GCmtb

So I kinda dropped the ball on posting this one, but it's done now and I'm really happy with it so here it goes!

After finishing up my bass I still some sapele left over that was just long enough for a thru-neck blank, which made for a great excuse to start a new build. Took a quick trip to the local lumberyard and got some thin wenge to use as neck runners and a nice piece for a fretboard. The best find though was a 10ft x 7in x 1in board of quilted maple that was in a clearance bin for $25. It was too thin to bookmatch but I was still able to find some nice parts of it, plus I can probably get tops for 2 more build out of it.

The lovely clearance rack maple

Went with a very PRS-ish shape, but offset a bit and added a an arm carve, also did quite a bit of chambering which kept the finished product around 7lbs.

Aaaaand this is why I love building thru-necks, so much carving that can be done. I ended up copying the neck profile off my Schecter that I've played since I was 12 just because that's what I feel the most comfortable with, but I made it just a bit thicker. 22-24mm flat-ish C neck with a 14" radius fretboard, feels great to me. I also tried my best at getting a somewhat matching back plate, worked out ok. Inlays are just maple off cuts.

Frets went pretty good, wenge was surprisingly easy to work with though I didn't do anything hard with the inlays, decided to keep it pretty clean and simple (though really it's because I'm scared to do crazy inlays like a lot of you guys on here can do).

Color was tricky on this one, I got the whole set of crimson guitars stains to play with and I first I was thinking some kind of teal/ blue burst, but none of my tests came out quite right. This cheap maple was very soft and added an amber hue to most colors, really didn't react well with blues and greens. I ended up with this sort of red/ maroon thing that looked pretty good and I just ran with it. It's cherry red on the whole body, then royal blue on the edge blended in with a lot of water to bring out the highlights a bit more, pretty happy with it.

Body after one coat of just the cherry red

Stain done but no finish, I liked it best here, the oil I used to finish made the burst a bit less noticeable.

At this point I was really happy with how thing thing was coming along, so I decided to spend a bit more on hardware than my last few builds. Nothing crazy, whole build is still at under $400 total, but I went with Gotoh hardware and got an almost new set of Gibson 490/498 pickups out of a 2016 LP studio for $80 (these sound great). Did the switching similar to a PRS Paul's guitar with coil splits on separate mini toggles.

And here she is (with a super not staged workbench set up)!

Soooo happy with how this turned out, plays exactly how I wanted with great access all the way up the neck, and I love how the arm carve flows with the rest of the top carve. This will probably be my last build for a while as I'm going in for surgery on my left hand in a couple weeks to fix an old injury, then I head off to college in September and have to leave my shop behind, will definitely be taking this guitar to school with me though !

Cheers,

Graham

As everyone has said before me that body is looking great!

Also, if you are looking for an easy way too weigh guitars I'd suggest grabbing a cheap digital fish scale, you can get them for about $10 on amazon and they give you nice precise weights. 

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...

I don't think you can get much more metal than this, pretty sure this is the peak.

I love it man, looks so good

Figured I might as well enter my newest built. This is my 2nd build and first real custom design, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Built it simply because I've never owned a bass before and I decided I wanted one! Built in the corner of my garage during my free time between highschool and work. Went a bit wild with the finish and burnt a sunburst finish then clear coated over it, and got a nice sort of rustic burst effect which I'm really happy with.

The GC-B1 "Sunburn"

• 1 piece Alder body, carved and set on fire
• Sapele/ flamed maple neck
• Flamed maple fretboard w/ 21 stainless steel frets
• sapele/maple side inlay dots
• Alder headstock cap w/ flame maple truss rod cover
• Alder back plate attached w/ magnets
• 2k poly clear coat body
• Crimson guitar oil finish on neck and fretboard
• 34" scale
• Gotoh Fender style bridge
• Gotoh compact bass tuners
• All parts Music Man replacement Alnico pickup
• Graphtech black Tusq 40mm nut
• CTS 500k long shaft pots, wiring is 1 volume and 1 tone with the mini toggle as a coil split

Build thread:

Cheers,

 Graham

And she's done! Well she still needs a bit more setup work but I couldn't help but play for a while. Wiring is pretty simple and went off without any real issues and I'm really happy with how the coil split works and sounds, it's my first time trying one of those.

Might have to get some better quality photos later, just have some quick phone shots for now as I want to get back to playing this thing! Though I suck at bass...

16 minutes ago, mistermikev said:

looks pretty smooth to me.  nice work.  what kind of poly did you use?

It's SprayMax 2K high gloss, was recommended to me by a friend of mine who does a lot of automotive paint work and it worked really well. It's in an aerosol but it's catalyzed so it dries very hard in not much time, just a bit expensive.

On 2/14/2019 at 2:18 AM, mistermikev said:

looking great.  the nice thing about poly is you can abuse it with sandpaper and get it smooth and shoot a final coat.  little elbow grease and another shot and she will be smooth as silk.  keep up the great work.

A bunch of sanding from 800-7000 grit followed by a load more polishing did the trick! Next time though I think I'll invest in some high grit random orbital sander pads, as doing it all by had took about 4 hours and didn't come out quite perfect. 

Also finally got the neck glued in place and got the first coats of oil on the neck, super happy with how it all feels now that its together.

Body is nice and shiny!

Oil brought the flaming out in the fret board nicely

The patch is still looking decent finished, grain doesn't match great but its nice and smooth.

Couple little bits I haven't shown on here yet, made some 2 tone side dots out of some off cuts from the neck, and a truss rod cover out of some extra flame maple, with my initials burnt in using my soldering iron.

Now I've just got  a few more coats of oil and a little more touch up polishing to do before I get into wiring this thing up, still deciding

Well the weather delayed spraying clear coat for a bit, we've had a pretty crazy last week or so here getting about 2 feet of snow so I had to wait a while to get a warmer day to spray. Finally had a day in the mid 40's so I went for it and closed my garage and got two area heaters going for a while and got the shop up to the low 60's. Went with Poly for this one as I have a bit of experience with it, and have no experience with laquer. Spraying worked out alright, a couple of drips and a bit of orange peel, gonna be a fun time sanding and polishing this one...

The headstock probably came out the smoothest

The body has a bit more orange peel, but hopefully wont be too bad to level out

And I tried to line up the light to show the couple drips at the top of the back.

Overall I'm really happy with how this is looking finished with the whole "sunburn" thing.

On 2/5/2019 at 2:57 PM, ADFinlayson said:

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

Thanks! I'm really happy with how it turned out

Well I broke out the blowtorch today to start finishing, doing some strange stuff here. I wanted to try out some shou sugi ban, and decided that a sunburst effect cone with a blowtorch could be cool so that's what I went with. Came out exactly how I was hoping, a kind of rustic looking tobacco burst effect.

Did the back first in case anything went wrong

Then I did the front and sides, burnt a bit extra as its really easy to sand back

Sanded it back to the burst effect I wanted then wet it down to raise the grain for some more sanding. This is is when wet down.

Also did the headstock cap and couldnt resist getting the pic of it all together

Just went through with some clear grain filler on both the neck and body. My plan from here is actually the do a gloss clearcoat on the body instead of oil like is normal with shou sugi ban, not sure how its going to react but fingers crossed it all goes well!

Well the repair went super easy, just made a couple of cuts with a handsaw at either end of the scar, leveled it out with a big chisel, and inlayed a little piece of sapele. Grain match isn't perfect but it looks way better now than before, and only took maybe 15 minutes to do.

Little before/during/after

3 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

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.

Yeah I thought I had it all measured out correct but it looks like between this fretboard being a little thicker than normal (it's 8mm or so on center), and not having the truss rod channel carved super accurately I was off. Definetly going to be more careful next time!

3 hours ago, mistermikev said:

ouch, dang that's ruff but you know what they say: everybody makes mistakes, it's the recovery that makes you a luthier.  so it's an opportunity.  I think norris's idea is probably best.  I guess you could plane it flat right there and add a piece back on... try to match the grain.  better yet, plan the entire length of the neck and add a contrasting piece and make it a feature!

really nice looking build.  was looking at the chiseled out body and thinking "well that'd be quite nice if you just left it rough".  Esp the pic where it's half chiseled and half smooth.  Don't think I'll ever be brave enough to chisel my way to a carved top but if I ever do I might go for that!

This was the first idea I had, throw another strip of flame maple in there, I figure the transition at the heel and volute would be a pain.

And thanks! I'm super happy with how the body turned out, just hoping it survives finishing, which may involve playing with fire.

9 hours ago, Norris said:

A chap at my class carved through into the truss rod channel. He ended up cutting a small section out and then inlaying a piece. He cut a shape like this...

With careful chiselling and sanding the repair was rather good compared to the state of it beforehand. The triangular top and bottom helped to blend in into the grain. Obviously that was followed by very careful carving to avoid going through again!

Edit: Btw, his guitar was a through-neck multi-scale 5-string bass, that was almost ready for finishing! He was gutted when he carved through, but managed to save it without too many battle scars 

I think the plan is going to be cut out around it just up to the glue line where the sapele and maple meet, then inlay some more sapele and hopefully that will hide some of the seams. I may just have the top and bottom straight, as with my level of skill I bet I can get a cleaner joint that way, but we'll see how it goes.

Finally got my fret slot saw in and made some progress on the neck. Decided to do a pretty thin neck carve at just under 20mm and dug up the truss rod it one spot, was hardly noticeable at first but after all the work I had to do to fix the soft spot around it I've got quite the mark left. Still trying to decide if I'm going to try to do something about it, it looks horrible but at this point its strong and smooth so functionally I'm all good. Besides that though the neck carve came out great.

Also got an alder cap on my tiny little headstock and drilled the tuning peg holes, and test fit those today.

The wonderful scar that's left in the neck

Tuner test fit shows how tiny the headstock is, bit of an odd look but I really like how its coming out.

Just pressed the frets in, went with stainless this time around so I'm interested to see how much more work they are to level/ crown.

Once I get the fret work done this thing is going to be about ready to finish (and I've got something special planed for that...). For now I think I'll just learn to live with the "scar" on the back of the neck, but if anyone has an idea on a way to cover it up I'm all ears!

Cheers,

Graham

I like the idea of doing the whole body out of fanned pieces of maple/walnut, could make for something really unique.

On 1/20/2019 at 8:28 AM, ADFinlayson said:

thats a great looking carve, especially first a first attempt. Did you go straight from gouges to scrapers? That is one way to do it but a lot of effort. I tend to go from gouges to random orbital sander, or if I'm after some quiet time, thumb planes. FYI my thumb planes cost about £15 from ebay/china, I highly recommend them, like your cheep gouges, they just need a good sharpen. If you want to do a bit of a back carve though ala PRS, it's much easier to do that with the random orbital. Looking great, looking forward to seeing it mate.

Thanks! I brought out the random orbital between the gouges and scrapers, I do want some of those little thumb planes though, the look like fun and useful little tools.

On 1/20/2019 at 10:39 AM, komodo said:

Excellent carve, you are doing everything right!

There have been so many times, I look at something that needs to happen, plan for the power tool, the template, the setup and then do it by hand with a chisel. And, as you are doing already - take the time to stop and sharpen the gouges, planes, and put fresh burrs on the scrapers. It makes all the difference.

Thank you! I'm usually just too lazy to pull out any power tools from under my bench when all my hand tools are right in front of me and so much nicer to use.

On 1/20/2019 at 11:18 AM, ScottR said:

Man after my own heart.

SR

Thanks man, means a lot hearing that with how good all of your carving is.

On 1/20/2019 at 11:51 AM, Andyjr1515 said:

Nice bit of carving, that....

Thanks!

Well I am now done with Finals for this quarter so now I should have a bit more time to work on this build. Got the body cleaned up and finalized over the last few days, ended up changing the carve a bit. Did the pot recesses with a 1.5 inch spade bit with the corners ground down, then just cleaned them up with some 80 grit paper. Made a control cavity cover, sadly didn't have any alder scap with the correct grain direction sitting around but I'm pretty happy with the fit compared to my first build, plus the magnets are nice and clean. Body is sanded up to 220 grit, so nice having a random orbital sander now after my first build where I did all the sanding by hand.

Quick test fit of the pots and mini toggle

Still waiting for my fret slot saw I ordered to come in before I continue on the neck, and at this point the body is nearly ready for finishing. Hopefully that will be here in the next day or two.

On 1/14/2019 at 2:12 AM, mistermikev said:

looking good!  Wow, you are making good progress.  Congrats.

Thanks! Progress is slowing down a little now that I'm in the middle of finals though...

On 1/14/2019 at 5:36 AM, ADFinlayson said:

It doesn't matter if your truss rod channel isn't perfect, it's hardly visible. The blue PRS rep I've been working on has a little zig-zag in the truss channel where I forgot to lock off the router. It looked like a dogs dinner before the fretboard went on  Looking good though, I'm really liking the looking of sapele/maple contrast strips.

Yeah I had a bit of an incident with a borrowed router I used for my first build, I was routing the neck pickup cavity and the router caught an ripped the whole corner of the fretboard out and a lot of material around it, that was super fun.

Learned to use gouges this week, got a cheapy $18 set of gouges on amazon and spent a couple hours sharpening them properly and got to work on the body. The carve isn't perfect but I'm pretty happy with it for my first try, this piece of Alder was very easy and forgiving to work with so that was nice for learning.

Also did all the cavities with my drill press and cleaned them up with chisels. Not as clean as using a router but far cleaner and quieter.

Got some work done the last couple days, neck is starting to take shape a bit. Did the truss rod slot by hand as I don't have a router (And I don't really like using them so I'm not too motivated to buy one), Drilled out most of the waste with a 7/32" drill bit then went through with a 6mm router plane, not perfect but it does the job and came out better this time than on my first build.

Then I got the fretboard glued up, trimmed down, radiused, and the frets marked out, Cut out the headstock and cleaned it up a bit. On my first build I used a pre-slotted fretboard so this is new to me, fairly confident I got the frets marked out accurately.

Also got locations of things roughed out on the body, but I'm planning on going back and re doing all the measurements once I have the neck carved and have a better idea of where it's going to sit.

Cheers,

Graham

5 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

Looking good, I wish I could build a guitar for £300. I usually get a bit carried away and spend that on just the pickups then I think during each build I end up spending that again on new tools. I wonder if I will ever go to the point where I have enough tools

Yeah I'm just trying to not think about how much I've spent on tools at this point. During my first build I probably spent twice as much on tools as I did on materials for the build itself.

Thanks for all the nice words guys! Nice to have a new forum to be on (As a mountain biker I spend way too much time on all the bike forums). 

Little bit more progress the last few days but I've been pretty swamped with studying for finals. Got the neck cut down further and cleaned up the sides and back of the body. Also planed down my fret board blank to about 8mm, been making good use of my new Stanley #62, definitely the best Christmas present I got this year, I love that thing.

I also ordered most of the hardware for this build, trying to keep this one fairly cheap as I'm not a bass player at all, but I managed to find a good deal on a Gotoh bridge and tuners so I picked those up. It's pretty early to tell but this build is probably going to come out to under $300 for all materials and hardware, not bad!

Cheers,

Graham

Hi! I'm Graham and I'm a High School student from just outside of Seattle Washington, I just started building in October after seeing a few videos on youtube and deciding that this looked like something I could do (Learned pretty much everything from the Crimson Guitars channel and by lurking their forums). Going into this my only woodworking experience was a few wood shop classes in middle school (And I'm a senior in high school now, I'm 17) but I race mountain bikes and work as a bike mechanic so I do know my way around tools to some extent.

I just finished my first build, a through neck, 24 fret strat-ish thing at the end of December and it came out way better than I expected, but definitely not perfect but it plays well. here's a couple pics of it. 

Now that I have this build done I already feel like I can make something far better, so that leads me to where I am now. I've decided to do a bass as my second build, simply because I don't own a bass and I want one. This is also going to be a sort of trial run for a custom guitar that I've had in mind for a while, but using cheaper woods. Here's the design:

Very PRS inspired but with a bit of my own twist. I just got wood for it yesterday, A big 'ol piece of Alder for the body, and some Sapele and flame maple for the neck and fretboard. Ended up being just under $100 for all the wood, and I've got enough Sapele left for a another neck, maybe even two! So far I've got the body rough cut, and a neck blank made.

Was my first time cutting a scarf joint as my first build had an inline headstock, surprised how well my little old bench top bandsaw that I stole from my dad did. Hopefully going to make some more progress over the next few days but it's always tricky to balance working on builds with School and work. 

Cheers,

Graham

That ziricote top is looking incredible, been watching some of your builds for a bit while lurking the Crimson Guitars forums, all amazing work man.