Bizman62

The spots where you've sanded through the top layer showing the cross laminated veneer are the weakest ones. They're not large, though. Quite some time ago I posted a couple of pictures of a classical guitar with a loose bridge. The top was made of some sort of plywood similarly to yours and the three layers were so damaged that there was no strength lengthwise at all. Yours looks much stronger.

@curtisa thanks for pointing that out. It was the first thing I saw but it slipped off my mind when I was looking for the truss rod image.

Ouch! You're obviously far more experienced than I'll ever be so take my pondering with some salt. That sounds like a fret buzz indeed. Have you tried lowering the last fret only? That's a PITA to check since there's no reference point for a fret rocker and even with a straight edge laid on the frets the height difference can bee too subtle to be seen as the polished metal reflects the light coming between the fingerboard and the frets. If lowering the very last fret doesn't help, other potential culprits are the pickups but you've most likely set them low enough already. If the leaving edge of the bridge saddles is off, it can cause buzz as well.

Lots of patience. View these two, they're about a bass but the idea is the same. There's many other ways as well but the facet method for shaping in Ep. 3 is a very good way to achieve a fine result.

If you get the Shinto Saw Rasp you won't need a spokeshave to remove material. It's one of the fastest hand tools for that purpose. For planing you need a plane. A long sharp hand plane would be ideal.

Am I seeing right, is there two metal rods visible? And a brass block where they peek through? If so, it's a dual action truss rod with a similar brass block at the other end as well and both of the rods are threaded into both blocks like shown in the tutorial: As there's glue and potentially a round bottom you simply can't pull the square ended rod out. So you'll have to take the fretboard off. Before doing that take a very sharp knife and cut the paint along the glue line. That will prevent chipping, allowing you to hide the fix easier. I don't know your skill level but for those who don't know heat usually breaks glue joints. An old clothes iron might be a good tool for that. Starting at the body end (protect the body from heating with cardboard or similar) try to pry a heated palette knife into the glue joint and slowly work your way up to the nut. As the clothes iron is wider than the fretboard you can heat the knife during heating the fingerboard. There may be other ways that I don't know of and I'd be as happy as you to learn a less destructive way.

The damaged area in the neck pocket is so small that I'd just use some epoxy putty to fill and level it. It'll be invisible in any case and won't affect the tone.

That's genius!

Gotoh z??? They were the cheapest of that ilk I could find: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32844056399.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.29644c4dmXUqbT But yes, they seem to be smooth.

Well... During the weekend the Covid situation worsened a tad in our town and they strongly suggested people to be more alert than before. Masks and hand wash when there's other people around etc. I'm an IT techie doing mostly house calls and whaddayaknow the business completely died yesterday morning. So today as my calendar was empty I took the guitar and played a little while waiting for the phone to ring. And it rang! So while I was talking with the customer I hung the guitar back on the cabin door knob from the end hook (yes, still no strap buttons but I play sitting so it doesn't matter). I managed to return to my desk and sit down when CRASH! the guitar fell off the knob. Good news: The only visible damages are on the edges and are easy to fix by sanding and re-oiling. No deep dents, more like scratches. Funnily the neck has no damage despite the guitar was (and still is) hanging neck down. Bad news: The bridge pickup stopped working. The 3-way switch gives the neck PU sound in the neck and both positions. Does that mean that the pickup is dead or is there just a wire loose, I don't know.

Thanks Ash, under right lighting the Ovangkol really shines that warm amber glow. Under the fluorescent tubes in the workshop it was a dull greenish grey which often made me want to change the top wood!

Christmas is coming so you can spend the waiting time for running around in hypermarkets - oh no you can't! But you can do all the Xmas cleaning to please the lady of the house! Fun fun fun!

Covid19 happened and our class was canceled so this thread wasn't finished the way it was meant to. During the last Saturday before lockdown I got it pretty much finished and let the fellow builders play it through my Blackstar Fly. Let's just say she could sing both metal and jazz and anything in between, even the plunkety plunk I'm capable of producing. While she was hanging on the wall waiting for the finalest of the final touches I cooked a batch of wax from carnauba flakes and beeswax candles and pine turpentine. I spread the wax all over when it was still hot and running and buffed her nice and shiny.

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.