Bizman62

The "decorations" -binding or shaping? - really tie the headstock to the body! Very nice! What I tried to say in my previous post was more about the shape. One image tells you more than broken English ever can. Here I duplicated the upper horn, resized (hence the difference in the stripe size) and rotated it to fit:

Use a relatively stiff sanding block in order to only hit the tops of the bobbles.

Yep, Banggood is the place I've bought many things from. The truss rods I've got have all been working, also the ones I've sold to fellow builders. Currently it seems there's a 20% discount for 2 or more: https://www.banggood.com/Two-Way-dual-action-45-Steel-Truss-Rod-420mm-p-933049.html?rmmds=search&cur_warehouse=CN The bass size one I got from Aliexpress also seems to work: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/10-pcs-570mm-Double-Course-Way-Bass-Guitar-Truss-Rod-Inner-Diameter-9mm-Steel-A3/32774484651.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.a03d4c4dUaPimR As curtisa said, testing is mandatory. I've been mostly lucky, but in one tuner set one of the tuners had the hole in the gear off-center so it was very tough to turn at a certain point. One thing not worth buying is the "nut slot round file keyring set": They're not files, they're nozzle cleaning rods.

I once bought a 2 x 4 cm aluminium beam cut into 28 cm pieces and leveled them by rubbing against a piece of sandpaper on the table of the huge jointer plane. The length was based on the longer side of regular wet'n'dry sheets. Masking tape and super glue for secure yet easy to remove attaching of the desired grit slice of sandpaper. A longer and heavier beam might be better but as I just tried a worn out 400 it seemed to do the job just fine. Rather slow than sorry... For the fret ends I've used the dirty and fast method: File the ends flush with the fretboard, file the angle and round them by taking a piece of 400 grit wet'n'dry rolled to a flat threefold wrapped around my finger and running it in various angles up and down along the fretboard. It rounds the fret ends and also gives the fretboard a nice played-in touch. The same roll method can also be used to round the more or less triangular frets after having used a dressing file. It's more about polishing than reshaping so it doesn't ruin the levelling. For polishing I've used 3M Trizact pads up to 6000 grit or a nail polishing sponge with various grits. I've got those from China for $ 5.99/10 pcs - a nice gift for the fellow builders on the course!

It's been half a year but nonetheless this looks just like one of the cases Jerry Rosa repairs on his YouTube videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC29Dkc6-RMU8TCrloPN0Cbw

That's logical. Most woods have darker brownish growth rings so enhancing that colour produces a more natural effect. Lately I've seen that logic getting more publicity and popularity, yet the black still lives hard in tutorials. Note that you can use any colour for popping figure, even light ones like yellow or pink, and after sanding apply another colour. Also, if you start with a spirit based dye and continue with a water based one, the colours don't blend. Lots of options there for an open mind! Written by one who likes natural wood...

I've been using Chinese ones costing ~10 € for 3 including mail. And they look identical to those sold for 10 € a piece at a local builder web shop so the quality is decent. Of course it doesn't hurt checking the action before gluing the fretboard. They're only 420 mm long but that seems to be enough for 24.75 scale necks. As Mr Finlayson said, part of the neck isn't moving. There's no need to stress the neck joint!

There's aluminium tape with conductive adhesive as well. On the other hand, not every copper tape has conductive adhesive. Anyhow, let's wait for the correct answer!

I'd vote for aluminium tape used sold in hardware stores for fixing and sealing metal pipes, alufoil insulation and other building related things. It's much cheaper than copper tape.

It was a lovely warm day here so since I didn't have any work left in the early afternoon I beat the carpets and hoovered... And since it still was warm and sunny on our porch, I took the guitar and a sanding block out. No images but you know how to sand by hand so use your imagination! I also found a sketch I once drew for other purposes, here's how I cut the neck blank and measured the neck break angle:

Lovely! And superb indeed!

What a lovely contrast with the tranquil natural wood vs. the dynamic blue! Hopefully there's enough space between the strings and the covers. Recessed covers would match the pot knobs but at this stage making them would most likely require redoing the entire top and be nerve wrecking at the very least!

I'm working on my third neck through at the moment so I can at least tell what I've decided to avoid in my future builds... The first one, the LP type shown in the April GOTM contest, is a few mm wider than the fretboard end. Making the neck end blend nicely with the top is a PITA to make it look like a feature instead of just poor measuring! It's like carving the guitar out of one single piece of wood. Looking from the neck to the body joint shows more on the bout side than on the cutout. The next one is a dual cut where I succeeded better with the width of the neck block. Because of the dual cut the fretboard didn't protrude much into the body. The current build has a top to hide the neck seam but any inconsistency in the neck width would look even worse when looked along the neck. And since the single cut design left quite a many frets over the body, in order not to knock the bass side upper corner of the fretboard off some serious fiddling had to be done. That said, the next one will definitely be wedge shaped along the fretboard, no matter what the shape will be. The angle is so shallow that it won't affect gluing, neither would the profile suffer.

Yep, that's the way to do it. Good quality wet'n'dry. A friend just showed a lesser quality paper where the sand had worn off at the edge of his block. Let it soak thoroughly before using, that will both elongate the life of the paper and eliminate scratches caused by a bent edge of the paper. A drop or two of dishwashing soap can also help in keeping the water film uniform under the paper. Also use a semi hard block instead of just your finger. That will help keeping the surface level and the curves contiguous.

Wow, thanks! Didn't mean to push but if you like it you're welcome to use it.

I like it a lot too, and to be honest I didn't notice any significant pointiness. There's two sharp edges in the horns and the same amount in the headstock. Now that you mentioned it, maybe and just maybe the upper horn shape could be duplicated at the end of the headstock, Then again, that would be even more pointy despite being round...

On my first build, a T-type, the neck wasn't perfectly aligned. So the Master Luthier simply loosened the screws by a quarter of a turn and wrenched the neck into the correct position, then retightened the screws. If it worked for hard maple, softer woods should pose no issue.

A more serious error is that it looks like you're having the tuners upside down. Not a big problem per se, but it may affect tuning stability and cause the gear to wear.

Cheater! Seriously, that's what I should have thought about with mine.

I noticed that using the Latin name Erythrophleum suaveolens, Google can find quite a many wood sites telling about it.

Well practiced! And the Crimson method for the angle is valid, done that several times on my neck thrus.

Oh yeah? That may be true for staining but not when a yellow stripe of Titebond shines between two dark brown pieces!

That's merbau from the parquet factory outlet. One of the boards I found there was a 7 mm thick quarter sawn piece with a hole in the middle. Plenty enough for eight fretboards! I let our Master slot them using his machinery in all three common scales. And the truss rod cover is indeed an offcut from the headstock. Hence the tiny missing piece of birch veneer on the upper stripe.

Your plan doing the poly first sounds viable. Oil shouldn't stick to poly, nor go beneath it to push it off. Use masking tape as Andy said to protect the areas to be oiled. And if you get poly in a wrong place you should be able to scrape it off.

Alright, did a little mockup to see how she would look like... And noticed a couple of missing splinters. More sanding to be expected Obviously the saddle is still missing, also waiting for some magnets to replace the double sided tape to hold the truss rod end cover. And the headstock still is in a very sketchy state.