Bizman62

With this one I wanted to challenge myself properly. This is my fourth full build, built at the community college workshop during wintertime Saturdays. She's a semi hollow LP-profile neck-through as I titled the thread but let's just call her Ovie... So: Top: Flamed Ovangkol from Madinter, Spain Body: Torrefied Estonian Alder from the sauna department of the local hardware store Accent laminates: 0.55 mm flamed Birch a fellow builder got from a bankrupted flooring factory Neck: Maple with Cherry and Nogal stripes from the outlet of another flooring materials factory Fretboard Merbau from the same flooring factory Hardware from AliExpress, Banggood and Ebay Pickups: Humbucker sized P90's (Ali) Finish: Crimson Guitar Finishing Oil Final finish: Self cooked wax mixture of Carnauba, Beeswax and Pine Turpentine Weight 3,36 kg/7.4 lbs As you can see, the body has been shaped using a Les Paul template and the headstock owes a bit to PRS. The rest has just been improvised. Designing the F-holes: Just short of putting it all together: The pickups were a bit tricky to install, especially the springs: Fast forward to today: The devil is in the details: The jack is recessed - and that's wax I didn't notice when shooting these pictures! I tend to leave the upper neck too wide so I widened the nut with offcuts of the fingerboard. The truss rod cover is also from an offcut. The back: And how does she sound? Well... When I play she's yelling and screaming but a fellow builder got some very pleasing music out of her. Just as expected...

Yet another: http://www.frets.com/FretsPages/General/Glossary/TrussRod/trussrod.html

A friend managed to get into a luthiery school here in Finland at his second attempt. Before that he had been joining guitar building courses at the community colleges of two different towns under the tuition of luthiers with several decades of experience. Practical training was required towards the end of his studies and he managed to get an internship at a foreign mid sized guitar factory. He did the job well enough to be offered a one year contract there. Something similar might work with you as well. Eagerness is good but you'll need some basic skills and knowledge as well. A lot can be learned through videos and forums but you really can't learn how to use big power tools and such without appropriate briefing. Learning the materials is also easier if there's a public storage where you can see different woods in various stages of drying.

If you've NEVER seen anything else been used for fingerboards, you haven't seen much. Even on this site there's numerous examples of other woods. For example I've used Merbau for my last builds. Cocobolo is a common wood for fretboards as well as Ziricote, Chechen, Eucalyptus, Granadillo, Padouk, Wenge, Ovangkol, Walnut, Indian Laurel, Bloodwood, Bocote, Leopardwood, Zebrawood plus of course your list - available at Stewmac, Madinter or Exotic Wood Zone among others. The reason why Buckeye Burl isn't used for fretboard is its softness. A fretboard has to withstand the wear of metal strings, fingernails and dirty fingers. The following lists woods from soft to hard, that might help in deciding whether a piece of wood could be used as a fingerboard or not: https://www.bestbassgear.com/ebass/ideas/wood-hardness-chart-bigger-better-more-woods.html @curtisa you beat me in typing speed

http://www.frets.com/FretsPages/Musician/GenSetup/TrussRods/TrussRodAdj/tradj.html http://www.redspecial-library.com/tutorials/neck-tutorial-1 Do these shed any light?

Towards the end of the week I was a little afraid that our class would have been canceled due to Covid having been more active in our town lately. Fortunately not, but we all wore masks. In the morning before really waking up I came to the idea of using brass nails instead of white plastic to fill the button holes as that would tie the buttons to the brass tube side dots. The holes were 1.5 mm wide and the solid brass nails were 1.8 mm thick. I nipped the caps off of 10 nails, stuck the sharp end to the chuck of a hand drill and rolled the nails between a folded piece of sandpaper. Not only did that reduce the diameter, it also roughened the surface for better glueing. After filing the nails flush I then reradiused the neck, sanding through the grits up to 6000. The photos don't do justice to the shininess of the brass...

Are you going to leave most of the beautiful wood visible with that T-type control cavity? Having the jack on the opposite side makes it super easy to fold the cables neatly inside the cavity. Ergonomically it doesn't make any difference, I suppose both sides are equally good, but it sure makes a difference in the looks.

Oh the lower bout is sooo sexy not to disgrace the shoulders! And if it even smells good, what's not to love?

Speaking about physics, a doctor's ex has told me that modern medicine owes a great deal to the unethical Nazi Germany live human testing.

That's definitely a female butt-crack

@mistermikev haven't you been following this thread with a keen eye? It was already mentioned a couple of pages ago that they're "convenient handles" so some patina is inevitable.

I'm leaning towards preferring Osmo 3101 to Crimson Guitar Finishing Oil...

In acoustic instruments tonewood is a fact. The sound of the strings is amplified and targeted inside the hollow body and the construction can either amplify or dampen certain frequences. The shape of the body, the size of the sound hole, the thickness of the top, bottom and sides, the size and shape of braces all have their impact to the final output. In solidbody electric instruments the wood choice doesn't affect that much as magnetic pickups only register the vibration of the strings. As you say, the wood used affects tone but it does that indirectly. Rather than actual tone it's about sustain i.e. how long the neck and body maintain the vibration of the strings. Strummed strings make the body vibrate as well which in turns makes the strings vibrate which makes the body vibrate etc. until the energy runs out. It's similar to a pendulum: You push it one way and it swings back the other way almost the same amount and continues that back and forth movement in decreasing arcs until it stops. If you shorten the pendulum arm the swinging motion gets denser and I guess that the wood choice can have a similar effect to the frequency response. It affects to the frequency. Xylophones and the likes are tuned by taking material off the bars. Sanding a bar thinner in the middle of the bottom side tunes it down, sanding both ends shorter tunes it up. You can tune the top of an acoustic guitar by shaping the bracing. A common rule seems to be that tapping the top in various spots should give as many different sounds as possible for the most balanced and richest output.

Noticed the same.

Do you mean something like a rectangle on the side of the upper bout? For such I'd first look inside to find out if there's braces on the side. Usually not but you never know! Then I'd try to find a good location for the preamp. If the collar is curved I'd try to find a matching curve on the body. Masking tape can be handy in marking the location of the hole. It can also prevent tearout to a measure. After having marked the location I'd drill the corners off. I'd do that with a brad point drill bit after carefully having marked the drilling spots with an awl or similar remembering to take the diameter of the drill bit into account. I'd start drilling backwards in order to prevent tearout and splitting. As the side is pretty thin I might even go backwards all the way through. Drill bits have the tendency of going fast forward which can be very hard to control on thin woods. Before sawing between the holes I might use a steel ruler and a knife to draw the cutting lines, with the masking tape still attached. Running the saw inside the lines should also prevent tearout as it cuts the fibres on the surface. A small pulling action keyhole saw might be my choice, something like shown here: https://youtu.be/zdQoBsWGc9U What else? Careful, careful, careful. Measure, measure, double check before cutting. Good luck!

Sabre tooth rabbit... That's hilarious! The fourth on the left looks like there's pants in a sitting position and fingers on both sides. The third from the right looks more "real" in that concept. The one on the right is the scariest though in my eyes.

For some reason the body colour now reminds me of the opening phrase of the Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler: "I was wearing my powder-blue suit... I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be." Double checking what "powder blue" should look like revealed that the hue on the body is darker than the Wiki examples. The Finnish translation says "Gunpowder blue" which may look somewhat closer... Anyhow, the body looks cool! I also like the self made wooden fret markers.

Would this help: https://www.google.com/search?b-d&q=pennsylvania+guitar+repair+shop

Alright then, it definitely looks cool. I'd say the builder did a right thing not to cut the neck pocket deeper as the neck now matches with the height of the Floyd. If you cut the pocket deeper you'll have to carve the Floyd area deeper as well by the same amount to keep the action low. The other option would be to carve the bottom of the neck pocket deeper at an angle which would be even trickier. It can be done but it definitely requires some serious skills. Then again, a neck with a break angle is more ergonomic than a straight one. If you're willing to put some money in, letting an experienced repair luthier do it for you might be worth every penny. When you calculate the cost, consider the price of the tools and skills needed. A good router bit easily costs $40, a good chisel as much. And as chisels rarely are sharp enough right off the bat you'd also need a set of sharpening stones for $100 and a sharpening guide plus the skills to use them. If you already don't have all that, getting them might cost the same as the services of a professional - with much less risk!

Always keep your long hair tied to a knot, Always wear ear defenders when working with power tools.

There's something fishy with some of your Google content. I first thought I could see all images but these two don't open in your post: I could have copied the actual links but they were several lines long. If I inspect the properties of those, there's a broken band icon instead of a preview. Opening the address in a new tab requires me to sign in to Google but if I do I get a "Do Not Enter" icon. The video you posted on September 6th does the same. It used to work for me when you posted it. Earlier vids in this thread seem to work, though.

Just out of curiosity, is that a one off build or a stock guitar? I mean, I've seen that or a similar one before on some forum. There's one unmentioned option: If you don't like it, sell it! The looks appeal to some and the hardware seems to be of good quality. Even the fret ends look like the builder knew his basics. So instead of potentially ruining such a piece of art and craftmanship why not find a body to suit the skeleton?

That petroleum jelly sounds like a good idea! I've been covering the truss rod with a similarly trimmed strip of masking tape. As per a hint on a Crimson video I've also rolled a few pieces of masking tape on the truss rod to prevent rattling. There's space for those as the truss rod sits a hair deep.

Did you remember to put the truss rod in before gluing?