Bizman62

There's many types of rubber, starting from the soft eraser type to semi hard car tyre to the hard rubber used for combs. Back in the day I read a book about guitar playing, written in the late sixties by a Finnish session player. If memory serves me right, he mentioned tucking a piece of foam rubber or something similar right in front of the bridge for a slightly muted sound pretty similar to those rubber bridge guitars.

Welcome, @JAK! As @Charlie H 72 said, my current build has a bookmatched body made out of a trunk I got when they fell some trees in the yard of a block of flats- not my place but close enough. The 100 (39") cm long, 70 cm (27") diameter trunk stood on my yard for about half a year or longer, winter and summer, snow and heat. When the bottom started to build mould I raised it on bricks. Finally, when I couldn't find a place to get it sawn I took my chainsaw and butchered three >10 cm (>4")thick quarter sawn blocks from bark to center. I then laid the three planks on the beams of my firewood storage - dry, airy, dark, what's not to love? After some five years I took one of them to the workshop and resawed it to see how it feels. The fine sawed planks then sat at the attic of the workshop for some months with slats in between which really made them significantly lighter. That's true, wood can be cut to longitudinal slices with bark on both sides and then laid outside with slats in between and stones or other weight on top of the pile to reduce warping. And of course some sort of a roof against rain and snow, with a gap to ensure good airflow. That way you'll get a couple of quartersawn waned planks, the rest being more or less slab sawn.

A well set up tool is the key, powered or hand driven. One band saw at the town workshop even have the cast iron table twisted and the other one isn't much better - apparently they're good enough for the town carpenters to build pretty large furniture and things like doors. The band saw behind the wall belonging to a woodworkers' society is of the same age - all from the 70's at the latest - but it's much better maintained. The ½" blade cuts long stretches of perfectly straight slices thin enough for headstock veneers without any effort.

A friend did that when he was prepping for the luthiery school on a course. The tutor persuaded him to add a contrasting veneer to substitute the saw dust lost at resawing. That really made it look better than a seam! Yet another option I've heard of having been done by G&L is to resaw the neck vertically about 5 mm off center and route a radiused truss rod channel on the thicker half. That might be even less visible as the frets would hide a bit of the front side seam and a V shaped neck would make the bottom side seam less visible.

THAT was the colour! I knew I've seen it somewhere! Well, it's over a quarter of a century since the farmer's daughter divorced me...

You're not alone! The only inlays I've done so far are round dots on the fretboard. And side dots, of course. As I already said, you've got some imagination. Adding to that a good amount of perseverance! -Have you asked your mother or grandmothers if they ever knew some guy named McGyver?

The only trick I know of is an inlay. It can be something as simple as a strip of 0.55 mm contrasting veneer (like the Queensland maple of walnut) in a cavity you can make with your fret slot saw. Or route a bit wider slot for something fancier like a strip of something shiny like abalone or texturous like a piece of cord... Having seen your gaffa tape build I know you have quite some imagination!

As others already said, nothing to worry about there. Another good hand tool is a cabinet scraper, it can be both faster and smoother than sandpaper.

A couple of times in the Indian Restaurant and a couple of times from Lidl. It's nice indeed.

CAD - Cardboard Aided Design

Cardboard to the rescue! That's the way to visualize objects you're unsure of!

That much outsourcing is perfectly fine especially since you did all the designing. Why buy a cow if you only need a cup of yoghurt for your lassi.

Which one?

No need to! Just take a soft brush (clothes or shoe brush) and polish the pores.

HUZZAH!!!

She should join PG and start a thread of her own about that refinishing project!

My bad, didn't reread your math, only looked at the quoted picture. Then again, looking at the Sambora gig photo the angle could well be 120 deg. But the one with a bent grille and straight top front definitely looks more like 140 deg. All that said I fully agree with you regarding the accuracy as there's no specs available to build an exact copy. "In the spirit of" is usually much more interesting anyway.

Oh, and for the young lady: the lip of the hot air gun is not for scraping paint off! A cheap painters' spatula is the right tool.

No, we are saying it might be 120 degrees. Based on the pictures and the tiny pieces of information that may well be close.

No hints about how to do things easier this time! Well, you could have attached a block of wood into the cavity as a makeshift router template but freehand isn't too difficult when you actually have a template on three faces out of four. Waiting for the next episode!

Think again. The long reach c-clamps that you install through the sound hole are designed to push the bridge plate, top and bridge together. There's only wood and glue involved so you can't tighten them enough to really break something. The only thing to worry about with them is scratching and that can easily be avoided with pieces of leather. Obviously you can't clamp from outside of the body i.e. push the top and bottom together but you can apply all the pressure you need if there's solid materials all the way between the clamp jaws. You can easily build a similar tool out of a block of wood and a couple of bolts and wing nuts. It's just an adjustable counterpart for the bridge. The outermost black handle screws are for fine tightening the ends of the bridge but small wedges work just as well or even better. The wing nuts are for tightening the bridge and I'd definitely use large washers or rather a fitting piece of plywood against the bridge plate to avoid the bolts coming through the top! - The reason to use a c-clamp on top of such bolt-on tool is to add enough pressure.

There's also light steel strings. "silk'n'steel" if memory serves me right. I highly recommend viewing a bunch of Jerry Rosa's guitar fixing videos. They're lengthy but contain lots of solid information. What I specifically like about them is that he's not the ADHD guy bouncing back and forth doing all fancy video tricks. Understood. That said, the inside block and 2x2's tied with bungee cord and adjusted with wedges is a right way to do it. It's not how the professionals would do it but buying all the equipment for one time use when the result still remains unsure may not be economical. I've also seen a video about extending the reach of regular F-clamps for such purposes. There's many ways to skin a cat...

If it wasn't you who cut and ripped the spruce layer off from under the bridge I'm tempted to agree. There's many ways to clamp the bridge, you don't necessarily need the dedicated long reach clamps through the sound hole! The easiest solution is to put a snugly fitting block inside the guitar and clamp from the outside. Even there you can use a couple of 2x2's across the top and bottom and tie them with a bungee cord, using small wedges for tightening the bridge against the top. The action being high may be due to a common problem with acoustic guitars: The strings pull the bridge area up and the braces slowly give in to the new shape.

To find out what you have under the bridge is to look somewhere where the wood has been cut, in this case it's the peg holes. Take a torch and a magnifying glass and look all around the hole. If you see uniform layers all the way down all around the hole, it's plywood. If you see end grain at opposite sides of the hole, there's solid wood. If you see upright stripes all the way down, they're vertical growth rings which means it's quarter sawn solid wood. If you need to, roll a piece of sandpaper and try to smoothen the hole just to clean any furry stuff. You don't want to enlarge the pin holes! If you don't have a good enough magnifying glass, use your cell phone camera. Use flash and other light sources and macro mode if applicable. Try to focus as well as humanly possible. The two photos you linked to are blurry and blurrier much due to insufficient light. Use sunlight, mirrors, white paper, torches, flashlights, desk lamps, whatever to get more light into the holes for the sharpest photos possible. I highly recommend you to look at Jerry Rosa's guitar repairing videos, he's got quite a many of them. This is a short introduction to the subject:

Yepp, that looks like plywood. What's not so nice is that the top layer should be there for strength - no matter how thin the top layer is, adjacent long fibers going length vise under the bridge can resist the string pull much more than traverse grain. I've got a classical guitar with a similar problem, the top layer has been removed at some point to clean the surface for gluing and the two layers left are so soft I can poke my finger through! Luckily steel string acoustics often have a piece of hardwood called the bridge plate supporting the pins so if there's none you should "easily" be able to make one. The grain direction of a bridge plate is traverse to the top. Hint: You can see what's inside by taking a couple of photos with your cell phone, using the self timer feature and flash. The only way to really strengthen the top would be to peel the entire length of the top veneer from the sound hole to the bottom of the lower bout and replace the top veneer. Such a repair would be insane!