Bizman62

How about "tell your better half in your will not to sell them too cheap"

@ADFinlayson Holy Mo... whoever that guy was!  Those pieces look like they've got warts and blisters all over, yet I know they're flat!

@mistermikev Take every nice piece you can afford! Some day your widow will thank you, selling your stock to a big name custom shop agent. At least that's what I read in the Fender Frontline magazines back in the mid-nineties. Back then their Custom Shop luthiers used to "salvage" the backyard stocks of late carpenters in the driest parts of USA. Just tell your better half not to sell them cheap!

56 minutes ago, mistermikev said:

he said hand job lol.

You English speaking people seem to twist the true meaning of most any words or expressions. Handarbeit, hantverk, käsityö... they all translate to hand work. Aren't work and job synonyms any longer?

Nice summary there!

Looks like a variation of the sign languages for hearing impaired. 1 to 5 seems to be similar in most languages, from there on they start to vary a lot.

8 hours ago, DerMax said:

PS: the Chinese can count to ten with one hand! 

Are you sure you aren't confusing the Chinese to the Russians from Pripyat?

BTW good job with the bending if you made it fit better than the factory! Hand job FTW!

33 minutes ago, DerMax said:

6 for 6€ plus shipping?

That's what the Chinese do... Any amount costs the same. Or rather, it's the work of counting and packaging that costs, not the actual items. Notice the difficulty there: You just can't use one hand for packing and the other for counting, there's too few fingers in one hand for that!

18 minutes ago, ADFinlayson said:

Why, is it that bad?

If it were, I'd have no issue. I'm afraid my inlaying skills could best be described as hammering an oversized square block into a round hole, hoping there'd be no gaps.

At the moment my woodworking is not that delicate:

19 hours ago, DerMax said:

what do I do with 194 elastic pins?

Sell them on Ebay in bunches of 6, for 6€ a lot plus shipping?

7 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

I guess you could make your wenge one first and decide if you like it or not

I was going to say "do both" but that might save a larger piece of wood for something more spectacular.

It seems like I'll never get the courage to try after seeing that.

Well whadda ya know!

So many ways to skin a cat...

Russchian approach? Sehr gut!

If it bent by just using your hands it truly is soft. Hopefully not too soft, though!

Would this help you finding the pins? I couldn't see any pictures nor could I download it, but: http://www.bigsby.com/vibe/products/spare-parts/

6 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

There is no reason not to carve the neck first - I've done that a few times. The only reason I like to carve the neck last is that I find it easier to hammer frets in when the underside of the neck is flat.

There's opinions and arguments for both ways.

As you say, it's easier to hammer - or press - the frets on when the underside is flat.

Then again, wood is a living material where all sorts of tensions can get released during cutting and carving almost half of the material away. A laminated neck is less prone to warp compared to a one piece neck but it's still wood. Heck, even metals do that as well as stone. Carving first, letting it settle for quite some time, checking that it's still straight...

A combination of the two is to bandsaw the neck to the right thickness, let it settle and use the offcut as a perfectly fitting custom supporting block while hammering the frets in. That would allow fixing some twists and warps before fretting.

Well said, @ScottR.

Wood is a natural material but all that is sold as guitar wood is categorized as A, AA, AAA...

I still love the tranquil pace of your videos!

Rather than the Fendery slot, how about a lip at the end of the fretboard in case you need to raise the nut? Before you cut, read further...

Veneering the headstock is not (just) a way to hide mistakes, it also adds to the looks. Veneering the bottom side of a headstock even more so, one might even think of it as a luxurious touch especially if you can bend it along the volute. Not to mention that by adding those you can add half a centimetre to the thickness! Plus it would allow adjusting the nut height.

7 hours ago, Stu. said:

Realised the neck pickup is about 2mm away from where it should be:

Does it really matter? Sound vise there's no measurable difference. As I understand, this is not an exact copy so... Then again, wooden rings sure can look nice!

7 hours ago, Stu. said:

The plastic looks crap anyway

I fully agree, you've managed to get the light on the bridge ring so that it accentuates the imperfections of the surface. There's a simple yet surprisingly effective cure, though: Sand them through grits on a flat surface starting with some 32o or 400, going up to 1500 - 2000 grit. If you do it one direction only the result may even mimic the subtle grain pattern of ebony. By experience I can tell that using a coarse paper for the grain effect will only make grooves that look like deep scratches.

I've seen a similar video to the upper one. Gluing the pieces back and fixing the seams would have been my choice as well.

That Gluboost thing sure looks nice on the video. Looking at their site they also know how to take your money!

I'd just continue with method #1, applying acetone based colour (I've successfully used a black Sharpie instead of buying black powder dye for such a small job, it only has to dry properly before applying glue to prevent bubbling) and superglue in turns until you've filled all the cracks, then scrape and sand it flush.

Hint: Put a tooth pick into the screw hole. If you use glue and cut it level with the finish you'll have a solid base for drilling a hole for the screw.

Hi Max, just noticed the "Der" in your nick! Yes, we've met and shared knowledge and opinions at the Crimson forum.

For what I've heard they closed the forum for good and getting it back up is unlikely (read: not enough income for the effort)

Hope you find a similar model to yours to see how it's installed. It seems that it should lie flat on the surface, or you could use a Vibramate

Any protruding corner against the guitar body sounds like an issue.

As the instruction leaflet says,

Quote

• Align the hinged part of the vibrato with the original strap button hole
• Check that the hinged part rests flat against the guitar end and that the top of the vibrato is level on the guitar surface

That sounds like the bottom should be flat. You can try to bend it, or if it doesn't want to bend, file it flat. I suppose...

1 hour ago, bigbuddy912 said:

I decided keeping the exact stratocaster shape with 24 frets would be somewhat difficult for me

Decisions are good, they clarify your goal and help with the steps needed to reach it.

However, I think you're both overcomplicating and underestimating here!

Since you'll be basically just redoing your current body, all you need is the neck pocket template for duplicating it. You don't need to study models that "almost use the same wizard neck" since you already have the exact model. Take a piece of MDF or plywood and draw the neck pocket using your neck as a guide. Make the template long enough for adjusting and attaching, and also for maintaining the center line. The most important thing is that it fits snugly around your neck heel. Then measure the depth of the original pocket at both ends to find out the potential neck break angle. If there is, simply attach the template in the same angle using wedges.

Then, as @curtisa said, route the neck pocket into the body blank before cutting the final shape.

3 hours ago, curtisa said:

It may even pay to initially mount the neck and bridge into the body blank before you cut it to the Strat outline - effectively build a complete guitar body that is nothing more than a big rectangle of wood and then apply the Strat outline to it after all the 'working bits' have been mounted and verified correct. 

That shows the advantage of speaking English natively. Very well put, sir.

If you're going to build the body from scratch there's no issue at all. It's just a matter of measuring the right place for the bridge. The shape of the body doesn't matter, you "only" have to carve a fitting neck pocket in a right angle which in turns depends on your choice for bridge.

Start by studying the placement of the bridge you're going to use. The basic rule is to have the 12th fret exactly halfways between the nut and the bridge and then adding 3 mm to the bass side and taking 1 mm off the treble side. That can be made by adjusting the bridge blocks so take care to position them so you can adjust both ways for fine tuning. A TuneOMatic or wraparound bridge can be slanted, hardtails and trems and others with a base plate rather not.

After having chosen the bridge, find out the neck angle. It depends on the height of the bridge. @ADFinlayson has a recent post about how he does it with simple tools: http://www.projectguitar.com/forums/topic/48888-first-full-build-from-scratch/?do=findComment&comment=577648

Building the body is the easy part, most of the errors you make can be easily fixed. Happy building!

@curtisa I just had to illustrate that:

8 hours ago, curtisa said:

How many old spray painters and plasterers do you see these days?

And how many of the painters still alive are still in their full wits? The modern water based paints and lacquers may not be as bad as the old ones. Parquet lacquering was quite nasty, one had to minimize all air circulation in the room and back then there was no such things as a pressurized jump suit with fresh breathing air devices. A sane floor maker was a rarity, they all had personality changes sooner or later, similar to those who sniffed thinner rags.