Bizman62

I was going to say "do both" but that might save a larger piece of wood for something more spectacular.

It seems like I'll never get the courage to try after seeing that.

Well whadda ya know! So many ways to skin a cat...

Russchian approach? Sehr gut! If it bent by just using your hands it truly is soft. Hopefully not too soft, though! Would this help you finding the pins? I couldn't see any pictures nor could I download it, but: http://www.bigsby.com/vibe/products/spare-parts/

There's opinions and arguments for both ways. As you say, it's easier to hammer - or press - the frets on when the underside is flat. Then again, wood is a living material where all sorts of tensions can get released during cutting and carving almost half of the material away. A laminated neck is less prone to warp compared to a one piece neck but it's still wood. Heck, even metals do that as well as stone. Carving first, letting it settle for quite some time, checking that it's still straight... A combination of the two is to bandsaw the neck to the right thickness, let it settle and use the offcut as a perfectly fitting custom supporting block while hammering the frets in. That would allow fixing some twists and warps before fretting.

Well said, @ScottR. Wood is a natural material but all that is sold as guitar wood is categorized as A, AA, AAA...

I still love the tranquil pace of your videos! Rather than the Fendery slot, how about a lip at the end of the fretboard in case you need to raise the nut? Before you cut, read further... Veneering the headstock is not (just) a way to hide mistakes, it also adds to the looks. Veneering the bottom side of a headstock even more so, one might even think of it as a luxurious touch especially if you can bend it along the volute. Not to mention that by adding those you can add half a centimetre to the thickness! Plus it would allow adjusting the nut height.

Does it really matter? Sound vise there's no measurable difference. As I understand, this is not an exact copy so... Then again, wooden rings sure can look nice! I fully agree, you've managed to get the light on the bridge ring so that it accentuates the imperfections of the surface. There's a simple yet surprisingly effective cure, though: Sand them through grits on a flat surface starting with some 32o or 400, going up to 1500 - 2000 grit. If you do it one direction only the result may even mimic the subtle grain pattern of ebony. By experience I can tell that using a coarse paper for the grain effect will only make grooves that look like deep scratches.

I've seen a similar video to the upper one. Gluing the pieces back and fixing the seams would have been my choice as well. That Gluboost thing sure looks nice on the video. Looking at their site they also know how to take your money! I'd just continue with method #1, applying acetone based colour (I've successfully used a black Sharpie instead of buying black powder dye for such a small job, it only has to dry properly before applying glue to prevent bubbling) and superglue in turns until you've filled all the cracks, then scrape and sand it flush. Hint: Put a tooth pick into the screw hole. If you use glue and cut it level with the finish you'll have a solid base for drilling a hole for the screw.

Hi Max, just noticed the "Der" in your nick! Yes, we've met and shared knowledge and opinions at the Crimson forum. For what I've heard they closed the forum for good and getting it back up is unlikely (read: not enough income for the effort) Hope you find a similar model to yours to see how it's installed. It seems that it should lie flat on the surface, or you could use a Vibramate Any protruding corner against the guitar body sounds like an issue.

As the instruction leaflet says, That sounds like the bottom should be flat. You can try to bend it, or if it doesn't want to bend, file it flat. I suppose...

Decisions are good, they clarify your goal and help with the steps needed to reach it. However, I think you're both overcomplicating and underestimating here! Since you'll be basically just redoing your current body, all you need is the neck pocket template for duplicating it. You don't need to study models that "almost use the same wizard neck" since you already have the exact model. Take a piece of MDF or plywood and draw the neck pocket using your neck as a guide. Make the template long enough for adjusting and attaching, and also for maintaining the center line. The most important thing is that it fits snugly around your neck heel. Then measure the depth of the original pocket at both ends to find out the potential neck break angle. If there is, simply attach the template in the same angle using wedges. Then, as @curtisa said, route the neck pocket into the body blank before cutting the final shape.

That shows the advantage of speaking English natively. Very well put, sir.

If you're going to build the body from scratch there's no issue at all. It's just a matter of measuring the right place for the bridge. The shape of the body doesn't matter, you "only" have to carve a fitting neck pocket in a right angle which in turns depends on your choice for bridge. Start by studying the placement of the bridge you're going to use. The basic rule is to have the 12th fret exactly halfways between the nut and the bridge and then adding 3 mm to the bass side and taking 1 mm off the treble side. That can be made by adjusting the bridge blocks so take care to position them so you can adjust both ways for fine tuning. A TuneOMatic or wraparound bridge can be slanted, hardtails and trems and others with a base plate rather not. After having chosen the bridge, find out the neck angle. It depends on the height of the bridge. @ADFinlayson has a recent post about how he does it with simple tools: http://www.projectguitar.com/forums/topic/48888-first-full-build-from-scratch/?do=findComment&comment=577648 Building the body is the easy part, most of the errors you make can be easily fixed. Happy building!

@curtisa I just had to illustrate that:

And how many of the painters still alive are still in their full wits? The modern water based paints and lacquers may not be as bad as the old ones. Parquet lacquering was quite nasty, one had to minimize all air circulation in the room and back then there was no such things as a pressurized jump suit with fresh breathing air devices. A sane floor maker was a rarity, they all had personality changes sooner or later, similar to those who sniffed thinner rags.

Just amazing! When I was young I had seen inlays like that only on factory made instruments and in my naïveness thought that it's about some fancy industrial high technology machinery that can automatically cut the inlay pieces and carve the cavities in mere minutes - something that might not even have been possible back then! Oh and how I hated that saw in my early teens! We used omnidirectional blades for cutting acrylics and I never learned to cut straight or even stay outside the line.

Holy inlay! I'm not that afraid about carving the inlay cavities, it's the cutting of that crisp and hard material that has kept me from doing any inlays. Plus I've never remembered to place any order for MOP or abalone or anything like that. Plus I don't know what to inlay... Did I say clearly enough that it looks just amazing?!

Not to mention that the grain is so straight it's almost impossible to tell how many pieces a top is made of!

Cedar, you say? Reminds me of one guy making a semi-hollow with a cedar top. One day there was a stack of planed and rounded cedar planks intended to be used for sauna benches. The town carpenters sharing the workshop apparently had some fancier project going on, normally the benches are made of abachi in larger projects, or aspen or spruce for single family saunas.

No, but there's a risk of pushing the dowel right through the bottom. Unlikely but possible.

Since the top is only 3 mm or so thick and the body is hollow if I understood right, I'd try the heat and paint scraper method first. That also depends on the glue used. Titebond and hide glue will break with heat, the foaming one or the regular white wood glue won't. Some wedges might be useful to keep the top from regluing if you get it off with heat. Other than that, what @curtisa said is a solid method for those who have a decent band saw and know how to use it. Either my skills are non-existent or the saws at the workshop poorly set up but I can't get a 3 mm slice off with a bandsaw!

Welcome to the forum! If they are of good quality, age isn't an issue. A hundred years or so doesn't make a hand plane ancient or unusable! Of course the bottom has to be true and preferably the sides at a perfect 90 deg angle but those are relatively easy to fix. Same goes for the adjusting screws and such. A dull blade just needs to be sharpened, they rarely are perfect even from the package. Then again, if your tools are from a dollar shop fixing them would not pay. You most likely won't get the surface perfectly flat with sandpaper, the edges tend to round and slope. For tools needed, well, the builder at the refugee camp may have the minimum of what it takes:

There's really nothing I can add to what @ADFinlayson and @komodo said in terms of safety. I know from personal experience that a collet can loosen, fortunately I was taking off a <2 mm pass on predrilled soft alder... Summarised: Use a depth stop and route several shallow passes until you've reached the preset depth. The shallow passes serve a similar purpose to predrilling with a forstner bit, i.e. having the least amount of material to be routed. AFA pre drilled holes: I like the idea (never remember to use it!) of having a hole at both ends. That should help keeping the ends accurate. Another way to skin that cat is to have a stop block at either end. The bravest ones just draw a mark and stop the router spot on at every pass. The last method either gives me steps or a cavity too long - routing the cavity a tad too short until the last pass should tidy the ends though.

Now that you mentioned it, editing that part out is a good idea for the very reason you gave. Having a hole drilled at both ends in a soft wood, maybe. But tilting the bit a full 9 mm down on one of the hardest woods really can make serious damage.