Bizman62

That's not going to be as difficult as what one fellow builder did for an old acoustic a few winters ago. See, first he had to strip the fretboard off. Not a big deal as he was going to replace it anyway so the only thing to consider was not to tear the actual neck. Then he had to plane the neck level, still attached to the fragile acoustic body. And then he finally routed two channels for carbon fibre rods. And of course glued a new fretboard and hammered new frets in. Agreed, the trapeze and floating bridge construction allows for a bit more slack with the neck break angle than a glued one not to mention the thick neck - I happen to have a similar one and the V neck is over an inch at the first fret. Still not too bad for a novice. After this lengthy prologue, let's start with the good news. What makes this much easier than, say, a Gibson type neck is the lack of headstock angle. Even a carved neck of this construction will lay flush on the table by its headstock and heel. Double sided tape is all you need for attaching but if you want to you can even drill holes for screws. Pilot holes for tuners and neck pocket screws can be used for that. The next step is to guide the router. There's two ways: You can either align a beam with the truss rod and lean your router against that. Or you can build a template to be used with a bearing bit. My choice would be #1, a length of 2x2 would be easy enough to attach to the table. Oh, and I'm talking about a handheld router here. For a table router I'd attach the neck to a square piece of board to bypass the headstock and compensate the wedge shape of the neck.

I must admit that the last photo is the first one where I actually understood how that works! But hey, I have studied to become a bookkeeper (never worked as such) and later a PC techie or rather a local helpdesk. Oh, and the last photo shows even to my untrained eyes and brain that the thing really should work as long as the end posts stay aligned. I could even see that design being sold at a Chinese web shop like Banggood, they seem to have quite a lot of router cradles and other woodworking gear made of aluminium on their list.

Ouch indeed! Funny thing with eyes, apparently they don't have too many pain sensors. I've learned to wear goggles at the workshop most of the time, partially because they have bifocal lenses. When moving around I tend to push them on the forehead as I only need glasses for reading and other closeup work and the lenses aren't that clear any longer. With earmuffs I may be sloppier for a single minute job but the goggles fall on my nose every time I'm using power tools. As your example shows it only takes a fraction of a second to get a hole into your eyeball. Fortunately they also heal quite fast.

That might have worked better than laying the template over the body. The outlines of the body were partially drawn on the template and as can be seen the actual hole was aligned. But the cover template may not be in line with the hole template... And the grain on the rest of the piece makes almost a 90 degrees turn! That would definitely not match. Oh well, that's just a simple cover, I can redo it a million times or less. Matching it with the backplate of the headstock is also an option.

What a lovely repair! Now I finally understand the "scoop" thing mentioned at an earlier stage. For doing the same I should buy a gouge and learn how to sharpen it, then learn how to cut two similar scoops. One is easy but cutting a matching piece to the bowl... No way! Not to mention using the communal gouges at the workshop... Now it's also obvious what you meant by "green". Until now I was wondering if it was about the final colour or about the timber. Looks nice. Bright red plasticware with white edges would fit the current season, don't you think?

Yepp, nice smooth yet powerful sounding pickups on a guitar I'd like to call my own build.

The second last Saturday workshop this semester... So I took the plate under construction. As we now have a thickness sander I decided to level it alongside with the sides of a fellow builder's acoustic sides: Got it leveled and glued some cross grained scrap walnut to prevent cupping. That piece of foam rubber has proved to be invaluable in clamping delicate pieces! The spruce with copper tape remains will be sanded off in order to reveal the hopefully correctly orientated birch. While waiting for the glue to dry I fitted the tuners. The earlets of the uppermost ones overlapped each other so some filing was required to fit them straight. There seemed to be a gap between the walnut pieces but sanding it to right thickness revealed that it actually was tight. Here fitted upside down. Flipped it around and Oh Crap! the grain lines are still off! So I decided to take the other resaw piece of the block that was salvaged from the trash bin. Also took my template and after careful aligning measured and marked the grain direction to it, transferring it to the new piece. Cutting and sanding to dimensions I then dry fitted the new piece. After all the measuring I must have nudged it some in order to save enough material for another headstock veneer: It's still slanted! Arrgggh!

Yikes!

But think about all those shiny sparkles, spreading stainless steel shards all around your eyeballs!

How about carving a groove at the ends and use zip ties? Or, if you really want to make it fool proof, hose clamps? Like this from Biltema:

The top is a nice piece of striped maple but the lower half of the back looks spectacular! I would have been tempted to bookmatch that for a top... All in all a nice looking guitar. The HB sized P90 set looks similar to what I've used for a couple of builds. I'd like to hear a blind test with yours and mine, the price range is similar but mine don't have a name.

If it's not broken there's no need to fix it. Agreed, you can't use the entire length of the board. Double checking the ready cut fretboard blanks against a 24 fret fretboard revealed that there's not too much extra, a ½" wide tape at both ends doesn't leave any slack.

A pro? To be honest they look a bit dull, the ones you've shot are much shinier, much more delicious looking. I'd assume a professional photographer would make them look like candy, or like cars in a fancy car show that have been finished with a special show polish - yes, that's a real thing!

Isn't that a type of a finger joint? And doesn't it work similarly to multiple biscuits? I know it's a common way to increase gluing surface and make huge beams for buildings so it's definitely a valid way to make a strong joint. But is it stronger than plain longitudinal wood? Part #3 of the series: Part #2 is also interesting, combined the three are less than an hour to watch.

As was clearly stated in the last third of the video, solid longitudinal wood is many times stronger than any glue joint which for us means that you can't extend your neck with an end grain joint. Moreso, starting at about 13:50 he talks about geometry. about the length of the joint v.s. the length/width of the pieces. The example shows that narrow cross grained pieces are very easy to snap anywhere as the lignin bond breaks whereas an end grain joint can stand quite some bending forces. We don't have to worry about that as the only place where long cross grained wood is being used in luthiery is the band covering the bottom seam inside an acoustic guitar.

I recently stumbled upon a new video where they tested angled joints. The results were surprising, a finger joint isn't the strongest when pulling straight like the front of a drawer. Today I tried to find that video and found a more interesting one. End grain joints, come on?!? Don't we all know that they're prone to fail?

Gluing flat pieces together for added thickness isn't unusual in guitar building. You already mentioned the scarf joint. The heel of an acoustic often is made out of several pieces as well. On our class we've taught to glue slabs in the headstock area to make the wood thick enough for the break angle - a headstock veneer will cover the seams and the sides will look like cut of one block as the grain direction stays the same. Last but not least, as you know you don't need much gluing surface for a set neck joint which is prone to the same string tension. That said I strongly recommend you to use the actual neck as much as possible to support the headstock extension. The top veneer is a good idea, too. Something like this:

Oh well, I guess I can't live with the slanted figuration so flipping it around and adding some cross grain material for strength is on my to-do list. After all there's still a few millimetres of the birch left so after leveling there'd still be plenty more than the ½ mm that's used for furniture veneers.

That very piece is made of the leftover piece of the headstock

Isn't it annoying to find a minor flaw at the final stages of the process? I know that wooden plates look a million times better when the grain direction matches with the body. Actually I just praised how @ScottR had done that in his current build. Yet I found out that the control cover of my build is slanted. Looking further it seems that if I flipped it the copper side up the grain would match so at some point I must have lost the outside. Flipping it and turning it 180 degrees would not be that much of an issue although the shape isn't perfectly symmetrical. Peeling the tape off wouldn't be much of an effort either. But: There's a cross-grain veneer under the tape... So now I'm pondering whether I should 1) level the current surface to remove the finish, 2) glue a cross grain veneer for strength, 3) attach the new bottom side to a supporting block and 4) remove the tape and veneer.

Gotta love your attempts trying to make certain tasks easier, taking into account the time you use planning and building them I guess you could have made the actual task several times. But that's how inventions are made! 20% of innovation, 80% hard work of testing and rebuilding... Or something like that. Besides, you have both the engineering skills and equipment, and some rails and other stuff at hand so why not? My attempt for such a tool would be something like a router tied to a flexible willow branch with bungee cord...

Hi and welcome! And as Robin the Boy Wonder would put it, Holy Necro Bump! The black stuff colouring your fingers and the white cloth is most likely water soluble dye. I tried to look for the PCH series but they're pretty well hidden in the Eastman site... Anyhow, the PCH 1 and 2 seem to have a rosewood fretboard whereas the fingerboard of PCH 3 is made of ovangkol. If they're made of less fancy pieces of wood I guess for the lower priced guitars they'd like to make them look more uniform. There's several reasons why the dye comes off. First, it may be a manufacturing defect, something wrong with a batch. They say that the Chinese factory only builds for Eastman which they claim to be a proof of quality. Contacting Eastman should thus be the first step. Second, if Eastman doesn't co-operate, you can try washing the dye out. For water soluble dyes plain water is the best option. DON'T SOAK! A damp rag changed every so often should do. A final wipe with lighter fluid or alcohol to vapourize any water could help. And after that a thorough oil treatment as you'd be washing any oils off as well. Speaking of oiling, using hardening oil such as Boiled Linseed Oil or Tung Oil might also help keeping the dye inside. Splash on liberally, rub until tacky and wipe dry with a clean towel. After about a quarter of an hour wipe off anything that has sweated on the surface. Oil left on the surface won't dry but that in the pores will harden and seal the dye inside. You can apply the oil several times with a day in between for curing. Third, there might be nothing wrong with the strings or fretboard, instead the culprit might be your fingers! Some people have such a sweat that it melts stuff. The hand cream used may also affect. Back in the day I used to sell 'roller mouses' that had a rubber coated bar to move the cursor. In mere weeks one customer complained that the rubber had swollen and got loose so the bar couldn't move freely. We swapped the product to a new one and within a month he made another complaint. Needless to say that he wasn't a heavy user other than by his size. I also have a friend who corrodes regular strings in a few days, coated Elixirs are the only ones that last for a month or so. Is it toxic? Most likely not. At least such dyes should not be used for items that are in direct skin contact.

Another Saturday with not too much progress. This is the stage that takes the longest! Spot sanded the edges some and reapplied the oil mix. A few layers more and it's done, I guess... At home I then covered the cavities with copper tape, forgot to take it with me to the workshop but being such a minor task I could as well do it sitting beside the fireplace. It's -20° C outside... Nice sheen but that has been wiped off... And I ran out of the mix so some chemical adventures are awaiting: Copper

No set screws on the sides? My only ToM has wide oval holes to adjust the angle with four hex set screws.

Ahh, I've never thought sliding bearings to be bushings or liukulaakeri being a synonym for holkki although now that you say it I can understand that. A quick search for liukulaakeri brought up 'liukulaakeriholkki' which to me tells that the sliding bearing is a special version of 'holkki' but that they both translate as 'bushing'. Not a wasted day, learned something new! And my apples were indeed oranges to you!