Bizman62

Just thinking out loud, have you given any thought of usingtoggle latches to fasten the bottom? Maybe I should have worn a mask when sanding the finish today?

I'd say yellow as a base and amber for the burst. Apply more amber on the edges to make it darker. If you use water based stains you can even use plain water to make the center lighter. Or, if you use alcohol based dye you can rub the dye off with alcohol.

Nice spacious control cavity!

I can't but admire the workmanship on the halo, the transitions from colour to colour are perfect!

Nothing beats a proper sanding. There's no shortcuts. Then again, with quality papers and a proper technique it doesn't actually take too long.

I've usually sanded them but it depends on how thick the clearcoat is. We've been taught to go rather thick so there's quite a lot to sand off. Starting with rough enough a paper until the pits are so shallow they don't gather any sanding dust, just shallow shiny pits. Then changing the direction by 45 degrees and make the grooves of the previous sanding vanish, rinse and repeat. On my last build I started with 220 to get rid of the runs and other roughness, continuing with 400 and up. At 15oo it's level with a sheen, still a bit dull.

Tru dat, it's relatively easy to hear on a three pickup Strat how the low end vanishes. At least I can hear it when playing myself, but definitely I'm not one of those who can tell a pickup position just by listening! The pickup-on-node theory is still somewhat fascinating to me. Speaking of Strats, the mid pickup is also on a node and the bridge pickup is close enough to one, open string harmonics that is. One might argue that when fretting a note the harmonics would travel off the pickups and that is also true. Artificial harmonics, if I've understood the terms right... But if the pickups are placed to fraction spots of the scale length there should always be a node close enough to the pickup. Which harmonic will be cut and which emphasized is another question - that's most likely the reason why the same chord sounds different when fretted at another position.

Ahh, so it has nothing to do with the tonal theory, nodes and such, only about looks.

Yes, the logic behind things is interesting at least to me. It's logical to have a longer scale tuned lower as the extra length is at the low end. Like, when you're playing a barred E chord the scale from the bar to the bridge would be of standard length but you'd have two extra frets for easier fingering. Following that line of thought a guitar is just a ukulele on steroids with two extra strings and a dozen extra frets to go left. Umm... Are you talking about the Neck pickup optimally located at the 1/4 spot of the scale length? Another theory tidbit...

Knots are flowers on wood, for what I've heard.

Some minor progress... I've sanded and applied more rattle can lacquer. One thing I noticed last week is that the sponge with abrasive pads on both sides (400 amd 1200) may not be the best for dry sanding lacquer: I kept wondering why the rounded edge didn't want to stay flat, it seemed like a layer was peeling off or something similar, anyway there was a rough stripe apperaring no matter how I tried to sand it. Wet not so much but I didn't want excess moisture to seep under the finish. Then a fellow suggested that the accumulated lacquer dust increased the friction and burned the lacquer. Most likely so! So after having applied a coat two weeks ago I decided just to flatten all the roughness and runs, in the worst places starting with a 220 grit 3M Clean Sanding paper, continuing with Mirka Abranet 400, 600 and 800 after which I continued with 3M "pigskin" 1000 and 1500, wet. There's a nice sheen now (and a couple of dents that I don't care about). Next weekend I'll do the same for the headstock and go up to 6000, then a swirl remover compound. I should have done that at a couple of rattle cans earlier but was afraid of sanding through down to the wood.

Big is beautiful!

Good tips, @mistermikev! Let me add one more: Rub the screw with some sort of wax. You don't need much, it's enough if you screw it into a soft candle or jar of paste wax. Even a piece of soap will do. That will lubricate the threads for easier insertion without sacrificing the grip.

That's true. When tapping the pickup with a steel object it can be heard in "zero" position as well. The sound isn't bad, though. When our Master Veijo Rautia who is a pretty well known pickup builder tested it he wondered why bother making pickups for €100 a piece when a €30 set of Warmans sound that good! The bleeding blender seems to add beefiness to a single pickup and although the difference in the tapping sounds in zero position seems to be quite minimal, I'd say about half or 1/3 of the volume, there's some audible difference in the actual sound even from 0 to 1 in a scale up to 10. Obviously I can't tell how the neck or bridge pickups would sound individually but the middle one doesn't seem to be of another series despite being isolated from the the other two.

I'm not that good a player that I could turn knobs or switch a lever during playing. Also, it takes some time to figure out which direction the blender works when the switch is either at bridge or neck position. But I can tell that just a tiny bit of the other pickup adds loads of richness to the tone! Even if you don't turn it while playing you may find a sound that cuts through without extra volume. For a two pickup Tele you shouldn't even need the switch! That's why I would have liked a slider pot, I would have put it into the place of the blade switch. The lever would tell if the sound comes more from one end or the other. A center notched one would have been even better. Slider pots seem to be hard to find in ohmages used for guitar pots. I'm not sure if that was even necessary, though. The electricians here should be able to tell that. Another thing is that there's dedicated blender pots to keep the volume consistent. Mine is a standard pot and I can't hear any difference in the volume levels, guess it's partially a wiring thing.

I did one for my Strat, blending the bridge and neck whenever either one is chosen. I followed this Breja video: A Tele should be even easier! For my current build I ordered some slider pots but they never arrived for some reason. Might even have been sent back by the Posti, it may have been in the early days of the current customs regulations.

You mean rocker switches? There's lots of variations available, supposedly an on-none-on switch would be best for that based on the photos of Teisco switches. The local automotive store might be a good source! It just so happens that there was an image on today's newspaper featuring Heikki Silvennoinen posing with his main axe, a Flying Finn Custom which seems to be even further customized with three rocker switches, in this case on-off. That type should be much faster to switch during playing than the mini switches of my Eko:

Exactly. Yet I'd like the makeshift template idea to be taught to any budding luthier at an early stage. Not only would that save them money, that would also make them understand the basic mechanics of a template. A routing template is just a fence and in cavities and holes the diameter of the router bit (or rather the bearing) plays a big role in corners. I still remember the feeling when I realized that a square template creates a round cornered hole!

I was thinking similarly, although I can't name any brands. I've used Crimson's Guitar Finishing Oil for some of my builds and for what I've heard it's counter-engineered TruOil. They make two variations of it, the penetrating oil enhances the grain pattern and the thicker one builds up faster. TruOil is basically just a brand name which has spread from the original manufacturer. The basic recipe(s) used to be known by every country boy but after people moved into towns and lost touch to any maintenance woodworking many skills vanished. That opened a market for ready mixed finishing products for hobbyists. Same stuff under a fancy name giving the illusion that only <add name here> is the real and true product to be used for that very purpose. Anyhow, the basic recipe is simple: Boiled linseed oil, Turpentine and Poly/Lacquer/Varnish/Whatever you call it in your whereabouts. Boiled linseed oil will eventually level but it takes a million layers until all grain is filled. The lacquer is more substantial, it builds up much faster but getting it level with a rag or brush is challenging. And the turps just makes it more fluid and shortens the curing time. The mixture is easy to wipe on and as you wipe any excess off after every layer it will level nicely. One version has 1/3 of each but by changing the proportions you get either a more penetrating or more building version. Should I mix it myself, I'd choose a linseed oil based lacquer that uses turpentine for thinner. That should make the ingredients mix and match. If you choose the TruOil route, check the ingredients in the Safety Data Sheets of the products you can find. That should tell you how much solids there is which correlates to how fast the finish builds up to a level surface.

Gotta love the simplicity of tools you use! People whining how they'd need a template for every detail before they can build a guitar should take a keen look at your headstock. Similarly, there's great wisdom involved in how you drilled the tuner holes. Not only did you prevent splitting with the pieces of plywood in your vise, you also prevented the end of the holes splintering by drilling the holes before cutting the center off. The ramp to the headstock opening is going to be a showstopper!

You can't go wrong with a good rasp! I've noticed the same with spoke shaves. It's obviously a tool that takes quite some practice to master. And some more practice to sharpen and set up correctly. There's both flat and concave ones in the workshop and after having carved an hourglass out of my neck blank I've always changed to less aggressive tools like scrapers and rasps. Faceting is most likely the easiest way to get consistent results.

Thanks! I saw the product page but couldn't find that information - maybe the 8 hours ride from a friend's funeral had affected my eyesight. So, the "on-off" pot that acts like a secondary master volume is actually a tone. I'll tell my inlaw.

7.5 mm sounds thick to me. Fender probably uses the thinnest ones, barely 5 mm. Something around 6 mm at the highest point should be thick enough for cutting fret slots, yet thin enough to leave enough material under the truss rod channel.

I just visited my brother-in-law who had bought a Gretsch, looks a lot like a G2622 Streamliner™ Center Block Double-Cut with V-Stoptail but it has chrome knobs on pots. He had got it for steal as both he and the vendor had thought there was something wrong with the pickups. I tried it and there was no hum or anything like that, it just sounded different. LOTS of boomy bass! The pots puzzled me. I have never studied how a Gretsh work so I just tested to try to figure out what they do. Well... I found out that around the F-hole one was the volume for the bridge pickup and another the vol for the neck pu. The third one seems to be a linear volume for both as it works sort of like an on-off switch. On the horn there's a logarithmic volume pot, again for both pickups. This one seems to smoothly change the volume. So four volumes but no tone??? Can anyone explain the logic behind that? Also, as I previously said, the sound is very bass dominant. I wonder if that's a bug or a feature. It works well for palm muting bass lines in the style of Scotty Moore but if that's intentional it seems like a one trick pony.

Put it on a table cup side down. That - in theory! - should allow the wider side to dry similar to the other side. When/if it levels, raise it above the table allowing air flow on both sides. The main reason usually is that the top wood isn't dry enough. So if you lay it on a non-breathing surface the bottom side won't acclimatize in a similar way as the top side. Good thing with warpy tops is that they most often aren't strong enough to reshape the actual body. A rule of thumb is that if you can pinch the gap close with just your thumb and one finger, it's perfectly glueable.