle and you wont have to angle your neck tenon. But I've found that my break angles usually end up at about 2º when I'm using PRS style wrapround bridges.

If you're building a PRS style guitar, the tenon extends under the neck pickup (deepset tenon) and you need to cut am L shape into the tenon for the pickup to fit, so a strat style neck heel will not do, you need a deeper neck pocket and a thicker heel so you've still got plenty to glue/bolt - I only leave about 10mm under the tenon when the body is 47mm thick in the middle. 

The depth of the pickup route doesn't matter hugely either, it's only the posts of the pickups that require the most depth, you can do that will a drill if you want. I tend to let the weight of the wood dictate how deep I'm making pickup cavities.

I've had failures in the past doing it this way, the mk2 required some dust and glue in places. But the trick I've found is to have the blade barely out and make sure you're going with the grain. But the trouble with only going in one direction is that it's very easy to end up with a fretboard that's thinner at one end. 

Bit more progress, not a huge amount. I’ve got the tops glued, really happy with the joints, they came out well, much better than the last build. I’ve rough cut the top, it still needs smoothing out on the top face but the underside is good for glueing. 

Something I’ve not done before, I used my shooting board and a wedge to plane a slight angle into the base of the headstock cap so it butts up to the nut, required a few fitting test and a razor sharp plane for the endgrain but it worked well.

I wanted to get this glued on to the headstock but it occurred to me that it might get in the way of the router when doing the binding channels and radiusing the fretboard. So I got the channels routed tonight and cut the fret slots. 

the I started working on the radius taking the brunt of the wood off with a block plane, then moved in to the no7 to get it all even, then moved on to a 12” radius beam. Then I got bored of sanding and remembered there’s beer inside. That’s all for now.

Ollie sent me a monkey the other day for parts.  so I’ve got some pretty damn awesome parts for it: Fender 5-way blade, Schaller hardtail, sperzel locking tuners, swichcraft jack, 57/08 bass and HFS treble pickups. He’s decided that he wants it to be blue, so it looks like I’m going another blue flame top. It will be interesting to see if I can do a better job that build #5, especially as it’s from the same plank of maple 

2 minutes ago, KempGuitars said:

Hey,

That's one of my DCs, not based on anything else

Not sure what Ben's formula is for the Crimson Finishing Oil but the results you're getting from the sanding sealer/wipe-on Poly look good.

Thanks, I'm happy with it and will likely go with that option - waiting for a warmer spell so I can do the finish as I just work in my garage and cold/moisture is a concern! Can't bring it in given the fumes, the poly is not too bad but the sanding sealer is strong stuff!

Ben always said on videos I saw that it's his take on tru oil, but it can't be that similar chemically, crimson finishing oil would never finish on ziricote like you have managed to get above with tru oil.

17 minutes ago, KempGuitars said:

Mmmm… Ziricote and Black Limba combo *drooools*

Nice work dude  What finish did you use? Doesn't look like it's finished. I know ScottR mentioned a downside to using oil on Ziricote earlier in your thread, but worked okay on one I did a while back using Tru-Oil...

Thanks dude, that one you've pictured above looks lovely, is that based on a suhr modern?

You're right, it is currently unfinished. I'm playing with testers on offcuts at the moment.

The top one is bare for comparison, the bottom one has a cellulose sanding sealer coat, knocked back with 320, then 2 coats of wipe-on poly knocked back with 0000 wool. I'm pretty happy with the results but left it for a while to make sure there are no adherence issues given that the sealer product and the poly are different. I did try a coat of Crimson finish oil on another tester, but it went jet black just like @ScottR said it would.
It's looking like I'm going to stick with the poly.

8 minutes ago, mistermikev said:

very nicely done!  might seem like an odd comment but it matches well with that case!

hehe, it does indeed match the case very well. The case comes with PRS Artist pack/private stock guitars. But my Paul's guitar has been relegated to a wall stand as I don't have anything else that fits this currently. 

I forgot to mention, I also use this little 3" block plan to do some of the larger more shallow area at the back (you can see in the pic where I've been with it), then move on to my thumb planes. The size of the plane to use is determined by how tight the curve it you're trying to get round. Up by the horns is a job for the smallest! Inside of the top horn on a PRS style guitar is really tight and the only tool I've got that will do that job is a kidney scraper. 

Once you get into a bit of a rhythm, you'd be surprised how quickly you can get the rough carve into a smooth top, but the bladed tools need to be sharp. When I carved the ziricote top on my last build, I must have spent as much time sharpening the planes as I did carving.

I've only been using a bandsaw for about a year myself and I'm on my 6th blade. I have tried some of the premium titanium blades but they break just as easily at the welds, so I put it down to user error. In fact I've made the same mistake as you, resawing 2" hardwood with a 1/4" blade. I would recommend you move your workshop around though so it isn't backed up against the wall. I've got mine side on to the wall so it doesn't take up too much space but the work is free to push all the way through.

My top didn’t move over night so I’ve done a bit of thicknessing, jointing and glueing this evening.

ive glued the tops top-side clamped down so the bookmatched faces are level and so that I just need to skim the backs with a hand plain to get good glueing surfaces. I hope the joints turn out ok, I managed to get them so I couldn’t see any light coming through the joint, guess we will know tomorrow!

You've put a kink in the blade, probably on the weld, there should only be one weld though. I did this exact same thing a month or so ago. but I carried on using the blade until it broke a couple of weeks later, I just didn't cut quite as close to account for the extra kerf that's created by the kink. When it breaks, you will probably find that it breaks on the weld too, that's always the weak spot.

If you run in to trouble and have to back out, it's best to put a wedge in at the end to keep the gap open for the blade. I find headstock breakangle offcuts are perfect for this, used one to wedge my maple top while I was book-matching it last night actually. May be of interest, the blade I've got on my bandsaw at the moment is an axeminster "back-toothed" blade, it's awesome at going around corners and if you need to backup, it will just back out like a knife in butter, you just have to make sure that you're cutting on the right side of your line on the way back.

An assumption I've been making lately.. The more timber pinches when resawing, the more tension there is in the board and the more likely you are to see some movement, especially in your neck blank  Give it a good few days to do what it's going to do.

I got these little dudes from ebay china. They were about £20 inc postage and are spot on once sharpened and hold their edge quite well, I had to touch them up with a strop and compound while carving the Ziricote but didn't need to sharpen them again while carving the maple cap below. I just couldn't justify spending £50 per plane for the premium version after trying these.

The soles on all of these are slightly curved, I think that's the point.

Got my kerfing plane back out and got the top bookmatched. I had to make a new shim for the plane so that it would cut directly in the middle. Took about an hour of sweat and blisters all in but came out well, fairly even and 9mm at the narrowest points. So I’m going to work to 8mm and thickness the body blanks accordingly. 

Ive stores these wings under weight for now, and hopefullly they behave.

That’s seriously good work  A lot of people, myself included, would have called that a fail and walked away. 

To do a bowl, surely once you've done the side to side radius, all you need to do is flip the body perpendicular and go at it again? I was thinking only do the bowl at the back of the body, not the front. 

I guess in terms of bending, you just need to clamp it down then gradually tighten the clamps, I would be inclined to spray it with water and use a heat gun anyway, get it pre bent and help with clamps for a few days so the top at least retains some of the bend before glueing so there is less stress on the glue joint.

Looking forward to seeing it. 

This hasn't happened to me yet but it's something that scares me every time I carve the neck. I'm very conscious of how deep my truss rod channel is and how thick the neck is. When carving, I'm always stopping and checking depth with a micrometer.

For me usually the fretboard is 6mm (in the centre), the truss rod channel is 10mm at the nut and I get the neck wood down to no less that 15mm leaving a safe 6mm of wood under the truss and 5mm under the nut. Starting the volume a couple of mm just before the nut adds a bit of extra material too. For a bass neck, it's probably fine to go even thicker.

I know no of the above is any good now, but it might save a neck in future.

I don't mind having it all in the first post, saves having to go through all the comments to find the posts. The radius jig looks interesting! are you planning to make the body in to bowl shape before topping it? What about the area that the trem sits on?