Bizman62

Oil finishing is pretty forgiving but it takes some time to build a shiny layer. Then again, the Acryl lacquer I used on my current build is still soft, starting to relic before it has cured... The main thing is to apply it very thinly, only so that the surface looks moistened but not flooding. A pool of oil may never dry so it's very important to get the layers thin - if you've ever seen an oil bottle with sticky spills on the outside you know what I mean! There's several methods of applying TruOil, one of them is using just your fingertips. The method I'd use is to apply as much as the wood will absorb, rubbing properly to drive the oil in. And then wipe all excess off with a lint free shop towel. And wipe again after a quarter. That's a fool proof way to keep the layers thin.

Here kitty kitty kitty! Looks nice!

Craftmanship pork, never thought of that but makes perfectly sense!

Why can't I use simple words like that? Exactly what I meant, the grey line up there.

I can't figure out a switch that is designed to be mounted internally. After all, all the pressure comes from the outside of the guitar which requires some sort of a collar to prevent the switches being pushed in. The three way switch type used in LesPaul type guitars is by design closest to your wishes but it requires a washer and a nut of about 15 mm in diameter. Not too bad considering that the actual hole on the guitar is about 10 mm. I also thought about threading the hole but tightening the switch in the right position would be next to impossible. A blade switch (Fender type) requires two screws at the ends of the slot. You might be able to attach them from the inside if the top wood is solid enough. Threaded inserts might help. The distance between screws is about 40 mm from center to center and the length of the slot is about 30mm so there's not too much space for heavy duty attachments at the ends. Also bear in mind that you can't make the top too thick or the switch won't operate. One option might be a larger base plate which would take the fastening screws farther from the slot. You could even leave the top thicker at the attaching spots and use more than just 2 screws.

First, hi and welcome! Second, the down-to-earth way to combine your mini amp is to figure out how the amp works as a separate thing and continue from that. I mean, can you use the mini as a distortion device via the headphone jack? If you can the rest is simply a question of tidying up the cables and cutting unnecessary jacks off.

That caul holder looks like it would cost some serious money at any luthier store! Beautiful craftmanship! That one proves true that if you know what you need and have the tools to make it, there's no need to buy it. Too many budding luthiers spend fortunes on simple tools like that and struggle to make the ends meet. Building band saws and sander thicknessers and other power tools out of plywood and a washing machine motor can be dangerous and even prohibited without authorization in some countries but simple holders like that should belong to everyone's toolchest. I find it somewhat contradictory that people who want to do the finest of fine woodworking have no imagination or inventiveness, not even to the level of copying a tool. Or, could it be that building a guitar is somehow kin to being a guitar hero, potential sex partners buzzing around?

Neat!

This is also the same I meant. The jig is fancy and for a hollowed body it's almost essential. The two first radiused tops I made just by drawing the radius at the ends and the edge on the sides and used various tools like hand planes and a belt sander.

My experience with a crown file is that it's way too easy to get the top filed as well and ruin the leveling. Maybe I have the wrong file, I don't know. One is an American one-size-fits-all and the other is a Chinese mystery.

Can I give another vote? I use both a triangle and crown file. Actually I have two different crown files, both of which I've used for this current build but in the end I found that the triangle worked best this time. It varies! I wouldn't worry about that. As long as you get a single narrow line on the fret it's in the ballpark. After all, the tuning of a guitar is never perfect, it's always a compromise. If you think about True Temperament Frets (the squiggly ones) they're way more off the straight line than just the width of a fret. I also believe that you wouldn't accept your work if the narrow line were significantly off-center of the fret. With narrow frets there's not much wiggle room anyway, with Jumbo frets you'd have to level them quite low to get the crown on one side or diagonal:

Definitely doable and definitely complicated! There's a lot you can do on the bottom side without sacrificing the stage looks. A belly chamfer, a forearm contour, reduced thickness, thinner edges or a wedge shape like in https://www.projectguitar.com/forums/topic/54406-guitar-of-the-month-april-2022/?do=findComment&comment=609469... I've seen guitars cupped like a spoon with the bottom side edges thinned to wedges. Dual cutaways instead of one, radiused top instead of flat... As long as you have space enough for the pickups and controllers you're golden!

Congrats!

I was thinking similarly about turning the bridge around but then I started to think about height adjustment being a bigger issue. As for shimming, my first thought was to have a large shim under the whole bridge - or several shims for that matter. A large plate secured with screws in each corner would be easier to align than tiny strips under a single screw. A pair of scrub screws to raise either the front or back edge sounds like an option. However, that would require something harder than wood underneath. And that would change the entire design.

I'm with you in not being a guitar player, then again I don't consider myself a woodworker either! But it's satisfying to be able to build a playable instrument. The cheap pickups make a sound distinctive for the type in question and at least for me that's close enough. Better players may want more this and less that in the sound but for me it's enough that I can hear the difference between a P90 and a humbucker. That said, a fellow just bought a 1960's Teisco semi-hollow. The seller said that the original pickups sound crap, my friend was all "wow" as they had just the perfect sound for the style of music he likes to play.

I thought I saw something at an earlier stage but now those details don't look like I thought... It's like seeing figures on knotty boards - looking at one spot you see a man, look at his chin and it's a dog, move your head ever so slightly and it's a witch flying on her broom,,,

At first glance that looked great. But... As @curtisa said adjusting the action would be challenging. Radiusing the base to match the fretboard would be a no-brainer and even getting the action right by filing the base lower for a perfect action is doable. But if you'd find out that a new set of strings or a fret job or a change in climate would require raising the bridge, how would you do that? A shim? Or in the opposite case, how would you lower the bridge? Filing more? Agreed, I've rarely adjusted the bridge of my guitars after I've got the action right. Also, on acoustic guitars the bridge bone has no other adjusting other than filing. But the bone has to be replaced if you need to raise the action for instance after a refret.

Hi and welcome! Finishing is a Dark Art which takes lots of practice. Even if you just apply some clearcoat, getting it level and shiny can be a nightmare if the odds are against you! That one does look decent for a three piece body so a translucent finish should work if you get it right. You won't get the mile deep look of a fancy figured wood but a dark edged burst is highly doable. Agreed. it's as traditional as can be but if you can get it right you've learned a lot! There's several ways to apply colour on a guitar. Stain/dye (similar to ink) rubbed on bare wood can be done on your kitchen table and a clearcoat or an oil based wipe-on product like TruOil will seal that. I'm talking about water or alcohol soluble dyes which you can fade or blend, even and wash with the same solvent. As @mistermikev said, a dyed varnish tends to end up splotchy unless you have a good spray gun. That or an air brush can be used for creating nicely fading bursts, often that's done over a clearcoat base which allows wiping an unsuccessful job off using thinner. Don't ask how I know...

That looks great! Geometrical shapes are the most difficult ones to get consistent - except of course a perfectly round dot and even those can be misaligned. The human eye seems to notice the slightest angle in squares or diamonds. Your work looks like there's nothing to be ashamed of.

My understanding for sound qualities is that no matter what type of pickups a guitar has, my playing sounds like "thump, plunk, plunk" while another player can find all kinds of classy tones from that very same guitar. Shape is something my eyes can see and my brain understand. Do the C/C's usually use a ring? If not, have you thought about a matching pickup ring for the HB?

I had to search back to the first page to see what you did. Definitely yes the sides are thick enough for a solid glue joint. After all the linings on acoustics are only some 5 mm wide and even that may be partially routed off for binding. And in my thinking a plastic to wood glue joint is never as strong as a wood to wood glue joint so binding most likely doesn't add more strength than what has been routed away for the channel.

Oh, you enlarged the holes in the template! Didn't think of that! But I did think about putting the file in the drill... In my case the lacquer was so soft that rotating the file between the palms was efficient enough. But getting the template just right is definitely a better option. Giving the template a further thought made me think of having used that as a master template to make sacrificable work templates out of any material you have at hand. That would have allowed you to use a 3/8" brad point bit to mark the center of the tuner hole and it would then be easy to use a 10mm brad point drill to get the holes just right in a drill press. For a one-off the 3/8 brad point bit could have been used directly on the headstock but as I've noticed it's too easy to miss the center by a visible fraction. It's safer to make a template and if it fails make another. -- Oh, and I forgot to mention that using the blocks to keep your body piece level is simply ingenious!

Isn't it better that way around, assuming the two smaller holes match? I ran into somewhat of a similar problem as the lacquer had downsized the holes. There was no reamer but it appeared that the round files in our workshop are slightly conical so I simply dropped the file into each hole and instead of the normal back and forth movement I spun the file between my palms, applying some downward pressure. After getting the first hole done there was a rim of dust which served as a depth marker for the rest of the holes.

Glad I could help!

Hi and welcome! Very simply put, an input is where you put sound into the amplifier. On my Blackstar Fly there's a guitar input and a line input - the latter is for mp3 players so you can play along or just listen to music. So basically it has the same in- and outputs as your Pocket Pod. An output is for getting the sound out of the amplifier. They can be of different levels, starting from line level to headphone to speaker. Line level is for connections between your amp and a power amp or a recording device. Headphone output is for headphones and speaker output for an external speaker - the two latter usually bypass and mute the built-in speaker. The emulated output is just as it says, an output. It's for headphones or line. The word "emulated" means that there's some electronic magic that makes the sound coming through sound like it comes from a bigger amp. Basically, if you want to use headphones you don't actually need the Blackstar at all! Just plug in your backing track device to the Pod's cd/mp3 INput, plug your guitar into the Guitar In and your headphones into the Direct OUT/Phones jack. But if you want to get all the Pod's effects to the Blackstar, then connect the Pod's Amp OUT to the Guitar IN on your Blackstar. You can then plug your phones into the Emulated OUTput if you want to stay silent. Hope I could keep that simple enough!