Bizman62

59 minutes ago, mistermikev said:

is that tin foil shielding?  if so how do you get it to stick?  just curious.

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.

2 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

I like it a lot, but I do think the headstock is a little pointy for the body, what if you rounded those to sharp edges ever so slightly? 

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...

9 hours ago, Captainstrat said:

Perhaps slightly enlarging the bolt holes in the neck pocket a smidge would allow me to push the headstock to the bass side and align the strings better on the fretboard...Paulownia is so soft I get leery of any such mods

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.

2 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

the darker woods like walnut, wenge etc is that they're a bit more forgiving on your glue joints.

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

2 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

What fretboard wood is that?

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.

2 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

No pics?

No, but you can imagine those eight holes, can't you? Or Photoshop them on the previous images...

Maybe I should take her outside and use a proper camera instead of this 1.3 megapixel piece of excrement of my Nokia 6230i...

Not much done today. I noticed a tearout at the corner of the neck pickup cavity so I decided to sand the top. Again... Last time I got to 320 grit including a couple passes with a grain raising wet towel. Starting from 80 and going up there - well, you know how long it takes! Drilled the holes for tuners and after thicknessing the headstock to some 15 mm attached the two E tuners to find the location for the bridge using old strings. After some fiddling I managed to mark the location for the studs, but then:  There was no 11.5 mm drill bit in the house! I spent a good hour fumbling through all possible locations until I finally drove to the nearby hardware store to buy one. Actually I bought a set of 25 bits from 1 to 13 mm with 0.5 mm increments for 26.90 since a single 11.5 mm bit was 18.70! All that hassle and expense for two holes!

Next weekend is Easter so it'll be two weeks until I can continue unless the weather allows me to do some sanding outside and even apply some oil. I've found an idea for the headstock but it requires tools I don't have so that has to be left for the next course.

16 minutes ago, mistermikev said:

doesn't seem like much... but I swear I feel it

Our senses are more accurate than we can imagine. Don't you use your fingers to "see" any imperfections in the curves of your builds? They most likely are much more subtle than the fret width. 

8 minutes ago, ADFinlayson said:

the neck is much further out on a prs so you're playing further away from you. There is a worst of difference in feel between a custom 22 and custom 24 (even though they're the same scale) just because the nut and frets are 2 frets further away so the players whole body positions has to change

I can confirm that, the double cut I built has a very easy access up to the end since the cut is on the 23th fret compared to that of the other one being on the 20th. Playing rhythm with open string chords really requires some stretching out!

Thank you both, lots of information there.

33 minutes ago, mistermikev said:

I wonder why you don't see so many prs single cuts being built" and now I'm asking that even more.

That raised another question in my head: What are the main differences in single cut guitars re dimensions? I mean, there's quite a bunch of them around starting from LP to PRS to Gretsh Jets to mention a few. To me it looks like Gretsh has a wider upper bout and the shoulder line of PRS is a little perkier, but other than that? Anyone got blueprints stacked?

What Scott said. Celluloid is plastic which means it's basically the same stuff as a polyurethane finish. Imagine sanding a lacquered surface to 320! If you're going to oil the headstock, apply the oil with wet'n'dry paper or a fine grit plastic abrasive. For lacquer, try sanding the inlay only to some 2000 grit or even higher.

Sir Ash, it's amazing to see how you've progressed in such a short time! Wasn't it just yesterday when you asked for advise about this and that, now you're the source of inspiration for all of us?!

As for burnishing scrapers, how about a knife sharpener? One of those that come with a 15 money kitchen knife set or just a few coins alone? If they work for stainless steel knives they should as well work for scrapers, I suppose. Maybe a little long but an angle grinder can take care of that if needed.

Thank you for your kind words.

I'm not a great LP fan either other than the body proportions. The upper bout is smaller than that of a Gretsh DuoJet although they look quite similar at first glance. Subtle changes here and there can make a big difference.

A French curve is a magnificent tool for designing F holes and such, isn't it? As you can see from the images, the original design drawn on the masking tape evolved a bit during the process. Looking at the drawings for a week made me rip off those tapes and cut a new cardboard template with the current shape..