Bizman62

Hi and welcome!

Most often the routing is done by leaning the router on the top with a tip bearing router bit. Thus the cutting depth depends on the bearing which should be easily swapped to a desired size, the actual bit "can" be of any diameter. The bearing rolls along the side of the guitar and the difference of the diameters between the bearing and the bit defines the depth of the cut.

There's also dremel tools that instead of a bearing have a solid depth stop to prevent the router bit to cut too deep, they also lean on the side.

And there's Ye Olde Skool method of using hand tools like chisels and marking gauges.

totally nuts!

2 hours ago, Akula said:

I'd love to reinforce the butt joint

How about a full length dovetail groove, guess rather in the wood as a wooden slat inside the plastic might swell and crack the plastic.

24 minutes ago, Andyjr1515 said:

I think there's a few but Ovangkol is definitely one of them...

Funny how I can't remember anything about that! And I sawed, drilled, carved, scraped and sanded my GOTM winner top quite a many months on a weekly basis!

All the above.

Plus making a 7 string neck shouldn't be that difficult compared to a 6 string one. It's just a bit wider. Haven't made one by myself, there's too much for me to learn playing a 6 stringed guitar. But there's fellow builders with a similar skillset to mine who've successfully built beautiful 7-stringers.

On the positive side the middle string follows the centerline which in my thinking should make things even easier. Some extra attention to stiffness may be required because of the extra string pull but laminated necks and/or carbon fibre rods are common in any necks nowadays.

What's the matter with this world? Basses look like superstrats and have P90 pickups? No wonder an elderly fart like me gets confused. Four strings used to be plenty enough but what do they now have? 36 string basses...

Superstrat, not a bass! I only saw four holes, not figuring out the outermost holes were covered by tuners! Blame (almost) bedtime and Scotch.

Heh, that must be a slayer metal bass! Looks like it has been played with fingernails pulled off and wrists slit.

2 hours ago, Akula said:

Does it stick to MDF? I'm hoping not...

MDF is porous so most likely it will.

My first thought was to suggest using tape to prevent sticking but then I realized that tape is made of plastic film and the glue is intended to melt plastic. No wonder it's sold in metal packages! I wonder what sort of plastic the caps are made of, though. Finding that as tape might work. Then again, metal tapes are widely available in various widths and aluminium tape isn't too expensive.

Wax might work as well but it depends on the solvents used and the time of exposure i.e. will the solvent penetrate the wax layer before evaporating. Waxes can be dissolved at least into alcohol and turpentine, never thought about stronger stuff with them but a quick search reveals that many other solvents can be used to remove wax.

10 hours ago, henrim said:

Frtd

Couldn't find what that would mean in luthiery. Please?

3 hours ago, RVA said:

Should I be concerned about the decreased surface area for gluing the fretboard to the neck with routes for the truss rod and two 380mm L x 3mm W rods?

Knowing that there's aluminium U channel truss rods that are 12 mm wide and commonly used by makers like Martin I wouldn't worry.

There seems to be a lot of discussion about that question and for what it's worth there was a dead link to StewMac where they allegedly had told that wood glue would work with carbon fibre rods in a guitar neck. Also it was mentioned in several occasions that sanding the carbon fibre rough improves the grip despite that there's no pores in the carbon. So in any case it seems that Titebond will stick to carbon fibre better than to plastic or metal. And as a final thought, there's wood that is not optimal for wood glues unless treated specially (sanded/planed or wiped with acetone) just before gluing.

And of course you can use epoxy if in doubt. Or replace the carbon fibre rods with hard hardwood rods.

33 minutes ago, GenerativeGuitars said:

One dimension i did not come across was the distance from the pickup to the bridge... Is there any theory on this?

There is a theory but does it matter is another question. Take a look at the nodes picture I posted on the previous page. You can play harmonics at about 1½ and 1.75 fret, the tones being a fifth apart. And for some reason that's where the bridge pickup usually sits. Or close enough given how close to each other those nodes are. Also, you can play the 5th fret harmonic on the 22th fret or over the neck pickup as well.

Yikes! That's going to be something amazingly insane!

10 hours ago, henrim said:

Progress is slow but there’s some

Progress is progress disregarding speed, And most likely you'll get this project finished before global warming has been stopped by political actions.

Your tool set is somewhat puzzling... Yours must be the most professional looking fret organizer block. Not only are the holes perfectly aligned and equally spaced, but you also have taken the time to do the markings with a tool instead of a Sharpie! Lasered or punched? Doesn't matter, they're perfect. And I don't believe you have bought that!

Further, what is the function of the metal block with a black grooved top?

And finally, the wooden wedge tightened clamp (curious about the real name for that tool), is that a commercial product or a family heirloom?

Hi and welcome!

First, I'm not an expert in electronics by any means.

However, that looks like a basic wiring, something I've done with my guitars. And the tone works.

The selector may look confusing as there's three switchable options and the two center lugs are connected together so in total there's five lugs.

Utterly simplified the pickup system is a loop from hot to ground starting and ending at the Output Jack. There's gadgets that let the signal pass, adding some modifications on the route.

Take a look at the Pickup Selector: The hot wire from both pickups is connected at the side lugs. There's a common ground going to the top of the Volume pot but for simplicity let's forget any grounding for a second. So, the blue wire continues that path for both pickups either one at a time or simultaneously, then goes to the lug of the Volume pot continuing to the Tone pot. Now we get into the grounding: The signal then goes to the outer lug of the Tone, through the Capacitor to the top of the pot for grounding. From there it continues to the top of the Vol pot which is connected to the sleeve lug of the Jack.

9 hours ago, ScottR said:

And the sand back work is done.

I've said it before but for potential future readers repeating feels just right: Enhancing the figuration with other than black makes the result much more vivid. Clean as opposed to smudgy, also more natural. Coal and some stones are the only black things that come into mind thinking of Nature and even they have depth (chatoyance) and shades of other colours. Plain matte lampblack simply looks like dirt on the surface in my eyes. There's uses for such but it's not the best option for this kind of a job.

As @Prostheta said in another thread

Quote

If you value your work and want everything to be the best, don't accept flaws and half-measures but take full ownership of them.

So I decided to attack this issue. I could have lived with the cracked seam but the misaligned stripes of the neck and backplate bugged me every time I saw them.

Thus I took the sharpest chisel I could find - no sharpeners there other than a grooved Tormek which is a good tool per se but not in the desired condition! Anyhow, I managed to cut the problem piece off and move the seam by a mm, double checking the straightness with a steel ruler.

Nobody seemed to know where the small clamps had gone, there used to be a dozen of about 10 cm long ones but after some reorganizing they seem to have vanished. I wouldn't be surprised if a member of another group had left them on their workpiece and took a break for the rest of the year. Arrrgh! Anyhow, this worked. The white mess on the block is due to it cracking which I fixed with Titebond which instead of trying to clamp it I secured with drops of super glue and accelerator at the ends,

Much happier now, a little sanding and reoiling and it will look similar to the other side!

While the glue was drying there was time to address the other alignment issue, the dreaded backplate. After several iterations I finally cut a slice of the same neck offcut as the backplate of the headstock and expanded it with the birch of the front of the headstock. It's aligned with the centerline, or will be when the shape is finished. I still wonder if the birch should be replaced with the darker wood to copy the backplate of the headstock. Opinions, please.

This was the last Saturday this semester, the saga will continue some time in January.

That's not going to be as difficult as what one fellow builder did for an old acoustic a few winters ago. See, first he had to strip the fretboard off. Not a big deal as he was going to replace it anyway so the only thing to consider was not to tear the actual neck. Then he had to plane the neck level, still attached to the fragile acoustic body. And then he finally routed two channels for carbon fibre rods. And of course glued a new fretboard and hammered new frets in.

Agreed, the trapeze and floating bridge construction allows for a bit more slack with the neck break angle than a glued one not to mention the thick neck - I happen to have a similar one and the V neck is over an inch at the first fret. Still not too bad for a novice.

After this lengthy prologue, let's start with the good news. What makes this much easier than, say, a Gibson type neck is the lack of headstock angle. Even a carved neck of this construction will lay flush on the table by its headstock and heel. Double sided tape is all you need for attaching but if you want to you can even drill holes for screws. Pilot holes for tuners and neck pocket screws can be used for that.

The next step is to guide the router. There's two ways: You can either align a beam with the truss rod and lean your router against that. Or you can build a template to be used with a bearing bit. My choice would be #1, a length of 2x2 would be easy enough to attach to the table.

Oh, and I'm talking about a handheld router here.

For a table router I'd attach the neck to a square piece of board to bypass the headstock and compensate the wedge shape of the neck.

I must admit that the last photo is the first one where I actually understood how that works! But hey, I have studied to become a bookkeeper (never worked as such) and later a PC techie or rather a local helpdesk.

Oh, and the last photo shows even to my untrained eyes and brain that the thing really should work as long as the end posts stay aligned. I could even see that design being sold at a Chinese web shop like Banggood, they seem to have quite a lot of router cradles and other woodworking gear made of aluminium on their list.

3 hours ago, Akula said:

they dug a chunk of metal out of my eye

Ouch indeed! Funny thing with eyes, apparently they don't have too many pain sensors.

I've learned to wear goggles at the workshop most of the time, partially because they have bifocal lenses. When moving around I tend to push them on the forehead as I only need glasses for reading and other closeup work and the lenses aren't that clear any longer. With earmuffs I may be sloppier for a single minute job but the goggles fall on my nose every time I'm using power tools. As your example shows it only takes a fraction of a second to get a hole into your eyeball. Fortunately they also heal quite fast.

1 hour ago, ScottR said:

tape a piece of tracing paper over the opening and trace the shape. then with a pencil, trace in all the grain lines from the surrounding wood and cross them over into the cover side of the line a little ways. then you can cut that out and lay it over your offcuts and turn it in all directions until you find the orientation that looks best. Then trace the outline and get to cutting.

That might have worked better than laying the template over the body. The outlines of the body were partially drawn on the template and as can be seen the actual hole was aligned. But the cover template may not be in line with the hole template... And the grain on the rest of the piece makes almost a 90 degrees turn! That would definitely not match. Oh well, that's just a simple cover, I can redo it a million times or less. Matching it with the backplate of the headstock is also an option.

What a lovely repair! Now I finally understand the "scoop" thing mentioned at an earlier stage. For doing the same I should buy a gouge and learn how to sharpen it, then learn how to cut two similar scoops. One is easy but cutting a matching piece to the bowl... No way! Not to mention using the communal gouges at the workshop...

Now it's also obvious what you meant by "green". Until now I was wondering if it was about the final colour or about the timber. Looks nice. Bright red plasticware with white edges would fit the current season, don't you think?

Yepp, nice smooth yet powerful sounding pickups on a guitar I'd like to call my own build.

The second last Saturday workshop this semester... So I took the plate under construction.

As we now have a thickness sander I decided to level it alongside with the sides of a fellow builder's acoustic sides:

Got it leveled and glued some cross grained scrap walnut to prevent cupping. That piece of foam rubber has proved to be invaluable in clamping delicate pieces! The spruce with copper tape remains will be sanded off in order to reveal the hopefully correctly orientated birch.

While waiting for the glue to dry I fitted the tuners. The earlets of the uppermost ones overlapped each other  so some filing was required to fit them straight.

There seemed to be a gap between the walnut pieces but sanding it to right thickness revealed that it actually was tight. Here fitted upside down.

Flipped it around and Oh Crap! the grain lines are still off!

So I decided to take the other resaw piece of the block that was salvaged from the trash bin. Also took my template and after careful aligning measured and marked the grain direction to it, transferring it to the new piece.

Cutting and sanding to dimensions I then dry fitted the new piece. After all the measuring I must have nudged it some in order to save enough material for another headstock veneer: It's still slanted! Arrgggh!

Yikes!