Bizman62

I'm hitting myself by surprise by agreeing with you! It's close but not quite there. What is it that makes it look undone, I can't tell. Could it be the fretboard markers? They're large and aggressively shaped but they're neither black/white nor colourful.

Whew, I already thought I was seeing things!

He'd be blind, deaf and haptically impaired not to be. That's a true high end masterpiece.

Thanks for reminding! I was already making a mental note to "add warmth" to the neck pickups of my next builds but you gave a valid argument not to. Then again, a quarter of an inch isn't much compared to the magnetic field of a pickup. And on third thought it's easy to add warmth to the icepick sound by adding some bridge pickup with a blender pot. I've got a Strat doing that and on my current build I had the idea of replacing the three way blade switch with a sliding blender pot with a center notch. Unfortunately I never got the sliders, either they were never sent or, as I've learned to think due to recent experience, Posti never announced me that they had arrived and sent them back.

Now that you said that, I realized that you didn't. Carving the tears or rather a tear shaped rod shouldn't have been too much of an effort compared to carving the tear shaped holes! The shape looks easy but getting the points point to the same direction is a task I've heard highly experienced luthiers struggle with.

I already thought I'd like to toss a couple of my posts away... But due to my nature I decided to save them to torture the potential future readers Let's wait how the original subject continues!

You sure don't make things easy for yourself!

All good points, the younger generations already have grown to toss away things they don't need so the mental environment has surely changed. About a nation being more or less wealthy, in the post war world there was those who had to pay and those who received. Agreed, having to pay war reparations gave a boost to the industry, everyone had a job etc. but there was lack of everything as most of what was produced was sent to the winning team. And of course there was the Karelians who had to be situated somewhere since the USSR needed their homes and land. As recently as in 1980's there was still households without a water closet. Back in 1994 when we bought this house the water supply renovation was already done but the 40 litres hot water boiler served the kitchen and toilet sinks only. For washing there was a big enameled cast iron pot embedded on a fireplace in the sauna which has no other heating than the stove. Of course we built a shower indoors before moving in but the previous owner was mostly happy with how things had been since her husband built the house in 1952. The reason for her to sell the house was that there's six steps at the front door which weren't too easy to climb with a wheel chair. Shoveling snow may also have been a challenge. There's a couple of things that are "free" in Texas compared to Finland. If you build a house you don't have to insulate it much against frost. You don't have to dig the water pipes six feet underground to prevent them from freezing. Nor do you have to build houses or roads or railroads so that ground frost doesn't move them. Nor do you have to put new tarmac on busier roads every second year just because the spikes of winter tyres have chewn the old off. That makes building and maintaining infrastructure a lot cheaper which should also mean lower taxes which in turns leaves more money to the people. Oh, and if you say that you have floods, so do we. The Ostrobotnian rivers tend to flood almost every spring when the ice and snow melt but the frozen ground can't suck the water in.

Poly can have a colour which will disappear when it dries. I bought some gym hall grade poly for my floor and it was transparent purple! But it didn't change the pale pine at all. The mix looks good so far. While waiting for potential changes in the mix, prepare some scrap pieces with a couple of layers of the Danish. Let's call the Danish the penetrative finish and the mix the high buildup finish. If you do a Danish only on another scrap piece every time you put on a layer of the mix you should soon see the difference, even after two-three coats. This is an interesting process to follow!

Despite us being of same age, I suppose families here were much less wealthy than over there when we were kids. Saving and reusing everything was and still is common practice among people over fifty. Inheriting hundreds of washed youghurt beakers is still not uncommon - fortunately my parents sold their house and moved to a smaller apartment...

Kelohonka indeed! That makes me wish you could find the inside glow of it when sanding through the flat grey! Shoe polish? Yikes! Even the thought of it sounds fake looking fake! As I've already said, there's ways to fast forward aging, the wear and tear that comes through years of usage. There's valid techniques of making something look like something else - marbleizing is the first that comes into my mind - but "painting" to make something look worn out is simply wrong! Like bullet hole stickers with no actual hole! Paint it and sand the paint off, that's speeding up the normal wear as well as painting and applying/heating a finishing coat too soon to crackle the surface.

A good starting point though, and nothing irreversible done - yet. Asking for opinions and waiting for them before making your final decision, that's what I'd call a good choice whenever in doubt.

Asking is the path to knowledge. The splines add friction. Thus the holes in your knobs should be just a little smaller than the outer diameter of the shaft but larger than the inner diameter measured from the bottom of the splines. The ridges should cut a bit into the wood. And the split in between gives some flex. If the knob becomes loose you can carefully pry the gap more open for a better grip. Here's how the size of the hole should look (red)

You are aware of adding the tannic acids in form of black tea and such, aren't you?

Oooh! They're pretty! First thing to do is to find the center, then drill a hole of the right size. A drill press and a drilling vice with triangular notched jaws would help in getting the holes straight. For finding the centerline you'd need a set square with a 45 deg angle in the handle and a straightedge. I'll draw... One notched block in your vice should keep the knob upright! Draw a couple of lines and mark the crossing for your potentiometer hole

#metoo

The idea is solid but to be honest I'd like to suggest you to play around the shape a bit more. The "beak" is a bit too protruding for my taste. I mean like this:

I thought Aluminium is lightweight! The wooden centre block must be too massive?

The neck clearly has a much higher rating than the body, both the maple and the rosewood are pretty. I would be surprised if they originally have belonged together unless there's been some artsy paint job over the cheap three-piece basswood body. Having seen your builds I'm sure it would be a no-brainer for you to build a body to match the neck and create a quality instrument which you can then sell if you don't like it. Speaking of using as a test bed, the luthier who has been tutoring me once tossed away a basswood bass body which he had built for testing pickups. The reason was that it didn't have the acoustic properties he wanted. As @curtisa's test bench has showed, the actual pickup sound isn't affected by the wood but there can be a significant difference in sustain which may be the main reason he dumped it. Just FYI.

Dentist drills are just more expensive versions of the Dremel. Both are high speed rotary engraving tools that can be used on very hard materials. When the Danish has fully cured it shouldn't be much more flammable than bare wood. It also may help avoiding chipping. Speaking of flammable, the rags you use for applying Danish and other oils are self combustible. Never just toss them into the trash bin, either burn them or spread them to properly dry before dumping.

I might have flooded the entire surface with that epoxy, spreading it with a credit card to fill the tiniest cracks. There's spots that don't look too healthy and you'd be sanding the surface clean anyway. Or are you going to use clear epoxy for the rest?

Giving it a name and putting in a bottom label sure adds a professional touch! A Stellar idea!

Nice idea to duplicate the end of the fretboard to the pickup rings! One side note about terminology: The names of the finishing products vary depending on country and language. Thus pay attention when mixing products. I've learned to speak about "poly" but in the Finnish language we would call all it "lacquer". Direct translations can be way off but also within one language there may be regional or cultural difference in wording. If you search for "difference between poly, varnish and lacquer" you'll find lots of information. To confuse you even more, there's both oil and water based versions. As oil and water don't mix as such, it may be safe to assume that the same applies to oil and water based finishing products. Just a heads-up.

Well doubted! Without this thread I still wouldn't know the background of the paint striped strat not to speak how it connects to EVH...

You never know until you've tried. You can somewhat test the compatibility by mixing the Danish with the poly. If they mix and stay mixed without making layers like water and oil in a glass it's a good starting point. Some scrap piece testing after the mixing test is recommendable. As I may have mentioned I've used the Crimson Guitar Finishing Oil that comes in two variations: Penetrative and fast buildup. It's basically similar stuff to Danish, the difference between the two versions is the amount of poly. So if the poly you found is compatible with the Danish you can easily control the amount of buildup. Getting a glossy finish with brushed poly only isn't easy as the brush strokes will show. A wipe on/wipe off oil finish is much easier to get level. As this seems to be a long process with the long curing/drying times and testing various finishings, I'd still recommend waiting for the drier season. In the meantime there's plenty testing to do. You don't want a guitar where the finish peels off during the first year!