Bizman62

Plenty of ways to skin the cat. My spokeshaving skills aren't stellar, I tend to get a hourglass shape on the neck with those. I've used them but the ones at the workshop are blunt, cracked apart and welded back together, reshaped poorly on a grinder, blotched with semi-dried glue etc. and there's no sharpening tools other than a heavily grooved grindstone... The 4" cheesegrater seemed to do an uniform job in joining the dots and as I said the guy using it had no guitar building experience. I've learned to like a sanding beam for leveling the humps and bumps caused by other tools.

Nicely hidden glueline! The cheesegrater seems to be a highly underestimated tool in guitar building, yet I saw a first timer shape a neck with a 4" one in a couple of hours!

Re-entering just for competition: 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...

I must agree. It's not mine but I can't remember where I saw it mentioned.

Yupp, the SemiHollow LP style Your chamber routings just look so much neater.

Guess I couldn't get the meranti for 90...

From 'meh' to 'yeah!', good job! Just so if anyone ever needs to, one option is to put a snugly fitting temporary supporting post inside and clamp from the outside - even weights will do if there's no clamps available. Just make sure that the post isnt too long to bulge the top and bottom. And of course neither too short.

There's a lot similar to one of my builds, but your build quality looks much tidier!

I suppose they're called cleats and if you have the proper clamps they're not too difficult to make and attach. Simply take a piece of stiff wood, thin it down to a couple of mm's or 1/16" if you prefer. Cut it to diamond shape pieces of 15x15 mm or ½" making the grain direction go from tip to tip. Bevel the edges on one side just for neatness. Glue and clamp one or more of them cross grain over the crack. I'm confident that you have the skills, tools and materials needed.

That's the best way and I suppose you have enough offcuts for all types.

@Gogzs I fully understand! That was my concern as well but then I thought that even a small indicator dot or directional grain would similarly be off-parallel. Isn't that the meaning of markings on the knobs, to inform the position in one glimpse?

Not saying which one is the best but here's yet another option to stir your mind:

A lesson learned and no harm done! Apart from the oil based stain it could also be a mismatch between the white glue and epoxy, or the white glue and fabric. White glue should work with fabric but in order to make it really stick you should soak it. You can do it with epoxy only as well without having to worry about mismatching. Similar to hanging fiberglass wallpaper where you apply plenty of paint on the wall, lay the paper and apply more paint. Substitute fiberglass with tartan and paint with epoxy and voilà! -Sanding the oily stain off would still be recommendable. Tele place mats look cool and in pairs they look even cooler! I almost envy your taste...

I was going to argue that kits most likely don't have predrilled pickguard holes but before posting something that stupid I checked and lo and behold they're a real thing. Anyhow, that neck is way too pretty to be wasted for a test bed. But that's just my opinion. A test bed has all the right to look pretty as well.

Hallelujah! (1 pcs, delivered)

The neck sure is pretty! Do you think that the body has actually been a part of a finished guitar? The plugged pickguard, bridge and especially the ground wire holes hint to such a history... If you're going to use that body, something to entirely hide the three piece less stellar wood might be the best solution - a figured top, paint; or fabric/wallpaper/napkin in the true Paisley style? Or simply build a new body that would better suit your likings? Guess the chopped-off neck slot end is no issue regarding structural integrity or sound transfer...

Yummy! For a protestant any side of Jessica Rabbit beats Virgin Mary

Most likely there's no audible difference based on the highly scientific study made by our very own @curtisa

Must be an age thing, I'm only mere months behind @Drak

Well, the first one up left looked nice as did the variation of it, the second from down left. Some battleaxe style in those. And the swastika style was somewhat interesting as well, the second from up left. Those three inspired me to draw a few more H's just for fun. The one you chose matches the grain direction which I find nice. It also has a 1960's vibe, you know spaceships and all the other technology related stuff that was believed to free mankind from tedious work.

Guessed wrong... But that one looks classy.

That's true but not the case here. Good addition for accuracy, though.

It goes to show that everything is possible but if one sees it once in 30 years or more the possibility for it to happen is once in a lifetime. Like winning in the lottery, 7 numbers out of 40 or whatever it is in your whereabouts... Someone always wins but there can be weeks between the big wins. Or, as happened to a friend, there were two coupons to share the second lowest prize of about 2.5 millions - and the other coupon was split into 50 shares! 24000 is a nice sum but it could have been a million...

As @curtisa said, it's about looks only. I've never thought about or even heard about worrying about the tang chipping wood. Now that you mentioned it, I can imagine that a stud of a tang might end up right at the edge of the fretboard which might be visible. It's common practise to cut and level the fret ends including the tangs after having hammered them in. If (rather 'since') your fret slots are a bit deeper it's also common practise to fill the gaps with dust and glue. Some people take that one step further and cut the tangs a bit so they can hide the tang ends with dust and glue. No right or wrong here. Speaking of fear of possibilities, I've always wondered if the tangless ends would curl up and cut your fingers...

Good thinking. The main thing is that you're aware of potential issues and have thought about how severe they may be.